High street retailer Woolworths has signed a five-year outsourcing deal with Cable & Wireless for the provision of managed communications services.

It will manage Woolworths’ networks, including an IP-based local area network at its head office, data centres, remote corporate sites and 820 shops across the UK.

Cable & Wireless will also install an IP-virtual private network to connect the head office, regional offices, distribution centres and data centres as well as all its shops.

With all services running on a single IP network, Woolworths will benefit from faster communications, enabling it to respond to customer needs more quickly, such as updating promotions and pricing information more quickly.

The network will also be able to prioritise vital traffic like credit card authorisations, in-store ordering and kiosk-based transactions and corporate back-up.

Woolworths head of systems delivery Peter Wilkinson, says the contract will pave the way for future consolidation of its traditional voice network onto the new data network.

‘We are effectively outsourcing our network management, maintenance, network provision, capacity planning and disaster recovery,’ he said. ‘It will allow us to focus on our retail and channel systems.’

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