BT was one of the big winners in the race for the multibillion-pound contracts for the NHS National Programme for IT.

To some observers, the choice of BT for a major systems development project was a surprise, but it's an area the telco has been expanding for some time.

As managing director of BT's Major Business Group, Danny McLaughlin is responsible for the supplier's 5,000 largest customers. He led the sales team that won three of the biggest NHS deals, including development of the central 'data spine' at the heart of the programme.

Here he talks exclusively to Computing about how BT will deliver on its contracts.

What was the key to your NHS successes?
We were very pleased with the outcome: we are prime contractor for three big pieces of business and we have an involvement with the other contracts, either as a services supplier or as an infrastructure supplier.

Clearly that was something that [NHS director general of IT] Richard Granger was quite keen to see, as it gave synergies and scale possibilities to the other service providers.

Granger certainly does drive a hard bargain and there are stiff conditions with the contracts. But I think it is always best to have a tough and knowledgeable client, because the bargain you get to at the end of it is deliverable and you go there with your eyes open.

You do your due diligence and your risk assessment. If it is done at the appropriate level - ours was done by BT's Operating Committee - then we absolutely believe we will deliver against the obligations we have signed to under those contracts.

That is a competitive advantage we have. We have the scale and the expertise, and the programming project management and the partnerships. So our very informed decision at the time was: "Yes, we can do this".

Others may have felt it was a risk too far, particularly where they were dependant on getting parent company guarantees from US-based masters - maybe they didn't want to do that.

I am satisfied that what we signed up to was deliverable and in the commercial interests of our shareholders, and we will deliver.

Does this big win open the door to more opportunities?
Our experience with the NHS has been great because it took us forward in terms of managing risk, and contractual terms and conditions. Those conditions will start appearing elsewhere in government, because Richard Granger didn't just do that for the NHS alone.

With one part of government at that point, we expect other parts of government to get to the same point.

If we as a company become acknowledged for delivering well against those conditions, then other people who didn't will be asked the question: "If you didn't step up to that six months ago, why would you be there now?" It gives us competitive advantage.

Are you achieving similar success in the rest of the public sector?
The public sector has gone crazy on us. We won the major health contracts but we had a pretty big public sector business before that.

One of the reasons we were successful with our bids is because of the long-term relationships and services we have provided. We had quite a lot to build on in health because we were already there with HealthNet and NHS 24.

The public sector is very healthy because the government has been prepared to spend and hire more people, and they all need a Lan port and a phone.

They all generate revenue for whoever their communications supplier is. There is money in health and education, and if you look at things such as the Freedom of Information Act, it drives spending as organisations have to meet their obligations under that legislation.

I can see lots of initiatives underway to make the relationship better between local authorities and the people who pay their Council Tax bills, and BT has brought out some offerings in that area.

There is our customer relationship management offering, eCity, which has local authority applications built into it, such as revenue collection and so on. It comes with a multimedia interface that lets the customer delve into some of the detail. It seems to help with the relationship.

BT is keen to promote itself as a broader-based IT services supplier. How do you go about changing years of preconceptions that you are just a telco?
Are we perfect at it? No. It has to be built on a sound knowledge of the customer. What are they trying to achieve? What are the key drivers?

Are they upsizing, downsizing, expanding, is there merger and acquisition activity? Where are they in terms of the technology-installed base? Is it over the hill, and are they getting into replacement mode? What's the roadmap? Where are they trying to get to?

How do customers react when you start talking about areas such as outsourcing? Do they still expect you to try to sell products?

Sometimes it leads into discussions on outsourcing and sometimes they leave that for further down the track. Often it starts with infrastructure renewal.

I can't remember the last time I went in with just a product pitch. It's not effective. Apart from anything else, our product portfolio is just too big. I defy anybody to name 100 products out of the thousands we have. It has to be needs-based and partner-based.

All the big stuff we have done recently, at NHS, Unilever, Royal Mail: a lot of it has been based on partnerships.