Thomas Cook goes with outsourcing

Telephony deal aims to save travel company £20m during next five years

Thomas Cook is outsourcing its telephone network in a five-year deal that aims to save the company £20m.

The travel agent is working with telecoms provider T-Systems on the contract, covering three call centres, 615 stores and various offices in the UK.

Implementation will begin in September 2005, with voice networks and hardware rolled out at Thomas Cook’s head office in Peterborough. The system will be put in place at all stores, call centres and other sites for peak-season holiday bookings in early 2006.

Thomas Cook IT director Carl Dawson says outsourcing will help the company deal with a large number of telephony suppliers, disparate systems and technologies.

‘Our aim was to move to a single strategic platform across all our UK businesses, providing a new technology system on which we could build better integration between the businesses,’ he said.