Hewden signs £20m outsourcing contract

Plant hire firm renews networking deal with BT

Hewden’s old green-screen terminals are to be replaced with modern PCs

Hewden, the UK’s largest plant equipment rental company, has renewed a contract with BT to be its fully managed networked IT services provider.

The outsourcing deal, worth £20m will BT implement a new technology plan for Hewden.

Old legacy servers will be migrated to a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, a new network will be rolled out across 100 Hewden sites, and the company will move to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

'As operators of the largest holding of construction equipment for hire in the UK, we want to offer our customers the most rapid and effective deployment of that machinery possible,' said Doug Sprout, chief executive of Hewden.

'We also want to remove barriers to consistently exceeding customer expectations. This project is a vital element of that strategy.'

BT will install and manage an entirely new multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network across all 100 sites in Hewden’s estate, and replace its old green-screen terminals with modern PCs.

As a result, Hewden will have all of its sales and mobile working staff using 3G mobile laptops for the first time, increasing flexibility and efficiency.