Bodycare puts its trust in BT with new five-year contract

In an age of comparison sites, it's become the norm for people to switch suppliers on a regular basis as they chase the best deal. But chopping and changing isn't ideal in terms of business continuity. So what if you could get the best of both worlds, a long-term, flexible service, built on a future-proof foundation and bundled with competitive pricing that frees you to concentrate on building your business? High Street retailer Bodycare has got just that, with a new five-year contract which includes a next generation network upgrade, a calls and lines package and a managed payments service to take the pain out of PCI compliance...

Bodycare has a straightforward approach to retail: Great value products available through 135 local stores in High Streets up and down the country. But with the family-run business growing, it recently reached a crossroads in terms of its IT structure and support.

Outgoing IT Director Roy McFarlane had built up a massive amount of knowledge in his time with the company and wanted to establish a platform that would continue to support its growth – and be able to cater to customer demands – well into the future.

With Bodycare's contract with BT coming to the end of its life, Roy looked around for the best possible deal available – and chose BT. For another five years.

The five-year support and services contract is huge commitment, reflecting the trust that Bodycare has in us and building on the relationship that we've established together. It includes three new key features:

1. A wide area network upgrade

Many retailers are looking at next generation communications just now and wondering if the time is right to take the plunge. A network upgrade is not something to take lightly, as there's a certain amount of pain involved in getting everything in place, but a new network provides:

• increased bandwidth
• improved resilience
• faster speeds.

And Bodycare has no doubt that the network upgrade will underpin a range of new services, solutions and consumer behaviour that technology is making possible. So things like mobile point of sale are now a real possibility because there's a more agile network able to support it.

2. Managed payments service

Just as importantly, the upgraded network will also support a new managed payments service, designed to reduce the scope of Bodycare's PCI compliance obligations. We're supplying the software, implementation, hosting, support and training – and we'll be managing it all.

By avoiding having the bulk of customer card data going through Bodycare's systems, it dramatically reduces the retailer's risk, simplifying its PCI compliance. Basically, we're taking on the headache of PCI and doing the due diligence for Bodycare.

This means that Bodycare's IT team can get on with driving the business forward, knowing that we'll make sure:

• customers' payments are processed quickly and efficiently
• the threat of card data loss is reduced
• one supplier provides one complete solution to make life simple.

3. Calls and lines

The icing on the cake for Bodycare was getting a new calls and lines package agreed as part of the new contract. It's a cutthroat area and we knew we were up against some really enticing offers. But we worked with BT Custom to create a calls and lines package that, along with everything else, made it difficult to find better.

Bringing it all together

Now, it's all coming together in-store. The next generation network project will continue until March 2012 as local stores are upgraded along with the local exchanges that serve them. It's a big change in the way Bodycare work, but the retailer sees it as the way forward and is confident other retailers will be following suit sooner rather than later. And we wholeheartedly agree.