Codestone

Category: Support & Managed Services

Marks & Spencer (M&S) has become the latest major UK firm to work towards improving its efficiency via a new managed services agreement.

The retailer has signed a multi-year arrangement with Cognizant that will allow many of its IT and application support processes to be handled externally, covering a number of different business divisions.

Thanks to the new arrangement, the company will become more flexible and responsive to changes and problems, with areas such as procurement, supply chain, forecasting and stock replenishment set to benefit.

It will also help to improve business continuity and make M&S' operations less susceptible to outages and other disruptions.

Damone Quigley, head of infrastructure and application services at M&S, said: "We are now more confident about promising our business better system availability, capacity and stability."

Earlier this week, mobile operator Everything Everywhere also signed a new £700 million outsourced IT deal that will cover the next seven years.

Posted by Victoria Browne