Bhs has extended its outsourcing agreement with Computer Sciences (CSC) for seven years, in a deal worth £80 million.

The agreement, which was originally struck in 1993, will see CSC continuing to support more than 850 desktops, 68 servers, infrastructure servers at 165 stores and 2,500 EPoS terminals.

The extension comes only a few months after Sainsbury’s extended its own outsourcing agreement with Accenture and, although the scope of the two deals are quite different, it is certain to be a filip to champions of outsourcing as a viable business case for retailing.

’Bhs recognises that outsourcing IT services to best- practice suppliers can deliver significant business benefits,’ said Bhs commercial director Ian Allkins. ‘After a thorough review of our IT operations and requirements we were satisfied that extending our existing long-term relationship with CSC would provide the best solution for Bhs.’

CSC confirmed that its duties would be business as usual and that for the most part Bhs would not be starting any big new IT implementations for the foreseeable future as a result of the extension of its contract.

‘Developments such as Chip and PIN and RFID may impact on the contract,’ said CSC vice-president, commercial business Ivor Canovan. ‘We will provide the framework for those developments.’

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