Tesco’s stores in CEE rely on Deutsche Telekom network

Just over three years ago, UK-based retailer Tesco chose GTS Central Europe to connect over 1,000 of its stores across the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary with a centralized private corporate network. Now, after the merger of GTS and Deutsche Telekom Group, Tesco has decided to extend its contract with the Group for another two years – a success story about thinking globally, acting locally, and providing an all-in-one, seamless service to our customers.

Founded in 1919 and famously earning just one pound of net income on its first store’s opening day, Tesco has since grown to become the world’s third-largest retailer by profits. In recent years, it has expanded rapidly in central and eastern Europe, continually opening new locations throughout the region. “It was important for Tesco to find a trustworthy partner who would be able to provide a regional approach for CEE. Operating the network from a single location and receiving the same service quality in each country were among the key advantages of choosing the DT Group,” says Martin Berdych, CEE IT Infrastructure & Operations Manager at Tesco.

The network operated by T-Mobile Czech (TMCZ) has since been the backbone of Tesco’s mission-critical data applications in all four countries, including payment transactions as well as supply chain and employee information systems. These services are essential to retailers, and to Tesco in particular: In its 2016 annual report[1], the company stated that it hosted 78 million shopping trips per week and employed 476,000 workers worldwide that year. This means that potentially, thousands of customers and employees could be affected if Tesco’s payment or HR applications intermittently stopped working as they should. That’s why creating a reliable network to support them was the most important thing TMCZ could do for its customer.

Tesco has benefited from a centrally managed service run by our Czech subsidiary and backed up by local support in the respective countries, ensuring the stability and homogeneity of the network at all of the company’s outlets. As a result, the customer has now decided to extend the contract for central VPN covering the four countries for another three years, and even chosen to upgrade its services at all the relevant sites. Additionally, all of the company’s VPNs in Slovakia will be transferred from former provider Benestra to another DT subsidiary: Slovak Telekom. In continuity with the initial contract, TMCZ will also keep providing Tesco with other important services such as dedicated Internet access, voice and SMS, as well as server hosting services out of its own data center.

DT becomes a one-stop shop to Tesco’s thousand stores
Working with just one partner across the region is a crucial point for Tesco, and TMCZ has been able to pair a local support system with a regional approach to provide a seamless cross-border service in the requested countries. Tesco enjoys multilingual support across the CEE region, with DT employees present in each country and focused on delivering the best possible service. Additionally, having a single provider for the region instead of four different operators in four countries allows the customer to reduce the complexity and costs associated with the service. The company saves money both directly through volume purchasing, and indirectly through the lower cost of operating a single regional network compared to four local ones. Should the need arise either locally or internationally, DT’s own networks and those of its partners throughout Europe would also make it possible to expand Tesco’s services to new locations quickly and easily.

[1] https://www.tescoplc.com/media/264194/annual-report-2016.pdf