Post Office Seeks £500m Worth Of IT And Network Services

The Post Office has put out two contract tender notices worth a total of more than £500m as part of a wider transition strategy, following its separation from Royal Mail.

The new business plan, laid out at the end of November, will have the Post Office redefining itself as a multi-channel retailer.

Service Towers

Following a review of its existing supply chain, the organisation chose a new operating model based on Service Towers, managed by a Service Integrator and Service Desk (SISD) Provider, and began a series of procurements in 2012 to attract suppliers which could handle overall service provision and delivery of particular IT services.

ATOS IT Services UK was chosen in October 2013 to act as the SISD Provider, managing the Service Towers. The new tenders cover Back Office Tower and Network Tower procurement.

For the Back Office Tower, the Post Office is looking for a prime supplier to provide services including operations management, interaction with the broader supply chain, the development and maintenance of centrally managed, non-customer facing applications, and hosting and infrastructure support and management services, including finance, accounting and HR systems.

“A scalable and flexible solution is required to allow Post Office to grow with customer needs and support increased product diversity, reduced running costs and faster integration with its partners and suppliers,” the Post Office said in the notice, adding that the supplier will need to provide exit management services at the end of the contract term for handing the services over to new suppliers.

Network services

The Network Tower supplier will need to support secure connectivity and communication between and within Post Office locations, including WAN, LAN, network and IT security, unified communications, mobility and contact centre provisions, according to the notice.

Within the Network Tower the Post Office is also looking for services including hosting and infrastructure support and management, although hosting and infrastructure are also covered under a separate Data Centre Tower already in procurement.

The Back Office Tower contract is worth about £50m to £180m for an initial term of seven years, which could rise to £230m with possible extensions of two one-year periods. The Network Tower is worth an estimated £85m to £160m for an initial eight-year term, rising to £200m with the possible two years of extension. Both contracts are covered by the Government Procurement Agreement.

Transition

In July the Post Office admitted flaws exist in an accounting system that has been at the centre of a bitter row between the institution and subpostmasters. The Horizon system, which records transactions across Post Office branches, is thought to be operating correctly, but a variety of bugs were uncovered by Second Sight.

A group of subpostmasters, led by the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA), have blamed the software for wrongly charging people of accounting shortfalls. Some have had to repay money thought to have been illegally taken, others have been jailed for discrepancies.

In 2012 Fujitsu took over a five-year, £500m contract to provide telephone and broadband services to the Post Office, along with TalkTalk, Capita and billing specialist MDS.

As part of its transformation plan, the Post Office has embarked on what it has called the largest deployment of contactless payment terminals in Europe. Terminals will be rolled out at 30,000 counters across its network of 11,500 branches, meaning 99 percent of the UK population will not be further than three miles from the technology.

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