NEWS
Marks &
Spencer
transforms
workforce
scheduling
for 80,000
colleagues
Colt further expands its IQ
Network in London
M
arks & Spencer, a leading retailer
delivering top quality food, clothing,
home products and financial services,
is focused on using industry-leading
technology to create efficient, insight-driven
stores led by empowered colleagues. With
more than 80,000 colleagues, workforce
engagement is critical to M&S’ success. The
retailer has embarked on a new engagement
strategy with JDA and ecosystem partner,
REPL, to make the combination of JDA
Workforce Management and Microsoft
Teams the cornerstone of the strategy. This
has enabled M&S to ensure that at each
of its 700 stores, it has the right colleague
working the right shift at the right time.
To simplify its in-store operations,
M&S needed to combine its employee
communications channels to unite employee
engagement functions in one place. M&S
selected JDA Workforce Management and
JDA gold partner, REPL, to achieve this,
empowering the M&S workforce no matter
where they are, to see and swap shifts, review
their schedule and make changes as needed.
“It’s absolutely critical that we have our
colleagues focused on serving customers,
with the right people doing the right job
at the right time, ultimately improving the
customer experience,” said Sacha Berendji,
Retail, Operations and Property Director,
M&S. “Working with JDA and key ecosystem
partners, we now have a powerful, efficient,
insight-driven advanced scheduling system
in place that allows us to be more agile in
the way we run our store operations.”
10
INTELLIGENTCIO
Colt is continuing
to invest in its
Colt IQ Network,
further densifying
its offering
C olt Technology Services has
announced it has completed a fibre
densification project in and around the
city of London, adding 110 km of new
fibre in the city. traffic will come from cellular networks;
this is up 12% from 2017. This rise in
mobility means that having a reliable,
agile and dense fibre backbone has never
been more important.
This project was run alongside the
expansions in Eastern Europe, Dublin
and Berlin, with the expansion of the
Colt IQ Network seeing the organisation
continuing its commitment to enabling
enterprises’ digital evolutions and in turn
transforming the way the world works
through the power of connectivity. Carl Grivner, CEO, Colt Technology
Services, said: “We know that as the
world shifts dramatically towards wireless
networks, having fibre in the ground
becomes increasingly important. Colt
has been investing in our owned, high
bandwidth network, the Colt IQ Network,
for several years now, because we know
it’s our most valuable asset.
These expansions have seen a new 7,000
km network connecting more than 10
cities in Eastern Europe with more than
300 kilometres of fibre being installed in
the London, Dublin and Berlin metros.
The expansion of the Colt IQ Network
is being driven by customer demand as
well as wider industry trends such as 5G.
According to Cisco’s Visual Networking
Index, by 2022, 22% of global Internet
“The projects we announced last year
in Eastern Europe, Dublin and Berlin,
customers are now benefitting from
these, and the London expansion sees
Colt extending its already impressive fibre
footprint in the UK capital.
“We’re happy to say that we’ve prepared
the connectivity backbone that is truly
ready for the next decade.”
www.intelligentcio.com