The British Heart Foundation has linked up its 600 stores with a broadband network from Vodat International.

The charity sells new and donated products through its chain of stores and wanted to improve communication and productivity across its business.

The charity’s day-to-day operational information has been gathered at the head office by overnight polling of the stores’ tills via a standard phone line.

British Heart Foundation Shops head of finance Steve Biddle explained why it wanted to move away from this. He said: “This was obviously an expensive and inefficient method and we wanted to reduce costs while improving reliability.

“We needed a flexible technology that would enable us to manage our data network efficiently, improve communications between stores across the business and assist us in improving our customer service.”

The charity’s new private network will be fully managed so that all issues connected with it are dealt with by Vodat International and there is no requirement for the charity’s staff to monitor or resolve network problems themselves.