Editors’ Note

Kim McMann was appointed to her current post in December 2010. McMann joined BT from HP where she led the delivery teams responsible for HP Enterprise Services’ billion-dollar infrastructure technology outsourcing business in Asia-Pacific and Japan. She began her career at EDS in the government health care industry segment, eventually assuming responsibility for all U.S. state, county, and local government contracts and rose to President of Business Process Management.

Company Brief

BT Global Services, part of BT Group plc (www.btplc.com), provides managed networked IT services for business and government organizations. It operates globally and delivers locally to most of the world’s large multinational corporations. BT has had a presence in the U.S. and Canada for 20 years with 4,000 professionals and offices in 50 key cities. BT owns and operates MPLS networks and manages six network operation centers and three security operation centers. BT serves many large customers in North America including Unilever, Pepsico, Reuters, Procter & Gamble, and many of the world’s largest financial institutions.

What excited you about joining BT and what made you feel there was strong opportunity in the areas that you lead?

I joined BT because I consider the organizations I’m responsible for – the global Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) vertical and the U.S. and Canada region – as the most promising challengers in their respective markets. There is tremendous potential, based on a remarkable customer base and unique expertise, in the way BT Global Services reorganized itself into a combination of regional and vertical operating models. The CPG vertical organization was a new concept for us so I considered the challenge of growing this segment by creating industry-specific value propositions, building our practice within the current customers we serve, and identifying new customers to bring into the business segment as a great opportunity. On the other hand, the U.S. and Canada business had come together through a number of acquisitions over the years. Looking at the size of the market and the size of BT’s presence, I felt there was opportunity to significantly expand.

So I looked at the market opportunity, backed by a company with a strong financial profile, great products and services, an outstanding global reputation, and a leadership team in place that I was familiar with and respected, and it seemed like an exciting place.

Where will the growth come from and how do you differentiate BT in the space?

In the U.S. and Canada, there are traditional companies you think about providing telecommunication services, like AT&T and Verizon. But in terms of the global BT portfolio, we recently rebranded it to be unique and readily identifiable in the market. We classed ourselves with five areas of capabilities.

The first is BT Connect – Networks That Think. In terms of the network capabilities within BT, we have network services we run for more than 3,000 organizations in more than 170 countries. For MNCs located in the U.S. that want to take their business global, we have the global breadth and depth to make that happen. In 2010, we won the Best Global Operator Award at the World Communication Awards.

We also have BT One – Communications that Unify. We are the global leader in cloud IP telephony with 26 percent market share and we won the Best Technology Foresight Award at the World Communication Awards in 2010. Gartner put us as a “challenger” in the Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service. In addition, we have over one million IP phones and over 600 telepresence rooms that we manage on behalf of our clients.

Next is BT Compute – Services that Adapt. We manage data centers – 25,000 servers for over 2,000 customers across 45 global data centers.

BT Contact – Relationships that Grow is our capability with contact centers and our CRM work. Over 4,000 contact centers globally deliver services to over 1,000 customers; we have more than 13,400 agents; and we handle 135 million calls per year and 46 million online transactions.

Finally, we have BT Assure – Security That Matters, which is our security services. It’s not commonly known that we have 1,300 security professionals that we employ across our organization and that we have more than 1,000 clients that we provide managed security services for.

So our portfolio is broader and deeper from a global perspective than a lot of what our competition offers.

In terms of innovation, in 2011, we invested 684 million British Pounds in R&D. So we’re putting effort into looking at the future and what it holds for our customers from an innovation standpoint.

One of the biggest differentiators is that we have a professional services capability across the company globally and we have some 4,500 professional services employees that support our business. While we are based in the U.K., Global Services has more employees outside the U.K. and a majority of the leadership team is also outside the U.K. We are truly a global company that delivers locally.

Do the verticals run independently or is there crossover?

There is some crossover but each of the verticals has a distinct focus. The verticals we have are global banking and financial markets, consumer packaged goods, government, health, and global commerce, which consists of logistics, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing.

In terms of global commerce and consumer packaged goods, we have supply chain solutions we need to be able to deliver to our clients. While some of the solution might be more relevant to the CPG clients versus the global commerce clients, it made sense for us to work together to develop one solution that could be offered by both.

We are also looking at leveraging some of the capabilities and knowledge we’ve gained within our global banking and financial markets. It’s the most mature vertical we have and we have well-known product and platforms within that space. For instance, say a CPG client has a need to process financial transactions using mobile devices in remote locations when delivering product. We would work with our global banking and financial market colleagues to see what capabilities they have developed, to see if we can leverage them within CPG.

What are the different ways you measure success?

Financial success is important because we have an obligation to our shareholders. But if we have financial success and a lot of unhappy customers, we have failed. So it’s about having customers who are advocates of BT because of the value we’re creating in their businesses and because they feel we are true business partners. But you can’t achieve those results if you don’t have a motivated, interested, and trained workforce. If our client base views BT as true business partners, the financial return will come and we’ll get that through employees because we’re a services organization.•