| ||
|
|
|
Posted: Mon, January 14, 2002
The ITW Interview: Ann BeynonIf you are a member of an SME in Wales, the likelihood is that you will have some connection with British Telecom. Literally. Besides having over 80,000 SME customers in Wales, BT owns all the exchanges that supply your broadband internet, and it’s the main internet service provider in Wales. BT is a market-leader, simple as that. But in October, BT launched an innovative series of IT services to inspire a new generation of E-enabled SMEs. The BT Digital Business packages, tailor-made IT solutions for businesses, promise to make it easier, quicker and more cost-effective to make the most of E-commerce. itwales.com caught up with Ann Beynon, BT National Manager for Wales, to find out what BT is doing for your business. SHORTCUT TO....
ITW: BT has recently launched a whole new range of IT services for SME’s. How important is it for businesses to be on the web? Absolutely fundamental. But not just to be on the web. This is part of the problem. What we’ve found in our research is a lot of small businesses have a web site which is not necessarily going to help them. There’s much, much more to it than that. What we would recommend is an E-commerce or an E-business approach, which is more about business re-engineering. So you don’t let the technology drive the process, but the process drive the technology. This is what business needs. ITW: So you think a web site needs to be useful and functional in a business sense, rather than a gesture to technology? The important thing when you have a web site is that you make it work for you. That’s done by spending quite a lot of time marketing the site – which means making sure you’ve got the right tags there for search engines to pick up, and also that the search engines notice how often the site is visited. If your site isn’t visited often, you’ve got to do everything you can to get your site picked up by the search engines. This is part of our services. You also have to spend a lot of time identifying like-minded companies in your sector and e-mailing them directly and say ‘have you seen our site?’. So you’ve actually got to work quite hard at making that site work for you. Making use of it is the important thing. There’s a phenomenal number of web sites out there that nobody ever looks at. It has caused businesses some grief in that they’ve paid money – maybe quite a bit of money – for a web site, and what has it given them in terms of business benefits? Very little. Many companies are saying that because of that, well, we’ve tried E-commerce and it didn’t work. But that wasn’t E-commerce. ITW: What has BT done to re-educate these companies? BT has for a long time sponsored a chair in E-commerce at Cardiff University, and that chair is held by Professor Tony Davies. Tony has been doing a huge amount of work in Cardiff and West Wales, and also between Fishguard and the Eastern seaboard of Irealand on E-commerce, and he has come up with a way of working with SMEs which is more about understanding their business and what drives it, and then applying the technology intelligently. ITW: Does BT have a separate strategy just for Wales? As a company we obviously have our corporate strategy, which is very focused on publishing our new product, which is BT Digital Office. What we’re trying to do is create a simple package for small businesses which is hassle-free. It all comes in one box with the support built in. So you don’t have to worry about setting it up, or what happens if it goes wrong – there’s always someone you can ring. We tried to make it simple. We tried to make it price-attractive. And we tried to make it very attractive for broadband by putting in a broadband price which is the same as the narrowband price. So that’s our focus as a company, no question. Simple, easy-to-buy products for small businesses which is hassle-free. But we’ve got a team in Cardiff which is trained in the Digital Office product. We’ve also got SME envoys in all parts of Wales – BT employees who are specifically charged with taking out the small business BT message. They work with my team, the BT SME team, and go out to teams of commerce to talk about what we can do. So there is a process which we get involved with on a Welsh basis. ITW: Would you say BT is focusing its energies across the whole of Wales? We employ staff all over Wales. We have call centres in Aberystwyth, Colwyn Bay, Bangor, Swansea, Newport and Cardiff. We’re all over Wales. We’re very conscious of the local agenda. We would see ourselves as an all-Wales provider. We didn’t have franchises in particular bits of the country, we’re all over Wales, and that’s our strength – therefore we play to that strength. So we do see our responsibility. We’ve been very involved in Objective One. Obviously, that’s what we describe as market failure in the 15 local authorities – that’s what it is, the market’s failed to deliver, so you intervene. We’ve got very actively engaged in a number of Objective One projects. One in North West Wales, in the North Wales Employment Zone, and another in all 15 authorities, which is Opportunity Wales. What we’ve done there is take the Tony Davies methodology and treat it as a product. Then we see how we can get that product to market. We will now have a satellite of Tony in Bangor, in Llandrillo and in Haverfordwest. People are currently being trained by Tony in Cardiff on the that business re-engineering model. They will then be part of the whole delivery arm of finding advisors, and our research tells us that people want face-to-face help, they don’t just want to talk over the phone, so we’re going to get 150 adisers across Wales. What the businesses will get is 2 days free of an electronic commerce audit. At the end of these two days they get a report. There are pilots going on at the moment at Havefordwest, Blaenau Gwent and Denbighshire, and already people are saying, you know, wow, we’ve never had this done before! Obviously, on the basis of that audit, they can choose: they can have an implementation with the product where they start paying, or they can just purchase based on that electronic audit. And then when they purchase, they can get subsidy. They can get 35% of what they spend back – very important for a small business. ITW: What’s the extent of BT’s involvement in the project, and who else is involved with it? BT is not running it – BT is a partner. It’s European/WDA/Welsh Assembly-funded. All local authorities are on board, HSBC is on board, the voluntary sector is working with us, the three universities: Glamorgan, Cardiff and Bangor, plus the Further Education College in Llandrillo. It’s a huge partnership. But it’s such a huge problem, we’re not going to make any impact if we don’t come together. ITW: How long will the initiative run? It’s Objective One in the first instance, then we would look forward to Objective Two. So it’s a three year project, then we’d have the option of carrying it on until the end of 2006 or 2007. We now have a team of people running the project in Pontypridd – we’ve seconded someone from BT into it. They’re busy getting the whole thing up and running. They’re building a portal, opening a call centre, training the advisors, setting up the satellite centres. There’s a huge amount of activity. ITW: Apart from these initiatives, how would you say BT as a service provider is helping small businesses in Wales? Hopefully by coming up with something they can buy easily and affordably. And demystifying it. What we find is that there is a fear of technology. Very often unfounded, but very real. ITW: Is it a Welsh characteristic? No! Obviously, when you’re in an environment like, say, the city of London you’ve got large corporates using technology, and therefore a small business is going to interact with these companies more often and become more aware more quickly. It works in a cascading effect. That doesn’t work quite the same way here. But what’s more important here is that local authorities use technology – that they cascade out to the SME’s as we haven’t got corporates. That’s the difference between a very active market place like London, and the market place here. ITW: Does BT have to work hard to dispel the technology fear factor? I was amused when I joined BT by this discussion of ‘disruptive technology’. I thought that disruptive technology was a bad thing; in BT terms it’s seen as a good thing, because it’s an instrument of change. But it is disruptive by nature. It’s a good word to describe the chaos it can create until the whole thing is understood and settles down. And what we’re going through is a period of disruptive technology. The web has made a huge difference in the way business is conducted. There will be technologies coming up like E-procurement. BT does 85% of its procurements electronically. So you could argue that that disadvantages those who are not on-line, but unfortunately, that’s the way the world is going, and once companies understand it, and realise that it saves them money too, it’s a good thing. ITW: One of the missions of the IT Network Wales initiative is to provide graduates with work experience in Wales, and provide Welsh businesses with commercially-skilled graduates. Are such initiatives useful for the industry? Yes. We’ve been actively working with Swansea University, Cardiff University and Bangor University, looking at how we can support the kinds of courses being taught – so that when people come out at the end of them, they are in tune with the kind of candidates we are looking for. That’s very important. We have a software centre in Cardiff, which employs close on 400 people, and they build software engines for all kinds of things, for the global marketplace. And a lot of these will come through Swansea and Cardiff Universities. It’s very important, because we have a huge problem in Wales that these skilled people are leaving. It’s one of the major things that we’ve got to try and stop. It’s one of the economic problems we have. So at least BT is employing 400 of them. So yes, we ensure we are linked to the universities in Wales, it’s very important. But the key thing then is there has to be jobs in Wales for them to go to. Or, if they’re going to set up in business, how are they going to do that? It’s a difficult process. ITW: Talking of setting up in business, do you think we even have an entrepreneurial culture in Wales? I think to get an entrepreneurial culture you need a number of particular elements in play. First of all, you’ve got to have a good education system. This is the problem we have in Wales. In certain parts of Wales we haven’t got the qualified workforce we need – if you look at the South Wales valleys particularly – whereas in West Wales you have. It’s an interesting mixture. There’s a document the Assembly produced on the economy. Especially in Gwent, there’s a high level of people with no skills at all. So obviously, you have to tackle the skills deficit. But there are other things you need, like networks, official and unofficial, for people to talk. You need mentors, you need business angels, and you need people with some personal wealth. Richard Branson set up his first company with money from his father. I think in the case of Amazon, the first lot of money came from the family. That’s the pattern. We have the lowest personal wealth levels of all the UK. You’ve also got to have available capital – I don’t think that’s a huge problem, really, as long as you know how to get it, what to do with it. And then you’ve got to have support services: legal support services, accounting support services, because being an entrepreneur means you can have a fantastic idea, but someone’s got to help you get that idea to market. So you need a lot of very basic functions. And the only other thing I think you need is a very pro-business climate. An actual statement said publicly: ‘we think entrepreneurship and business is a good thing’, and then, to get rid of obstacles, and any kind of problems that could hold the business back. You need to give the business a clear run at it. It’s like a tool kit. I don’t believe there’s a genetic problem for us not being entrepreneurial! No, it’s a set of conditions, a set of skills and a set of tools that you need. ITW: Do you think we’re creating that set of conditions today? How far away are we from achieving it? Yes, we’re heading that way. We’re doing a lot. We’ve got Xenos, which is the business angels network, and that seems to be very successful. We’re gradually building up an understanding of what the toolkit is meant to be, and different bits of the toolkit are being put into place, which is quite encouraging. I guess we still need some role models – people who stand up and say ‘I set up my own business’. It’s the mentality – if you talk to kids in school, how many six-year-olds would say ‘I want to set up my own business’? Do they say I want to be a lawyer or an accountant or a footballer? Or do they say that I want to make my first million by the time I’m thirty? I’m not sure that’s there – that kind of ‘can do’ culture. And this again goes back to education and the whole mentality within the education system. ITW: One of the major issues at the moment with regard to IT in business is the provision of broadband internet connection. BT was criticised by Oftel for over-charging for competing suppliers of broadband to use their exchanges, and for over-charging customers for broadband access. How has BT responded to this? It’s a complicated issue. Basically we’ve done over 1000 exchanges as part of commercial roll-out, including an extra ten in Wales. We did the extra ten because we got extra funding from the European Commission and the WDA. We did Haverfordwest, Carmarthen, Holyhead and Denbigh and other places. Our feeling is that we’ve done pretty well. We’ve done the exchanges all on our own cost. We met all the deadlines and all the obligations that Oftel set us – even though you must remember that the previous regime at Oftel did not believe in local open bundling. The line at Oftel in 1999 was different, but now it’s seen as being the way. The previous view in Oftel was that you need competing networks – to get more people to build more networks. The view has changed – it’s now that we can’t afford all those competing networks, so we need one good network or complimentary networks, and let’s get on with making that work first. As soon as open bundling became what Oftel wanted, we got on with it, and we haven’t missed any deadlines. And again, it’s all our own money – nobody gave us any grants to do it! We’ve set aside spaces in our exchanges. There’s room in Fagan Bundler (in Cardiff) ready for the local open bundler. We are charging what we’ve had to pay to do the work. What we’re charging for the wholesale and the retail product is a competitive price, basically. What’s happening is that we are rolling out broadband as quickly as we can, and it is improving. But people are standing back to see what we do first. They’ve got the choice of buying it from us aswell, they don’t have to install in the exchange – they can buy wholesale products – and the wholesale product price has gone down. Every single network in Wales can give you ISDN – that’s not bad. I don’t think Scotland or even the regions of England could say that. Again, we did that upgrade as part of the ten ASDL exchanges. I think everything we can do we’re doing, but there comes a point where you have to say to the government, well, having made this massive investment we can’t just keep spending money without seeing a market place there ITW: The government recently launched a 2.7million scheme to encourage broadband take-up in Wales. Are you involved in the scheme? We’re working on a bid at the moment – one solution – because we do care, actually, that rural Wales gets broadband. We’re not sitting here saying ha-ha, you can’t have it. We’re looking at ways in which we can bring a satellite solution to rural areas. That’s in discussion at the moment, and that will be out of the 2.7 million. So we’re trying to come up with ideas and solutions. We’re saying, yes, this could be done. ITW: Is it a case of ‘invest it properly and it will pay off’? Yes, but we would come back and say, what about the down side? This Opportunity Wales project is all about demand stimulation and it’s resulted from the six million we spent on the ten exchanges in Wales. We just couldn’t see the return of the investment. So we said alright, there has got to be a huge demand stimulation actively going on now, in order for us to see a return on this investment. So therefore it made sense for us to get involved with Opportunity Wales to see whether that would help. We need to see some partnering, anything, for people to work together to push this demand forward. We want to do it because we’ve invested money, so it’s not in our interest not to do anything. So we’ve got a number of activities going on at the moment where we are looking at how we can stimulate the market. We’ve already done press advertising for wholesale explaining who the other suppliers are aswell, apart from BT. In terms of Wales, what we are keen to do is at least promote those areas where there is extensive coverage of broadband – like Cardiff. The take up in Cardiff should be better. So we’re working with the local authorities at the moment to say, Cardiff is a connected city and what you could do in Cardiff is what is available. And then we’ll try and demonstrate clearly with real life companies: this is what we do with this broad bandwidth, and this is why it is worth having. ITW: In other words, would you say that you have to demonstrate the benefits and de-emphasise the jump in technology? There’s an element of – ‘well, BT would say it, wouldn’t they?’ or even ‘the Government would say it, wouldn’t they?’. But if Joe Bloggs, carpet fitter, Swansea said ‘Great!’ they’d be more likely to buy. So we’ll keep trying to think of things we can do, and obviously Digital Office is one other way of explaining what broadband can do – since customers don’t pay more money for the broadband service and can consequently have a good look at it. We’ve also agreed that if people terminate their ISDN connection, there’s no penalty. Next year you’ll be able to get a kit through the post that allows you to do your own installation to bring the costs down again. They’ve done it in Germany and it seems to work there. So we keep thinking of things we can do to encourage take-up. Maybe one way is through education. Certainly Andrew Green, who’s the chief executive of Openworld, is quite convinced there’s an issue for training and education usages, for which we’re appealing. And you have to have the content – you see the dilemma. There is content coming, the BBC’s digital curriculum is going to be fantastic when it comes. It’s not there yet, there won’t be pilots until next March or April. But that’s the kind of data-rich content that you need to make people say, ‘Ooh, the benefits are obvious now’. ITW: What do you think, generally speaking, of the Welsh Assembly’s involvement in the broadband roll-out? To be fair the Assembly has taken out a lot of initiatives, such as the Wales On-line initiative. They’re all very positive and they’re taking this seriously and they’re doing something about it. Again, we must keep remembering, however many connections we put in, it’s irrelevant if people don’t use them. We’ve found this in the past. With videoconferencing it proved to be the case – the technology gathered dust in the corner. We’ve got to use it. And people will only use it if they’re trained. So there’s got to be money spent on training people how to use technology. And money spent on content. So it’s very dangerous to just spend money on the supply side. You’re wasting the money. You’ve got to do the other bits aswell. ITW: Is the training improving at the moment, do you think? I think people are gradually becoming more and more aware that training is an intrinsic part of economic development, and particularly in the technological sphere. The Education Minister made it quite clear that they see E-learning as a key issue, fundamental for the broadband initiative. ITW: I suppose the E-College at the University of Glamorgan would be a good example of this? Absolutely. And I understand that the take-up has been good. They’ve been taken aback by the response they’ve had, which is very encouraging. But the other thing you’ve got to remember is that, for the most part, if people go on training, they’ll want to know what job is there for them at the end of it, or what improvement in the current job it will bring. So you have to make sure you make it relevant. You have to have tangible benefits and ask: what am I going to get out of it? ITW: Professor Tony Davies has recently devised an accreditation scheme for websites that provides a standard. Do you think having such accreditations might be another way to raise standards? Standards are very important, and one of the things we’ve insisted on with Opportunity Wales is quality – quality of advice given for the key methodology, the quality of the advisors, the quality of the web sites. We’ve got another accreditation scheme – @teb. Advisors put forward a portfolio demonstrating their expertise and then they get accredited. For that you need strict standards. So we’ve been very careful that the people running the satellites for Tony will take six months to train because they’ve got to be trained thoroughly. We’ve got to insist on quality. ITW: BT is currently having a big shape-up. The suggestion is that it will be organised more around sectors and less around geography. Will this effect things in Wales? No. The big shake-up is a division of the company in two. So you’ve got MM02, which has been de-merged, and we’ve got BT Group. But within BT Group there is no diminution of the geographical focus. In effect, retail has to be geographical. And that’s been strengthened. We now have a BT Director of Regions who sits on his board, where there was nobody before. So the regional agenda is now higher up. ITW: Has this changed your role? It’s just that I now have two bosses! I’ve found it extremely useful in that there’s a very clear focus. Sitting at the top table isn’t just a nice thing to do, it means work aswell. But now there’s a very clear direction from above, what is expected from us on a regional basis. And we have a score card and we have targets which we have to meet, and they are all regional. So there’s a rigour about our regional activity. We all like to come in and think we’re making a difference. And you’re more likely to make a difference if you have a clear understanding of what you’re meant to achieve by when and how. ITW: Taking into account your involvement with the E-Commerce Innovation Centre, do you see BT as an innovator within a world-wide context? Are you an ambitious company? I hope so. I went to labs recently and I certainly got the impression that we are very much looking towards the future. Obviously, there are different categories of looking at the future. There are people who look at the really far future – we actually have futurologists. There are also people looking at what will happen in six months’ time – we have about three and a half thousand people in our labs. We spend many millions a year on research, and we work with other companies to actually develop that research and take it further. For example, there are links to Cambridge University and MIT. We recently got Dr. Chris Winter to come down to Cardiff to speak at a conference we sponsored – the British Irish Encounter Conference on Innovation. And he spoke about how we are innovative and doing things all the time. Not just in technology but in business. That’s very much the focus of being innovative – creating new business, being ahead of the game. You have to really, we’re in a competitive environment. ITW: But when you consider the fate of videoconferencing and even mobiles, it’s seems like it’s a risky game when it comes to technology. Well, you have to evaluate investments. You take an intelligent, calculated risk on the best information possible at the time. And a lot of time goes into proving your business case before you spend the money, and we have very strict procedures and committees to approve expenditure on investments based on business cases. We don’t just go off and spend money willy-nilly. We do huge, continuous market research – and it’s getting more and more that way, I think. But obviously, we cannot be risk-averse. Otherwise we shouldn’t be in business. For more information on BT’s products, check out: www.business.bt.com/business/sme |
|
|
Subscribe to ITWales Updates Click Here! |