BT aims to raise Canadian profile

Ask Stephen Brash, VP of sales and operations at BT Canada Inc., about his company's major challenges, and he won't point a finger at the competitive landscape or emerging technologies from other network operators. He'll point to mind share - and how little of it the global carrier garners in this country."Brand awareness is pretty high," he says, pointing out that everyone and his dog knows British Telecom, the parent company. "But ask them if they know what we do in Canada. ‘No. I didn't even know you were in Canada.'"That's the issue. Brash was in Toronto earlier this week to explain to telecom journalists and analysts where the company stands, where it's headed and how it means to maintain the growth curve it's been riding for the past five years.BT is something of a success story, to hear Brash describe it. The company's revenues have been on the rise lately - both across the entire enterprise, and within the global services division, which includes BT Canada. Like many carriers, BT struggled through the capacity-glut and dot-com meltdown era, circa 2001. But by focusing on a simple defend-and-grow strategy - defend the core services, grow new ones - "we really turned the ship around over the last five years," he says.The company relies on two main assets: its global network reach, and going beyond connectivity. According to Brash's numbers, the majority of the nine billion pounds of revenue the global services arm collected last year came from what BT calls "new wave" services such as ICT outsourcing, global data linkages and systems integration. The network, dubbed 21CN, reaches 100 countries and carries 160,000 customer connections. BT has seven points of presence (PoPs) in Canada, located in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. Brash said the company would provide more depending on demand.But demand is BT's pride and curse. While the firm has no shortage of large multinational businesses asking for its services, usually to connect branch offices around the world to headquarters anywhere (Air Canada, Canfor Corp. and Maple Leaf Foods Inc. are among its clients), BT has a hard time convincing businesses to join the CN21 fold. That is, customers that know they want specific services call BT; customers that don't know what they want by way of network connectivity don't consider the provider.Beside the traditional competitors - global network providers such as AT&T and Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems - BT faces an entrenched foe."One of our biggest competitors is do-it-yourself," Brash says. DIY network managers figure they can source links and broker good prices for top-notch service around the world and cobble together a WAN worthy of enterprise transport. No amount of marketing will sway these intrepid craftspeople - but a few years of poor service will. It's only a matter of time before they consider calling BT, Brash figures.But the truth is, BT has another competitor: itself. The organization is confusing, thanks in no small part to its breadth and reach. BT includes numerous subsidiaries, including BT Counterpane for systems integration and BT INS for software consulting. In an evermore converging world where hardware is morphing into software, software is becoming a service, and services are provided by all sorts of companies, it could be difficult for companies new to BT to understand just which stream applies to them and their specific requirements.Regarding reach, BT is necessarily a customer and partner of Canadian service providers such as Bell Canada and MTS Allstream Inc. The British-born company relies on the Canucks as sales channels, and BT turns to them for extensions from the seven PoPs it has here. Prospective clients might have trouble distinguishing BT from these others as a result, which doesn't help the profile problem.But BT is apparently adept at answering customers' calls when they come, even if the provider still struggles to reel clients in. Perhaps, one multinational enterprise at a time, the global network operator will improve corporate Canada's understanding of what it offers. It certainly has the right outlook, judging from Brash's words, specifically pertaining to BT's growing business as something more than a telecom pipe provider: "It's not ‘Can we get you there?' it's ‘What can we do once we get you there?'"

BT aims to raise Canadian profile

News | 07/16/2007 12:28 pm EDT

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