Multinationals' priorities have gone though a significant shift over the past couple of years. Before the recession, BT Global Services president of Asia Pacific Kevin Taylor said certain companies had a DIY attitude about managing their own networks.
Since then there's been a real focus on cost effectiveness and technology change.
Technology and the markets are changing so fast, he said, "that I don't think unless it's actually your core industry you can keep up-to-date. You need to be in the industry and live and breathe the industry to give customers what they really want. That's why they need someone like a BT, which can give a company a massive boost in competitiveness."
The end of DIY
He said people have realized this highway is a German autobahn not a slow road in Hong Kong. "DYI is a model of the past. Having said that 90% of companies are on the DIY model, which gives us a great opportunity."
Taylor gave Telecom Asia an update on its expansion and restructuring plans it announced last September. One of its most important investment areas is improving its bid response capabilities. He said BT has invested heavily to put together cross-functional teams covering solutioning, service, legal, finance, etc. to go after the larger, transformational-type deals.
Its bid resource team can now handle two or three transformation bids at one time, he said.
BT is also expanding its product portfolio and plans to roll out 15 new products in the next 19 months. It launched hosted call centers in January, relaunched optimization services that include WAN acceleration, and introduced security-based services that can monitor data trends on the network and report anomalies to customers. "We have a huge team that monitors some 80,000 incidences daily to identify anomalies."