- PE House/Pay TV – Assessed R&D and other cost reduction opportunities within a High Tech solutions provider that developed key solutions for satellite Pay TV companies
- European Cable TV Altnet – Synergy planning across sales, marketing and networks in preparation for final binding offer for other competing Altnet delivering Pay TV, MVNO and fixed telecoms services. 61
- Clientwise - Delivery of a £2M custom development of opportunity management processes using an agile method and Business Process Management software
- Alchemy, acquisition of Geo – Reviewed propositions of a Telco that was leveraging an extensive ‘second hand’ national dark fibre network acquired for next to nothing. Tested the uniqueness and differentiating characteristics.
- Vodafone – Telecoms service launch. Enabled Mobile operator to plan how to become partner of ‘choice’ for service providers, by augmenting basic data services with a valuable service layer
- ESAT – Prepared proposal for a joint venture, now executed, to use railway assets in Eire to establish a national network, working with key finance, technical and marketing managers
- Reuters – Using competition and well defined requirements to reduce cost, providing sourcing advice across complex global telecoms services
- Orange – Network review. Analysed service and network management requirements & processes across a mobile operator’s applications and networks, recommending improvements
- Barclaycard – Reduced cost by designing and delivering a virtual call centre needed to support a 15% headcount reduction, leading a mixed consultant/ client delivery team, and managing issues with stakeholders
- Interflora – Enabled transformation to cut costs and improve services, supporting and leading its management team through complex decisions on IT, process change and vendor selection
- Energy Utility – Designed and delivered a solution to deal with extreme demand on a call centre, to avoid a repeat of a customer service debacle
- Local authority – London Borough - Assessment of technical telecoms designs and recovery plans for a troubled project to deliver innovative telecoms into a major new building and its satellites
- Property business – Assessment of the current state of a regional contact centre. Part of a larger housing association under regulatory and budgetary pressure.
- Reviewed the propositions of a dark fibre provider
- Service definition
- Network quality
- Communications facilities management
Alchemy – Private Equity House
Testing the uniqueness of the ex 186k network assets
By 2002 Lattice Group (now National Grid) invested nearly £500m in building a national fibre network. In 2003, it aborted the investment, and created a small business to serve the needs of its (at the time) one customer, Hutchinson 3G. The business – Geo – steadily grew, making network propositions that leveraged its world class optical fibre assets, and winning some high profile contracts. The PE house’s challenge was to assess the opportunity to buy assets that would be very costly to replicate and that were generating cash, for a seemingly attractive consideration, while being aware that at least eight other similar sounding investments in fibre network were made in the early 2000s. It was critical to determine the degree to which Geo’s propositions were ‘unique’ and what might be the upside.
David led a cross functional team with telecoms market, technical and operations, bringing to bear his telecoms experience and his work with 186k. We interviewed the management team and reviewed documentation on Geo. In parallel we conducted a series of interviews with customers, competitors and industry experts, testing the availability of dark fibre and hosting facilities in order to assess the uniqueness of the proposition.
We found that the Geo proposition was differentiated from other providers on key aspects of service quality and hosting. Although we concluded it was not truly unique, we found that it had a sustainable role in the industry from which reasonable revenues could be obtained, and there were some significant upsides, dependent on how the telecoms market played out in the next five years.
Informed of the risks and upsides the PE house was able to complete the purchase of an interesting and valuable network asset.