- Altnet – Energis – Launched, ran and grew a portfolio of telecoms services. Generated multi million pound annuity revenues by leading team to launch rich, innovative service portfolio, including capturing dominant market share among Internet Service Providers
- BT plc – Launched and ran new telecoms service. Created multi million pound annuity revenue stream through an adventurous premium pricing strategy, by delivering to market network based Call Centre services, working closely to influence senior stakeholders in sales, marketing and finance functions
- Altnet start up - Advised on actions required to correct misalignment between strategy plan to be a world-class customer orientated Telco and what in practice was the baseline plan, including product management organisation and portfolio
- Altnet/Mobile, ESAT – Facilitated planning for a joint venture, subsequently executed, to use railway telecoms assets in Ireland to establish a national SDH network, working with senior technical, marketing and financial managers
- Altnet RWE – Accelerated product planning by leveraging Energis and BT experience. Advised on portfolio, specifying features, service levels and preparing implementation plans. Proposed product management organisation, defining roles, skill sets, structures and resource levels
- Datatec – Improved a network integrator’s business model by codifying and standardising propositions, enabling more focused selling and lower cost delivery by reducing customisation
- Alcatel – Improved marketing of advanced voice switches, developing a business, rather than technical, proposition for Telco’s, including a supporting toolkit for sales personnel
- NEC – Prepared market analysis input for proposal for a joint venture with BT to deploy broadband. Analysed requirements of SMEs, consumers and existing market for multimedia services, forecast growth and developments
- BT plc – Business case repair. Enabled a major project to overcome crippling launch pricing, by identifying business case errors, liaising with key players in finance, marketing and product management to agree the necessary changes
- BT plc – Led cross-divisional work on business case for Communications facilities management services, involving spend of £215m. Obtained consensus on way forward and business case
- BT plc – Designed and ran test that showed direct marketing was ineffective at stimulating calls revenue – saving UK from years of direct marketing call stimulation campaigns
- BT plc – Improved performance of BT business unit by delivering projects on advanced services aimed at MNCs. Responsible for building and maintaining business plans and ad hoc projects
- Major bank – Market advice to lenders with exposure to network integrator with a cash flow crisis following disastrous implementation of strategy
- Major bank – Market advice, lender exposed to insolvent specialist call centre solution provider, following loss of key sales people and market downturn
- Travel company – Assessment of contact centre operations conversion rate and cost performance as input into acquisition plans for an online/telephony travel basis
- Japanese Insurance business – Assessment of client plans and provision of advice on how to maximize synergies from customer data between insurance and motoring repair businesses
- Enabled RWE to accelerate its product planning by leveraging Energis and BT experience, working for its head of products
- Advised on product portfolio, specifying services features, service levels and preparing implementation plans
- Advised on product management organisation, defining roles and skill sets, structures and resource levels
RWE
Launching telecoms services
Rwe are a large German energy company that decided to exploit European re-regulation of telecommunications, by starting up a new telecommunication company. It needed to mobilise rapidly a scarce set of resources with experience of launching telecommunications services. David was asked to ‘kick start’ its preparations to develop a product portfolio for major customers, by injecting expertise and insights from the UK. David contributed in four main areas. Firstly he helped design a product management organisation, covering roles, responsibilities and competency required. He assessed the likely workload required for launch and provided advice on the number and timing of recruitment. Secondly he designed a product development process to help control the flood of ideas that occur early in programmes. The third key area was on service specification.
He used experience of launching new services into a mature and conservative markets to ensure specification would be competitive and not fall into traps, for example assuming that customers would bear equipment upgrade costs to use new services. He wrote service definitions for core services – private circuits, direct telephony – and advanced services – VPN, Centrex, Frame, ATM and advanced Number Translation services. These were used in the design and procurement of telecoms networks. The final main area was to provide advice on some of the commercial structure for service level agreements and compensation schemes required to be competitive or compelling against incumbent telecommunications providers and their solutions.
David developed a suite of service levels and guarantees, aimed at reducing customer perceptions of risk. David underpinned his advice with detailed service implementation plans to guide launch preparations. RWE completed its plans and launched into the German market.