These days businesses and organisations look for a single strategic partner to deliver IT services.
At the forefront of BT’s approach to strategic partnerships is a team of industry experts who help organisations leverage new and emerging technologies to change the fundamentals of how they work and deliver services to help them achieve their all-important business
objectives.
BT’s industry experts understand the impact technology can have in today’s business world and are hugely knowledgeable about their clients’ day-to-day operations. Indeed their role is to specialise in a particular area of the public or private sector and to take the time to understand the challenges an organisation faces.
Once that is understood, BT can then provide customers with expertise and advice on the role technology can play in the future success of their organisations.
The approach, which has been in operation for the last three years, didn’t come about by accident.
The strategy was written and designed to empower our team of experts to engage with a smaller number of customers.
It means we sit down with our customers to understand their corporate strategy.
Once we know that, we can identify the technology which is available to help the organisation reach its corporate objectives, whether that’s giving the organisation a competitive edge, improving the customer experience, increasing efficiencies, enabling more flexible working or possibly a combination of all these.
In that way, IT is used to help the company achieve its goals. Rather than being seen as a cost, IT is an enabler which helps deliver the
strategy.
That means it is easy to prove how each pound spent is helping reach the overall goal.
Clients from both the public and private sector are benefiting from BT’s innovative approach and he cites Translink as a good example of what BT Business can do.
Two years ago BT’s industry expert put a strategy in place for the company to provide a clear road map of IT provision over the next five years.
Paul McGrattan, Information Services & Technology Manager at Translink says: “Our business is about mobility and fulfilling the expectations of our passengers. We carry 80 million passengers a year and on top of increasing that figure, it is also vital that we continue to reduce our carbon footprint – these are just a couple of our current business objectives. In BT we have a credible, well established, trusted strategic partner who has a deep understanding of our business and who is working with us to meet our objectives. BT’s expertise is critical to supporting us achieve these and other ambitious goals.”
The feedback from customers has been hugely impressive. They’ve really appreciated the technical knowledge we have and also the time we’ve taken to get to know their businesses.
And it will be a self-fulfilling prophesy. As demand continues to increase, it’s good for the customer, it’s good for BT and it’s good for the Northern Ireland economy.
For further news and insights, join our BT Business & Public Sector Network in Northern Ireland LinkedIn group.
:: Paul Convery is head of BT Business NI.
