I think BT is admired around the world for its inspiration in terms of providing solutions and even the technology that it comes out with. Nobody would have thought that BT would be a digital television service provider, but lo and behold, it is. It is very much up there competing with the likes of Sky and Virgin Media. I think that is probably why BT is admired; they really push the boat out in what their market space is.
Its most cutting edge piece of technology that we are using is satellite navigation software, which tells us, based on where out customers are, where our customer care representatives are and how long it would take them to drive to those customers. BT is great at using technology for its customers but that goes all the way through the organisation. We use it for our internal people as well, and this piece of software will help us maximise our efficiencies.
Initially, my idea of BT was very much having the sense that it was a large organisation. There was just one BT that I saw, which was around the telephones and consumer side. Since being at BT, I have realised that BT is a huge organisation, involved in various different streams. It does global solutions, it does a lot on the consumer side - what you see on the television and through the advertising - and only recently has the BT business advertising been on television as well. That is a side that I never knew about and now have been exposed to, since being at BT.
The most exciting thing about working at BT is that it has an annual tournament called the My Customer Challenge Cup, in which various teams compete to try to solve a real customer issue. They go through various different stages of presenting their findings and results. The final is held at a five star resort, in a location somewhere around the world. I have been involved in the My Customer Challenge Cup and my team reached the semi finals, so we missed out on the trip to Cyprus by one point, unfortunately.
There is a project that I received yesterday where we provide a retail solution. For example, at JJB Sports, where from the moment an item is sold to the point where it is taken off their stock, BT provides that complete back end solution. I am looking to turn that into a case study and create a workshop so that other retail customers can come in and have a look at what BT can actually do for them.
In my current role at the moment, I have a project where we look at a new device called Office Anywhere, which BT and Microsoft have built together. The device itself provides customers with real-time email access, Calendar, Outlook, and the ability to be in the office but not necessarily in the actual office. My job is to take the key messages from marketing, create a focussed campaign and calendar of activity, take those messages and communicate them to our sales people so that I equip them with the right type of customer collateral so they can then speak to the customer about Office Anywhere and what benefits it can provide for them.
There are many things coming out that are very exciting and a lot of them I am personally very excited about, as well. Unfortunately, I cannot say what they are. All I can say is just to look out for them.
The good thing about being a global company is that we can give our customers global services, that is, we can give them convergence - bringing together professional services, network operations and information technology. It is about basically giving our customers what they want through any device, any time, anywhere across the globe.
The most exciting thing is working in service delivery improvement because if you are given a role that is all about improving the way we do things, you immediately realise that BT cares about continually improving things.
It keeps you aware. It keeps you hungry for learning new things. The values translate very well and very easily because they are very simple straightforward values and wherever I have worked in BT, whether Germany, Spain, Belgium, Holland, you can see the values there and you can see the people actually living out these values.
The fact that it was a global company was going to offer me endless possibilities in terms of developing my professional career. In this case, it was not about BT having amazing and really good and global customers; it was about a global company giving me the opportunity of really growing professionally, travelling, meeting hundreds of people.
My current role within BT is within retail marketing in the propositions team, which basically means we research the industry and our customers, find out what their need areas are. We then team that up with the solutions that BT has got and take it to market. In my current placement in the retail marketing propositions team I get to work with a lot of different areas of BT, which is really interesting. There are a lot of different enterprises within BT that a lot of people do not know about, and I did not know about until I joined. There are teams like Redcare, which look after fire and alarm systems, triggered through the BT phone system. There are also enterprises such as Expedite which supplies a lot of the UK retailers with Point of Sale till systems.
Other things that we have are things like contactless payment which is really interesting because it actually means that a customer would not have to put in a pin or swipe their card but can just put their card into a space and it would automatically take payments. Other new technologies are things like IPCCTV which is actually CCTV, but over the internet. This means that customers can access their CCTV from anywhere that has got a broadband connection, and it also saves storing all of their video footage on videos, as it can be stored on the internet.
Another technology is digital signage which saves retailers putting products in their store window but merely having a plasma display that can send advertisements 24 hours a day, without having stock in the window. It is really exiting working with all this new technology it means that everyday brings new ideas and new innovations, it means there is a lot more to get involved in and it is really exciting going back to my friends and family and getting them excited about it as well.
BT has given me a lot of opportunities to really stretch myself and really push me as far as I feel I could have gone. The most obvious recently is working on some of the bids, with very strict deadlines to reply to customers over what we are going to price their bid at. These deadlines are fairly immovable and there is an awful lot of work to do, we are talking about big numbers and very complicated systems. This all has to be pulled together. You have to learn a lot about network design and the technical aspects of what you are going to try and deliver as a service, right down to all the small aspects such as how do we build them? How much are we going to charge for using credit cards? There are a lot of things to think about and coordinate all of them on a very large scale, across a big range of teams and all to a very tight deadline.
The really exciting projects that we have tended to work on, and a new graduate joining has the opportunity to work on, would be along the lines of what I have done in my last year where I worked to help sign a £300 million deal with Vodafone, or the £750 million deal with the Post Office. That feels very good, to come out of university and not really have great business experience but to be given the opportunity to work on something that is obviously so important to the company. When you finally sign a deal and you have worked on it for hours and hours and days and days, even though you are not the man in the room getting that piece of paper signed, you know that you helped deliver that and all of your blood, sweat and tears are on that piece of paper as well.
It just feels great and you know it is going to be appreciated all across the company. I think that one of the really nice surprises that you get from BT is that you suddenly realise how involved you are with every communication provided in the UK. Everyone who has a phone line or a mobile phone, at some point that phone call probably hits the BT network. So you just realise how integral you are to all of these big companies. You realise just how closely you work with T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone and O2.
The 21st Century Network is a major investment project that BT is running, it is a £10 billion investment designed to revolutionise the current network. It is going to try and simplify current connections from individual phone line, broadband line and every other line that there is, into a single connection. It should make everything a lot quicker, cheaper and simpler. This is something that started in November 2006, so it has already started to be rolled out, and we are going to see it completed over the rest of the country in the near future. It is something that is not just for BT though. As it is going to revolutionise the whole network it is something that every other communication provider, all the mobile communications as well, is going to see some benefit from.
On the BT intranet site, they promote involvement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. One day, I was looking and there was something about raising money for ChildLine by trekking the Himalayas. I was very much drawn to it, and found out as much as I possibly could. You enter your details for a prize draw, from which they will pick 10 people to go to the Himalayas as part of BT Global Services. I was lucky enough to be one of those. The trip was in aid of ChildLine. As an individual, you have to raise £2,500 just to go on the trip. The majority of that money would go to ChildLine directly to help them fund the call centres they run for children.
The reason I wanted to go on the trek was, firstly, because I really wanted to go to the Himalayas. That is an opportunity of a lifetime. When I say BT offer you opportunities, they really do. This was a good example of one. The other thing was to make a difference to ChildLine, because children are at the heart of many people, me as well. I wanted to give something back to the community.
The highlight for me on the Himalayan trek was to go to a school out there, because you identify the different problems children in India have to those children have here, who we are raising money for. One thing that stood out was the love the children had. For example, someone commented on the fact that they do not have a fake smile; if they smile, they genuinely mean it, and all the kids were always smiling; all the teachers were always smiling. They were so pleased to see us foreigners coming into our school. They were so happy just to have us there. That was one of the most amazing experiences on that trip. The thing I remember the most about that trip is that, seeing people in that environment and how happy they are, it highlighted for me that less is actually more in life.
Since coming back from the Himalayas I found out that BT does a lot to give back to the community, not only in this country but also externally. This year, they did a similar trek to the one I went on to the Himalayas, but to South Africa, which I was also involved in. Going on these treks has opened my eyes to what BT offers and the opportunities available for us to grasp hold of and be involved in.