Analyst Talks To...Paul Excell

Paul Excell is chief customer innovation officer, BT Innovate.

Hi Paul. What are your main responsibilities at BT Innovate?

My role is to leverage BT's global innovation ecosystem mainly for the benefit of our largest customers. That means unleashing BT's broad innovation capabilities to maximise opportunities and relieve some of the pain points these customers might have in their business.

As part of this strategy, I am executive director of BT's Engage programme, which uses the innovation we have access to, to tackle the business problems of our biggest customers, from government departments to top corporate customers. I must emphasise that this is innovation not solely based on the products and services that BT sells through the usual channels.

When I refer to innovation, I do not mean purely 'invention'. To me, successful innovation is better defined as something that changes and enhances the performance of the business you are working with by reducing costs or bringing in additional revenue.

Engage unleashes innovation to make the difference for customers in four primary areas. Firstly, using new tools and capabilities to improve operational efficiency - vital in the current business environment.

Second, improving customer experience thereby driving higher margin revenue. Third, using innovation strategically, across the end to end business model, to increase competitive advantage.

Fourth, for those customers who want to set innovation free within their companies, we can run their end to end innovation process - from the new ideas stage all the way through to having a financial impact.

Why do you think Engage is so important for BT and its customers?

In this highly competitive and credit crunch affected world, companies are constantly thinking about how to use innovation to stay ahead.

BT today has a fantastic differentiator in the world-class network and global innovation platform that is 21CN. In the longer term, multi-national companies will increasingly be demanding the service innovation and flexibility enabled by that infrastructure.

They will want partners that are engaged in addressing their business issues, not just generic solutions providers.

They want the commitment shown by a partner that is investing more than a billion pounds in R&D, is nurturing relationships with more than 30 leading academic institutions around the world, is finding 1,200 new ideas a year through global scouting activities, has a wide range of partners and is then able to apply the results of this innovation on their behalf.

They want a relationship that offers a co-innovation approach, which helps build competitive advantage. Through the Engage programme, we are offering that kind of relationship to large customers as a long-term key differentiator.

How are the aims of the programme aligned to BT's overall transformational strategy?

We, in BT Innovate, think constantly about challenges from a customer experience point of view. In many ways, Engage actually grew out of the ongoing transformation at BT and the 21CN vision of a global innovation platform, which we will use to deliver our solutions, products and services through our Design and Operate arms.

We work collaboratively with our Design and Operate colleagues as part of the innovation ecosystem. Our remit is to make sure that when and where we apply our innovation and co-innovation with our customers, that it can all influence - and be influenced by - what is happening in the 21CN global platform.

This is key to our transformational strategy. It remains completely aligned with it and it continues to influence it.

In addition, by working with customers in a co-innovation scenario, we get significant insight into what works and doesn't work, before we make major investments.

And how is Engage progressing so far?

We launched Engage in April 2008 and in just ten months results are already ahead of initial expectations. We have also had tremendous feedback from account teams and customers, who are starting to see the real value of this innovative approach. In fact, it has generated a number of significant new business opportunities for BT as a result of customers interacting directly with our innovation ecosystem.

We also get new opportunities to sit down with the senior management teams of customers and other potential customers because they are seeing that we have this programme in place and that our strategic co-innovation approach offers them real value.

Paul, as a green business enthusiast yourself, do you think BT has done enough to promote the sustainability agenda?

BT is a sustainability leader. We have led the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for eight years now. Even before CSR became sexy, we had already adopted it - it has always been part of our lifeblood to be a 'good' company.

What is important to remember about sustainability is that it is not in significant conflict with getting your business working well and making good profits for shareholders.