Summary Bullets:
• BT Business continues the integration process of former UK and global enterprise divisions, focused on a smooth transition for customers while delivering benefits of consolidation.
• Key areas of interest included digitalization, the Cloud Fabric multi-cloud service, BT’s focus on the SMB market, customer portals, fleet ESIM solutions, AI, and environmental issues.
The BT Focus analyst event highlighted how BT Business is progressing during challenging times as telcos face the challenges of rolling out fiber and 5G while in a constant state of flux in a rapidly evolving technology market. BT is looking to digitalization for operational efficiency and customer empowerment, which reduces costs (e.g., using the same platforms across all segments, tailored to their specific needs, and approximately halving the overall portfolio).
The Cloud Fabric demo showed powerful management capabilities, delivering customers speed, flexibility, and pricing when configuring their networks (for more details, please see: BT Makes a Compelling NaaS Play with Global Fabric Launch, October 17, 2023). Similar portal benefits were highlighted in other areas such as mobile device management, fleet management using ESIMs, and in measuring carbon emissions.
BT Business noted that it serves one million SMBs, 15,000 corporate and public sector customers in the UK, and 1,000 MNCs globally as well as 1,000 wholesale customers. Areas of focus include the SMB segment, co-creation of solutions, growing vertical solutions, and deep partnerships for joint go-to-market solutions.
BT Business defines SMBs as enterprises with up to 250 employees with an estimated total UK market value of GBP5 billion. BT uses multiple channels to market, including telesales, digital/web, EE High Street retail stores, 28 BT Local Business ‘franchises,’ the third-party channel to market, and direct sales for larger SMEs. The company has observed differing behaviors across SME sub-segments, ranging from micro (0-9 employees) tending to make pragmatic choices by owners/managers, to small (10-49 employees) looking for affordable technology solutions to help power growth, to medium (20-249 employees) looking to use technology proactively to meet their business objectives. Noteworthy is the fact that, as part of business rationalization, BT’s wholly owned subsidiary Plusnet has withdrawn from the business market, which fits the ‘BT for Business’ strategy, but it also removes a ‘cheap and cheerful’ alternative for serving price-sensitive customers.
With a string focus on environmental issues throughout, BT Business highlighted that the latest technology has seen emissions reduce by 80 or 90%, which in turn also helps customers deliver their own net-zero targets for Scope 3. BT also noted that even the smallest business customers have proven keen on addressing the sustainability challenge. BT highlighted achievements and accolades as well as its launch of management tools and partnerships with the likes of Cisco and Equinix to demonstrate a coordinated effort to address the climate crisis. To date, the focus has been on BT’s core existing larger business customer base, but addressing the third-party channel to market (wholesale, resellers) is also being planned.
Inevitably, AI was a key theme as it is seen both to drive operational change and customer demand – and has been for decades (BT has been using it for smart fleet management for years) – but everything is in hype mode because of generative AI attention. BT believes that AI offers opportunities for many enterprise customers to change how they run their businesses, and that it will help BT itself to optimize operations (e.g., sales, customer service, people), but there was also a clear message that ‘AI needs supervision.’
BT Business is managing to transform itself in a dynamic market with the world in a state of flux. Its combination of a leading multi-cloud platform, a focus on customer enablement, and on environmental responsibility fits the bill. Now, it has to return to delivering revenue growth in the enterprise market.