New Managing Director for 21CN
21CN now has its own Managing Director and he brings a wealth of BT experience to his new job – learnt at the ‘front line’ of the business. Here Neil Rogers shares his views on the new role he has taken on for BT and the challenges ahead.
What is your career background?
Until stepping up to the new role of Managing Director 21CN, I worked for BT Global Services within the international sector for the past 15 years. I’ve had experience of delivering large scale, complex and commercially successful programmes, both within and outside BT. I have played a number of major roles in developing BT's global business including being responsible for BT's 100 largest global customers and increasing the growth of BT's international solutions business from one billion to three billion pounds over a five year period. I also led on BT's largest international deal - the three billion dollar network outsourcing deal for Reuters – along with the acquisition of Radianz the financial services extranet.
What does 21CN mean to you?
In short we are re-designing the company from the outside in and from the inside out. 21CN will enable BT to be innovative on a day-to-day basis. It will be the core of BT and by creating a global innovation platform it will enable new services like Web21.
What is the biggest challenge of your role?
I am under no illusions as to the scale of the challenge we are taking on or its importance to the company. The biggest challenge in my new role as MD is to ensure that all the elements of all the programmes align at the right point at the right time, but I am sure that we can do it. I have a great team around me and this, coupled with my past experience of delivering major programmes, understanding how BT works and knowing what its customers want, will stand the programme in good stead.
What are your priorities for the programme?
To deliver Pathfinder flawlessly, to be able to understand customer benefits and be able to deliver on them perfectly, while at the same time swiftly delivering clear visible shareholder benefits. We all know that 21CN is a big ask – but already much of what was just that a few months ago is fast becoming business as usual.
What is the most exciting part of the programme for you?
Personally I couldn’t be more excited to be involved in this programme and the challenges we face ahead because as things stand at present we are, by some distance, the first telecommunications company in the world to undertake such a complete transformation of its business.
What are your key milestones for 2006?
Needless to say we have some demanding key milestones for 2006 which we need to meet without a hitch so we can stay on track. Within 90 days I need to have ensured that we have created the total delivery plan for 21CN and that we fully understand all the linkages involved within it. Following that the focus will be on the delivery of Pathfinder – the lead area for 21CN migration in Cardiff and the surrounding districts.
This will officially begin operating on November 30 – however in practice we will need to be pretty much ready to go and in full operational mode some time in September with on-going work continuing until the following March before we can say we have finished. Once Pathfinder is complete the lessons learned will be key for the logistics of the UK-wide roll out which will be our next priority.