By Kevin Taylor, President, BT Asia, Middle East and Africa & Global Logistics.

In 2012 there was a watershed moment for the global economy when it was reported for the first time that there were more billionaires in Asia than in North America. 

While the huge growth we’re seeing in Asia at the moment clear for all to see, Africa has lagged behind, yet to see the kind of boom that has defined the early part of the millennium for developing countries in the Far East.

But there’s no doubt that the potential is there, and Africa’s time will come. Realising that potential will take a united effort. And the path will be smoothed by the growing use technologies and networks, helping bring people together to turn potential into prosperity.

The great strength of network technology is that it can make remote places proximate far quicker than any road, airport or train line. And it does so much more cost effectively than the alternatives, as well as having a big role to play in meeting one of the other big challenges the world faces at the moment —the need to reduce carbon emissions and work along much more environmentally friendly lines.

These challenges aren’t specific to Africa. And much closer to home the same approach is being used to open up the traditionally remote regions of our own country — Cornwall for example — which is now connected to the rest of the UK by superfast broadband.

We’ve started the process of connecting Africa already — following on from some great work in other remote regions of the world. As part of our work promoting digital inclusion in Africa we’ve formed a really great partnership with the children’s charity, SOS Children’s Villages, to connect twenty of the charity’s sites in twelve African countries via its global satellite network.

The scheme is part of our efforts to lay the foundations for growth on the continent. And by helping to connect people there we hope we can pay a positive role in turning Africa’s potential for growth into a prosperous reality.

To find out more about the work we’ve been doing with SOS Children’s Villages take a look at our video case study, which shows some of the villages and people the scheme is hoping to benefit. And make sure you check back here for more from our connecting Africa for a better future series.

And take a look at our video case study, which shows some of the villages and people the scheme is hoping to benefit .

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read Kevin’s post on Connecting Africa and the potential of Africa on the World Economic Forum’s blog site.

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At the beginning of this year, Jeremy Hunt, secretary of state for health, set out his vision of a paperless NHS by 2018.  No-one doubts the scale of the challenge, and equally everyone is aware of the huge benefits it could bring. What is still being hotly debated is the how.

What will it take to achieve a paperless NHS will be one of the topics that delegates at the NHS Confederation annual conference and exhibition 2013 will be discussing. Taking place between 5-7 June 2013 in Liverpool and supported by BT, the conference is one of the largest healthcare events in the calendar. With the reformed health system now in operation, healthcare leaders from across the country and all sectors of the new NHS will be coming together to share their experiences.

Attendees will hear from number of high profile figures and policy makers including Jeremy Hunt, secretary of state for health, Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS in England and Mike Farrar, chairman of the NHS Confederation.

BT will be at the conference, demonstrating a world where healthcare connects, a world where information is available at our customers’ fingertips, wherever and whenever it’s needed to enable them to deliver higher quality care at lower cost.

Our seminar session, hosted by new BT Global Health president, Ian Dalton, CBE, will focus on the how we can achieve the paperless vision and what will it take to get there. We’ll be hearing from those who’ve already done it on what lessons we can learn and how we can build on the experience of others to turn the vision into reality.

We look forward to seeing you at the conference to find out more about how we can help connect healthcare.

Find out more on BT’s health solutions

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The UK Government announced significant banking reform plans at Easter.

They come as the culmination of almost five years of fallout from the financial crisis, and include the UK’s interpretations of Basel III, along with measures to increase competition in banking and payments. The announcements coincided with the creation of the new regulatory regimes of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), which took over from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) from 1 April, 2013. But is it all going too far, too fast?

When the financial crisis hit, bank after bank was subsumed by leveraged debt. They had to merge, acquire, be bailed out, or go under. We all remember those dark days and their shadow hangs over us all today as we learn the meaning of the word ‘austerity’, with all its ramifications. Tectonic shift is taking place in finance all over the world – but different parts of the world are on different tectonic plates, and it is potentially seriously damaging to have some economies investing for growth, (namely the USA), whilst others (in Europe) shrink to survive.

There is a core divergence of approach between the strategies the Americas have adopted to deal with the financial crisis and those we are pursuing here in Europe. And this is reflected in a divergent approach to regulatory implementation.

 Risk concentration is still likely to remain
with the incumbents as the strongest players

In the USA, there is a wave of Dodd-Frank change. In Europe, we have the Financial Services Action Plan with its road map of directives, augmented by a Banking Union. And somewhere in the middle sits the UK.

We do not go as far as the Americas and ban all proprietary trading as the Volcker Rule would have us do – but we also shy away from the constraining approach of the European Union with its transaction taxes and bonus caps. This is because the UK sits in that uniquely uncomfortable position of being the world’s largest financial centre with an economy that depends on banking and financial excellence, while trying to do the right thing and regulate the banks.

It’s the reason why we are creating an electrified banking ring fence to separate investment and commercial banking activity, whilst avoiding the outright banning of bank trading activity. It is why we try to incorporate European wishes for banking reform, whilst ploughing our own furrow.

But what furrow have we ploughed?

A wave of change

When the FCA and PRA took over from the FSA in April, the first wave of change focused on creating more competition in banking and payments processing by lowering the barriers to entry and encouraging new players. A critical part of the plan is to allow new entrants to hold capital reserves that are around half of those required for incumbents, in order to allow new start-ups to get moving faster. But this does seem strange when the incumbents are being told to raise their capital reserve levels to meet the requirements of Basel III.

Without getting into the nitty gritty, the view of the regulators and government seems to be that new entrants are small enough to fail, so lowering their capital reserves is not an issue. Incumbents are too big to fail, and therefore they need higher capital ratios. This approach may be sound, but it is also a little flaky if you are an investor or client of the new entrant. Nevertheless, we are all protected by the Financial Compensation Scheme, so maybe this is not a significant issue.

A second part of the reform encourages new competitors in payments processing, and specifically encourages the idea of bypassing the core bank infrastructures by giving non-bank companies direct access to payment processing without the need to involve a bank.

As part of the reform, a payments regulator is being developed (an evolution of the Payments Council) and will soon have its own separate market operation. Again, you might interpret this as a need for payments to be processed, regardless of what happens to the banking community. When we saw banks fail in 2008, the main concern was how to keep bills getting paid and processed, and cash out of ATMs, rather than sorting out underlying issues of market structure. However, payments and transaction banking are a core part of retail and commercial banking, so opening this area up to its own non-bank oriented competitive operation is a potentially risky affair.

As a backdrop to all of this, we have the Banking Reform Bill working its way through Parliament, which is in the process of reforming financial services right now, and comes as a result of the Vickers Committee report from the Independent Commission on Banking. It will restructure the industry still further, by separating off all investment banking operations from those in the retail and commercial areas. It has just passed through its second reading in Parliament and should come into force as law some time in 2014.

Will it work?

Regulatory change is underway all over the world. With the G20 requirements for OTC derivatives to be traded on exchange, to the BIS revisions to Basel III, we have global change; with Dodd-Frank in the USA to EMIR and MiFID II in Europe, we have regional change; and with the UK’s introduction of a new regulatory regime, to Germany’s plans to ban high frequency trading (HFT), we have national change.

As can be seen, a lot is happening in a very short space of time. The core question is: will it work? Will the regulatory changes be effective?

Most of these changes are not orchestrated or managed in a joined-up way, but have overlaps and dovetails that often conflict and combine to cause friction and frustration.

The UK’s changes are positive in trying to fix the issues, but negative in addressing them. It appears that some of the new regulations are addressing the right issues in the wrong way: ring-fencing banks does not, for example, sort out the reasons why our retail banks failed through securitising loans in the investment markets. Others are being addressed in the right way: for example by separating off retail banks from investment banks, we can let half the bank fail without allowing the other half to be poisoned by the failure.

This latter point is the whole focus of the Vickers report, and the reason why it should succeed in dealing with failure, but not with the cause of that failure. Similarly, living wills for banks will deal with failure, but not the cause of failure.

Increasing competition in banking and payments will create a greater spread of risk, but the risk concentration is still likely to remain with the incumbents as the strongest players.

Finally, the lack of a cohesive global approach to regulatory change will leave a fragmented regional and national hole of regulatory arbitrage.

It is this last issue that creates the biggest risk for Britain and for our financial markets. If we come down too hard on the industry, we will just kill our domestic markets and international strength and see it move abroad. However, if we do not create consistency of the industry across borders, we will continue to be seen as a rogue state within the European operations of finance.

There is a fine line here, and it is a line that the Treasury, Bank of England, FCA and PRA are trying to tread.

Have they succeeded with their new reforms? Let’s wait and see.

For the moment, I’m sitting on the ring-fence.

The post UK’s Bank Reforms Leave me on the Ring-Fence appeared first on BT Let's Talk.

The philosophy of ‘easy’ works for everyone

How easy was it to get the help you wanted today? That’s the concept of ‘customer effort’ in a nutshell – how much effort do people need to put in to get their problem solved by a company.

But it doesn’t only work for businesses that sell direct to consumers (B2C). It’s just as useful for business-to-business (B2B) companies.

Make your company easy to do business with

“We’ve made ‘easy’ a philosophy that has been brought to life with ideas, responses and cross-silo working,” said an executive from a manufacturer of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG).

And it’s those silos that need to be challenged. When the company wanted to get its orders delivered to customers in full, it found that other priorities, like cutting inventories, were getting in the way. Now with the ‘easy to do business with’ philosophy in place, the supply chain director has a new target of being on time, in full.

Focus on your customers needs, not your own

This more customer-centric approach is a wake-up for a lot of B2B companies that have traditionally been designed around their own internal functions rather than their customers’ needs. And they need it because their customers often deal directly with different departments. So the B2B company’s accounts team has to be just as easy to deal with as its sales team.

The ‘easy’ programme at our FMCG manufacturer was led by the customer service team, but went across the company. It started by identifying improvements for the supply chain and moved back through manufacturing and design. Now the company will be looking at customer feedback to see where else they can make changes.

Follow these tips and make it happen

It’s been a major programme of change that has really transformed the way the company does business. And they’ve got a few tips on how to make the initiative succeed:

*         have an ‘easy’ champion to give vision and direction to the programme

*         make sure you have the support of your top decision-makers

*         shout about your successes, both internally and externally, to reinforce the ‘easy’ philosophy

*         involve customers in the process and keep them informed.

 Help or Hype, Professor Moira Clark and Andrew Bryan, Henley Centre for Customer Management, April 2013.

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Technology is certainly breaking down the barriers between work and home. It feels like our work life balance has gone to hell in a handcart. Now, it seems it is gate-crashing the bedroom with more and more of us checking email the last thing we do before the head hits the pillow. Can technology ever be romantic? Now, it’s hard to say this with a straight face but this question is being asked with the news that there is dramatic rise in the use of electronic devices in the bedroom. Let’s get one thing straight up front. I’m talking about laptops, tablets and smartphones.  

I’ve always had a kind of romantic view of technology seeing it as liberating humankind from the drudgeries of everyday life, promoting global social cohesion and world peace through international commerce. However, I’ve never really thought of it as a way of being more romantic with my beloved. For the record I never take my devices to bed but maybe I should. A little suggested competition can’t be a bad thing, can it? Maybe under-cover tweeting would be a good thing. Sharing a video on YouTube of a stupid cat doing something daft could be intimate, couldn’t it? After all, they say laughter is at the heart of intimacy. We could instant message each other, saying goodnight with the stroke of a few keys. That would be great, wouldn’t it? I don’t think so. I really don’t want my mind filled with petty office issues last thing. Other than cheese and coffee I can’t think of anything more likely to give me a restless night.

The funny thing about always-on, always-connected technology is that it can destroy relationships whilst building a new kind of personal social network. The danger is we replace a small number of deep relationships with many shallow relationships. But it’s so seductive. In Facebook we communicate the life we want friends to think we have, not the one we actually have. In that sense it is an escape but one that is hard to escape from. I can’t see how technology can be romantic in the personal sense. I may have over 500 LinkedIn associates and 200 Facebook friends but I’ve only got one partner and we like talking to each other. Even if it is just a tired goodnight and a yawn.

In 1983 the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov described a world of Solarians. They had evolved an isolationist culture in which citizens never met save for reproductive purposes which they had to, by law, do every once in a while. All other contact was via sophisticated tele-presence systems. All work was done by robots. They hated meeting each other, dreading the experience and making the unpleasant business as short as possible. They eventually disappeared and I can’t help thinking this dystopian society based on the shallowest of relationships was doomed once its inhabitants started saying goodnight via SMS. In 2000 Robert Putnam’s seminal work Bowling Alone showed how society has become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbours and our democratic structures. He warned that our stock of social capital – the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities.

Today we know technology can help re-balance society’s connections. There are many examples of communities forming, achieving and sustaining on-line. However, we don’t need it for deep personal relationships. I love technology. Just don’t ask me to take it to bed with me.

Read Steve’s predictions for agile working in 2013.

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote a short post that you can see here about my excitement waiting for the first set of outturns from our Net Good analysis.   It is still a week or two too early to tell you the results – they will be featured in our Annual Report and Accounts and our Better Future report due out soon,  but I can tell you that we are holding an event in London on June 18th to launch the programme.

Our CEO, Ian Livingston will be opening the event, and our CSO, Niall Dunne will be delivering the closing words. Along with our partners, The Climate Group, Carbon Trust and Small World Consulting, I  will be describing the approach, and we hope there will plenty of  discussion  and feedback on the next steps.

While this is an invitation-only event, and numbers are limited due to space, we would like to allow for some people outside of the usual lists of sustainability ‘suspects’  to join us.  We have five (free) places that we are opening up for anyone who would like to apply to attend.    We know this will bring us fresh perspectives and hope it helps develop the next generation of sustainability practitioners.

If you are interested in joining us, Please email steve.j.kelly@bt.com by Wednesday May 22nd with a short note listing your name, organization and why you would like to attend,

Either way, look out for plenty more engaging information on our Better Future web site and in our Better Future report later this month and tweet #BTBetterFuture to join the discussion.

The post Would You Like to Attend the Net Good Launch Event ? appeared first on BT Let's Talk.

It’s official that people who want to talk to government departments want choice about how they do that — even if they are more likely to choose the phone over any other channel.

That’s the findings of BT’s Autonomous Customer research, which suggests that people expect the same levels of service for government and public bodies as they do from the private sector — and they don’t want their choice of channels restricted.

While customers understand the need for efficiency — 86 per cent recognised this — they gave a resounding thumbs down to the notion of making online self-service the exclusive contact channel for public services. Less than a third of respondents (28 per cent) were in favor of compulsory internet self-service.

Phone is still the most popular method of contact, with 77 per cent saying they had phoned in the past six months. Fifty-four per cent had called a contact centre in the month leading up to the survey, compared with 56 per cent for the same period in 2010 — suggesting that the phone is holding its own despite the growth of alternative contact channels. 

Most people said they would like a single number to access all public services. Voice recognition and self-service are popular too, with people saying they had used these for voter registration, general bill enquiries and checking holiday rubbish collection times.

It’s clear the public understand the need to save money but they don’t want this to be at the expense of choosing how they get in touch. Self-service has a role to play – but as part of an overall multichannel offering rather than a single contact strategy.

Read Kate’s last blog on the Autonomous Customer

To read our latest whitepaper From agent to expert on the future of the contact Centre advisor visit:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/124350009/From-Agent-to-Expert

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By Mark Akass, CTO, Global Banking and Financial Markets, BT

If we look at the last 10 years, we can clearly see huge changes in the way we protect technology. The security ‘toolbox’ has grown in capability and is available to a bigger slice of the market place.  This coupled with an explosion of technology providers, and an increasing need for firms to manage and keep an eye on the costs which come about when bringing said tools into action to fight each and every security threat. Only recently we witnessed Australia’s central bank admitting that it had played victim to repeated attacks from computer hackers.  Was the fact that no data was lost or lasting damage done down to the effective use of the advanced tools available on the market today?

Undoubtedly we have seen certain highlights in the development of the security tool kit.  Take a look at pattern matching of signature based threats¹; to anomaly detection² based on behavioural analysis; to increasing levels of sophistication in being able to identify potential threats in the context in which they are being transacted; to testing suspected transactions for executable code in real-time. The attacks may have become more advanced but then so have the tools developed to fight the war against them.

 Maybe one of the largest areas of evolution in the security market today relates to tools that perform threat detection in real-time? Looking forward, the application of big data toolsets will prove increasingly important in helping firms to handle vast volumes of data generated by security monitoring. This is all well and good, but which security tools would make people’s jobs easier?  The answer is quite simple: Effective, secure, portable and searchable multi-media archive, storage and retrieval. These days, people handle so much data in so many different formats that the human brain just needs a helping hand!

Read Mark’s earlier blog on is ignorance an excuse for poor security in financial services today.

¹Signature based detection is the most common method of malware detection. To identify viruses and other malware, antivirus software compares the contents of a file to a dictionary of virus signatures.

²Anomaly detection] refers to detecting patterns in a given data set that do not conform to an established normal behaviour

The post Have Technology Security Measures Really Changed all that Much Over the Years? appeared first on BT Let's Talk.

By Kevin Taylor, President, BT Asia, Middle East and Africa & Global Logistics

The real benefits of connectivity around the world will only be truly realised when everybody in the world has access to the global network, however remote they are. Which is why I’m delighted to announce our ‘Connecting Africa’ project, which will bring broadband internet access to communities across the continent.

We’ve been working with international children’s charity, SOS Children’s Villages, to connect twenty of the charity’s sites in twelve African countries via its global satellite network.

The The first two SOS Children’s Villages in The Gambia have already been brought online. And the remaining ones — from Burundi and Benin to Sierra Leone and Swaziland — are scheduled to be connected by October 2013.

Using recycled satellite equipment, our engineers have been installing the broadband systems and training the charity’s local IT support teams to maintain them and make sure the benefits of connectivity are felt in the long term.

Connecting Africa will directly benefit at least 5,000 people in each community, with many more benefiting indirectly. By developing the technology and skills, and by running adult education programmes in the wider community, the project will help extend the benefits of internet access to the children, their families and wider communities.

The hope is that the scheme will benefit the young people in the Children’s Villages by letting them get online, boosting their education through e-learning courses and mentoring programmes developed by the charity.

And the benefits will be two-way — with the charity itself able to run its operations better as it will be better able to co-ordinate the facilities it operates in the communities — including schools, medical centres and community programmes.

The project will also help boost the charity’s fundraising work by allowing photos and videos to be shared with the people who have chosen to sponsor children in the Children’s Villages.

We’ve already shown our commitment to communication as a tool for good in Africa and the wider world, with this latest initiative building on our know-how and long standing commitment to helping children and whole communities reach for a better future. As well as that our commitment will be reflected in the number of BT employees around the world who will engage in the project through volunteering and fund raising activities.

Check back here for more on our connecting Africa for a better future series. And take a look at our video case study, which shows some of the villages and people the scheme is hoping to benefit .

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read Kevin’s post on the World Economic Forum’s blog site

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The Public Services Network (PSN) is taking off. Early customers are already connected and commitment from across the public sector, in particular from Health and from Police, in the last few months has added to the momentum. Central Government departments are already advanced in their own plans to achieve PSN compliance and to connect this year.

A further catalyst in this transition to PSN is the imminent requirement for all 588 organisations that use the old Government Secure Intranet (GSi, or GCSX in Local Government) to connect to its legacy services solely through PSN. The existing procurement framework for these services, GCF, comes to a close in August this year and the old, dedicated connections to them must be replaced by PSN by the end of March 2014. It’s also essential for customers to gain their PSN certification – the Code of Connection or ‘CoCo’ – before connecting to PSN.

So, with all this compulsion to comply and to connect this year, is PSN just about getting the ‘tick in the box’ so that you can get on with bigger challenges? I’d strongly suggest that PSN is actually far less about the tick in the box and more about thinking outside of it.

Consider for a moment the emerging scale of PSN, the proven capacity it has to save cash today and the much greater potential it holds to enable far greater efficiencies in future.

Take scale first. PSN is shaping up to be a factor of 50 to 75 times larger than GSi. Visualise that. Not just a link between Whitehall departments or set of spokes connecting to local authorities to some central applications. A single conduit shared by millions of people working to deliver public services throughout the UK. A shared environment based on common standards to keep costs down, and with access to a rich choice of inter-changeable services and content from an open and competitive marketplace of providers.

From the cashable savings viewpoint, of course users can save money now by shifting from multiple duplicated networks to a common network, linked to others via PSN. The Unicorn project, bringing together Authorities in Surrey and Berkshire in a deal with BT is doing just that, replacing up to forty networks with one, connecting at least 20 public services and saving £5.25 million in the process.

The initial business case for gaining the compliance tick in the box, consolidating and connecting is compelling. The cashable savings are there – but this is still missing the real opportunity.

It’s a point made clearly by the National Audit Office (NAO) in recognising that early savings, whilst important, can be unsustainable in the long run and that real service innovation and change are needed to generate sustained efficiencies and better public services. To quote from a recent NAO report: “This is the greatest challenge for PSN – to sustain cost saving whilst articulating the much greater economies and sustainable public service improvements that must be built on PSN.”

Thinking outside the box means exploiting PSN as a platform for innovation and public service transformation. It means, again in the words of the NAO, moving to “ICT solutions that reform public services and the way that government works”.

This brings a new set of challenges with it. Not just the task of maintaining compliance or procuring better, but the process, people and management challenge of aligning different organisations, sometimes with different goals and cultures, to collaborate and co-create public services.

It means redesigning public services from the outside in, starting with the citizen and replacing old processes, changing systems, re-aligning the way people do things and giving them the tools to work more flexibly and quickly. It means joining up, working closely and sharing resources rather than protecting or competing. And above all it means openness, agility and innovation as the key to delivering better services in the face of inexorable demand and shrinking budgets.

Solutions to these challenges too are being pioneered by projects like Unicorn and will be the source of sustainable transformation in services. To quote Surrey County Council, “We firmly believe public services should be seen as a single team co-operating to make taxpayers’ money go further wherever possible”.

Thinking outside the PSN box can be a genuine enabler that helps senior public leaders reconcile the conflicting demands of year on year savings and spiralling expectations for service improvement. So whilst the tick in the box is essential, it’s what outside it that’s compelling.

To find out more about BT and the work we do with the PSN visit:

http://www.globalservices.bt.com/uk/en/industries/psn

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Today, I’m happy to announce my next chapter at BT as president of BT US and Canada (US&C) as well as the global industry verticals – Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and Pharmaceutical and Chemical.  I am delighted to be a part of this talented organization and the transformation of its operations, performances and customer service. This new role is exciting for me as I look across the strengths of BT’s business in the US&C and these growing industries.  We have a strong business in the US&C for banking, financial trading markets, consumer products and pharmaceuticals.

I joined BT in 2008 as CEO for the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg) and in 2011 transitioned into president of the EMEA and Latin America region.  In addition to a regional leader, I also became president of the Global Commerce sector which supports companies in industries such as manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and logistics. I’m a Dutch native but have recently moved to Texas for this role and am looking forward to barbeque, American football and hot summers.

What many people don’t know is that BT has had a presence in the US&C for more than 20 years and operates its own network infrastructure.  In the US&C we serve more than 1,000 customers, including 74 percent of Fortune 500 companies. We recognize that there are many large well-known companies headquartered in North America that have business in areas around the globe and our strength is in helping these companies as they drive business in all regions of the world.

In today’s fast-paced world, it’s critical that we continually look to the horizon and expand our services to address new challenges and trends impacting enterprises and key sectors like CPG and pharmaceuticals, such as big data, cloud computing, mobile security and the consumerization of IT.

I see great things ahead for BT in US&C and incredible potential to build on our strengths in the region and across key global industry sectors. I work amongst the industry’s brightest and talented people. Together, we will continue to build upon our leadership in the region, leveraging the strength of our capabilities with a laser-like focus on anticipating customer needs and industry shifts.

Bas Burger is the president of the US & Canada region as well as Global Consumer Packaged Goods and Pharmaceutical & Chemical vertical market units with responsibilities for the business strategy and growth for each of the areas.

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By Eira Hammond, HR and Payroll Expert, BT

There are not many people outside our own organisation that realise that BT actually ‘do’ payroll around the UK, paying tens of thousands of payslips every month for a number of local authority organisations. So, when I was approached by Frazer Jones, the Global HR Recruitment organisation that places some of BT’s Senior HR Leaders, to be the guest speaker at their inaugural payroll leadership event I was delighted to have the opportunity to spread the word!

The forum provides a valuable networking opportunity and offers a chance to discuss topical Payroll issues, over a round-table arrangement. The forum was host to over 25 Senior Payroll delegates from organisations such as NBC Universal, PRET, Debenhams, Thomson Reuters, and many more.

My subject had to be relevant and I’ve had real determinationin ‘driving change in payroll’ for many years; with all the pressures put on teams in both public and private sector organisations to do more work with less staff, time and money it’s even more relevant now with lots of statutory payroll initiatives being introduced over the next couple of years.

I particularly wanted to focus on 3 main areas, Process, Systems and People to prompt discussion and engage the delegates.

We started by looking at how by utilising ‘Lean Systems Thinking’ methodology you could analyse and understand the demands and pressures being placed on the team which would lead to process reviews and changes to working practices. We looked at some real life examples of how this could be done, including how to measure success.

In discussing systems, it was shocking to hear how many people really didn’t feel they were utilising their payroll system fully. Unfortunately it’s a common occurrence to implement a new payroll system in phases – the first is all about go live, and getting people paid accurately. Often we see later phases scrapped as the budget disappears or the teams are so busy ‘making the system work for them’ they don’t have time to automate many of the processes that are often part of later phases.

Lastly, we looked at people – this is probably the area that is focussed on least in most organisations – although there are usually appraisal systems in place, there’s not always the focus on personal development and progression. Quite often payroll teams are stable with little staff turnover – this invariably means change is more difficult with individuals who have been around for years who are often sceptical and reluctant to try new ways of working.

The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP), where I am a Non-Executive Director/Trustee, have created a standards based accreditation (PQP – Payroll Quality Partnership) for organisations wishing to achieve best practice in the development of payroll people. I explained, with some examples, how the tools within this programme could be used effectively in understanding the technical, business and personal skills each member of the team has, and how a development plan could give motivation to those that want to progress.

There were 25 payroll leaders from a variety of public and private sector organisations at the event, who all got involved, many staying on afterwards to share in further discussions over refreshments. This was a great opportunity to network with old and new contacts from around the UK and I for one, am looking forward to being invited to the next event!

You can see Eira’s slides here.

Find out more about how BT can help local government.

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Queuing – it may be a British pastime but it’s not exactly something that we relish doing. How many times have you just shrugged and walked away when it’s “not worth the effort”?

We are busy people who want to minimise the amount of time, energy and effort we put into things that we don’t value. Things like trying to navigate around a complicated and badly designed website, setting up a product or service or trying to get answers from a contact centre. Sometimes we don’t want to be “wowed” by customer service. Sometimes we just want it to be easy.

This isn’t just laziness on our part; it’s the way that we are wired. We are often willing to take a “first thing that works” solution to a problem rather than striving to find the ultimate answer. This means that we don’t actually need to delight each and every customer all the time – we just have to wow when it really counts and the rest of the time just make it easy. This often runs counter to many customer satisfaction initiatives that aim to always delight the customer.

If I am buying carrots, I don’t need “wow” I just need quick and good quality. If I am going on holiday, I will probably put a bit of effort in to researching and planning it but, once I’ve done that, I want the booking process to be easy. I may expect elements of getting a mortgage to be difficult but, if as much of the process is made as easy as possible, I can concentrate on moving into my dream house.

We will put effort into things that matter to us and that we value. Effort is effectively a cost – with the currency being time, physical exertion, emotional angst and brain power. As with any cost there is a both trade off and a desire to either minimise it or get ‘value for effort’. This will, in turn, influence our perception of satisfaction, convenience and value for money.

However, how much effort are we willing to spend? The effort required to master a difficult musical instrument like the Irish bagpipes is likely to be greater than mastering the triangle – but, although mastery of the pipes may be highly satisfying, many people who attempt to play them will fall by the wayside (me included). Your customers may do the same unless they believe that the end justifies the means.

In other words, a customer who assesses the company as ‘difficult’ is much more likely to defect than a customer who is ‘dissatisfied’. Our research with Henley Business School also found that, of those who had a difficult experience with a company, only 5 per cent felt that they had got good value for money.

This is why it’s important to make your customer experiences, whether it’s though self service, contact centre or in a branch or store, as easy as possible. That way you can then seize the opportunities to add the wow factor when it matters the most.

For more on Customer Effort, take a look at our new white paper, ‘Customer Effort: Hype or Help?’

The post To Queue or Not To Queue? Only if you get Value for Effort appeared first on BT Let's Talk.

The Henley Centre for Customer Management has done some research into customer effort. They interviewed a number of companies about their experiences, and the findings inspired us to look at the topic ourselves.

People don’t hate hold music – they hate being on hold

It’s fair to say that call centre hold music isn’t popular. We all hate listening to It’s a Small World over and over while we wait for someone to sort our problem out.

However, one holiday company figured out that asking customers to rate the hold music they heard was the wrong question to ask.  They figured that this would always be low scoring, whatever the song; it’s not the music that’s the problem. It’s being put on hold that people don’t like – they just want their problem solved.

Find out what people want, and focus on that

The companies that are really getting customer service right know what their customers want, and make it as easy as possible for them to get it.

The same holiday company asked its customers whether they would recommend them. Then they matched those findings up to how much the same customers actually spent in the future.

They found that whether people would ‘probably’ or ‘definitely’ recommend the company didn’t make much difference to how much they spent. Where it did make a difference was at the lower end of the scores – the people who said they ‘wouldn’t’ or were ‘unlikely to’ recommend them.

So it made more sense to invest time and money there. Getting people from ‘no’ to ‘maybe’ was better than trying to get them from ‘maybe’ to ‘definitely’.

A job well done matters more than the cherry on top

The holiday company learned from this and found that, ultimately, it’s about being able to identify where to put in “wow” moments that the customer will appreciate, and where it makes no difference. Analyse what your customers value, wow them when they will appreciate it and, otherwise, simply make things easy for them to do.

Delight your customers, but only where it matters to them. That might seem a bit controversial for service departments that are used to trying to exceed customers’ expectations. But ask yourself this: would you rather have the latest music while you’re sat on hold, or would you rather someone answered the phone quicker?

Help or Hype, Professor Moira Clark and Andrew Bryan, Henley Centre for Customer Management, April 2013

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You can shut yourself in a windowless conference room on the first sunny day after a long wet winter and become more optimistic about the future! 

On the 25^th April some fifty or so leaders from UK business and government gathered in BT Tower’s auditorium to discuss how the country could pull itself out of the current economic doldrums.  This event formed the London leg of BT’s global conversation for CxO’s: “Connecting for a Better Future”. 

At the start they were asked how they felt about the UK economy.  The answer was a mixed bag with well over half the audience thinking it was somewhere between “bleak” and “ready for improvement”.  But by the end of the session the mood was noticeably up beat with two thirds considering the UK economy “had potential” or was even “warming up”!

This same audience believes the economic problems would be resolved by better collaboration between government and the private sector.  However,  the discussion itself focussed to a degree on the role of government the investor and how to make central government more efficient.

Panellist Brian Millar, director of strategy at brand consultancy Sense Worldwide, kicked the conversation off with the somewhat controversial statement that what we need was a war! 

He recognised that war had accelerated the innovations such as planes, computers and the internet that have come to define modern society.  He also pointed out that at times of war governments can borrow as much money as they like!  Venture capitalist Julie Meyer agreed to the extent that we should be treating the current economic situation as if we were at war.

Julie, however,  advocated “small government”.  She put forward the idea that corporations had both the economic and social motivation to invest in their local communities.  Why, she asked, was it not possible for them to sponsor their local schools directly and so bypass the complex and valueless exercise of handing that money to government as tax?

“Every single government department buys things differently,” observed John Telling of Mitie identifying another opportunity for making government more efficient.  The idea of achieving monumental efficiency through simple change was picked up by the other panellists.

Gavin Starkins, CEO of the Open Data Institute told us about the NHS making prescription data available for an analysis costing £20K which proved it could save £200m on its drug bill. He also had proof that by making procurement data readily available in machine readable form, organisations can reduce costs by up to 90%. Councillor Iain Malcolm, leader of South Tyneside Council made a more direct offer.  “Local Authorities have had to learn how to do a third more with a third less.  They should let us run Whitehall!”

Iain’s remark ably reflected  the mood of the audience who had voted, not unlike their cousins from Sydney, Australia at the series event there, that the Power of the Individual was the megatrend that most impacts their business or organisations now and will do so in the future.

The conversation in the UK was not just about making government more efficient.   The other side of the coin is about creating wealth and that, all agreed, was the role of the private sector with technology set to play a critical role – if, as individuals, we stand up, are prepared to take the risks and do things to move things forward. 

As the sun set over London on a stunningly clear evening, the view from the top of the Tower may perhaps have inspired some of the UK’s leaders to be up for that.

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