Well, it was bound to happen. The announcement of Ben Verwaayan leaving BT was made this morning, along with the appointment of Ian Livingston as his successor and Gavin Patterson as the new CEO of BT Retail and a board member. The rumors and speculation that Ben would be moving on has been in the press for at least the past 18 to 24 months, so it’s good to get it out of the way and have the media and city concentrate their efforts elsewhere.

Ben’s been huge for BT. You can read about the changes he’s brought to BT since joining in 2002 here, here, and here. I’ve had the privilage of hearing Ben speak in person a number of times, as well as being on the receiving end of Ben’s criticisms of a poorly collaborated project we were demoing to him directly (details possibly for a future post). I must say Ben’s been an excellent CEO in my three and a half years at BT so far, providing the motivation, answering hard questions brought up by employees and leading the firm through the rough telco and technology waters.  I do wish him the best of luck in his next endeavour.

With all of that being said, I’m looking forward to Ian taking over as CEO and continuing the momentum he’s built leading BT Retail for the past three years.  Ian has some big shoes to fill and the rest of the firm (including me) will need to rally around him to help fill those shoes.

I do enjoy randomly stumbling upon articles that mention some of the cool stuff produced by BT teams. One example is a recent TechCrunch review of a VoIP service that overlaps in functionality with our very own Web21C SDK. Specifically mentioned was the new CallFlow feature that has only recently been released into beta and lightly covered here with quotes from our leader (and part-time blogger), JP Rangaswami.

The TechCrunch article only briefly mentions the CallFlow feature, but does provide a link to the article mentioned above, which goes into a bit more details. In layman’s terms, CallFlow allows the creation of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) customer experiences without having to procure some expensive heavyweight platform just to do so. Rather than even attempt to do a poor job of explaining CallFlow further, just go to their website for not only a description and summary, but detailed development instructions and code examples.

The SDK team, while running into a few speedbumps like all projects do, is picking up steam fast and with a couple more wins in the functionality and user adoption areas is on the path to do some really great stuff. I am definitely writhing in anticipation ;-). Good job boys (and girls :)!

As I was going through my morning news stories, I stumbled upon a CNN video shot yesterday from Davos, featuring none other than my company’s CEO, Ben Verwaayan.

Ben was interviewed by CNN’s ostentious reporter, Richard Quest. Although the interview was a bit all over the place, the major points Ben talked about:

• It’s BT Group, not British Telecom. Get it right.
• Three layers of importance for what’s happening in the economy
  1. Collaboration is the theme at Davos, not just the economy, the financial sector, or the current uncertainty of the market
  2. Debating and separating out the emotions that are currently clouding the market
  3. Real performance.
• Customers are focused on the robustness of their own performance, and areas to improve, which helps the overall economy
• The financial world is finally reconnecting with the real world as indicated by recent events
• The market is all about expectations. Accounting for risk is resetting certain expectation and the market reflects that.
• Ben, as usual, did not answer the question of if he’s leaving his CEO post at BT (Stay Ben!)
• The economy is closer to going into recession than slowdown

Updated: Also, check out Ben’s personal thoughts of the WEF on his blog at the Telegraph and the below more in-depth video of Ben and BT’s core business and competencies in serving our customers.

The Osmosoft team recently made a pilgrimage to Paris in order to support BT and JP Rangaswami’s presence at Le Web 3. Both Phil Whitehouse and Phil Hawksworth from our Osmosoft team have done a great job of covering the event on their respective blogs, so no need for another recap. Rather, I wanted to touch on a topic that came up a number of times as I was manning the BT and Osmosoft booth with the rest of the team; the reason behind BT’s open source initiative.

About two-thirds of the conference attendees who came by our booth had previously heard about BT as the traditional telecom provider in the UK, and some even knew we had a global arm that provided communication services all over the world. But what intrigued most everyone that stopped by was the reasoning behind BT’s support of open source and Osmosoft. What was the business case? Why invest into an area that had a questionable ROI? How does open source fit into BT? While the team had prepared a bit for answering questions from Le Web 3 attendees, most of the preparation centered around RippleRap, our social note-taking product that was launched at the conference, and less on our corporate strategy.

So what is our strategy then? Well, here’s my take. BT recognizes and anticipates open source solutions playing a much bigger role in the enterprise space in the very near future, thus the investment in Osmosoft. Our size and breadth (100,000+ employees around the world) allows us to implement today’s solutions that take advantage of software from Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, and tons of other major players but also at the same time to put an investment in ensuring we learn and experience when/where open source is the optimal solution for our us, our customers, and our partners. And rather than just being another research team, we’re taking a hand’s on approach with producing a product (RippleRap) through the engagement of an open source project (TiddlyWiki).

While TiddlyWiki is just one project, our small team is serving not only as a successful example, but also to show other BT teams how to add expertise in certain open source solutions (potentially enterprise email, collaboration platforms, etc.) to their list of proprietary offerings. We’re already working closely with our Global Services colleagues to expand revenue opportunities with a couple existing customers. I haven’t mentioned other traditional reasons for adopting open source such as reduced vendor lock-in, software as a service (SaaS), and so on, but as I gain hands-on experience in those areas, I will update as appropriate. The ROI is less straightforward than I was hoping, but calculating ROI’s have always been a bit of a black art anyways, so I won’t fret too much ;-).

For the large majority of attendees, my explanation made sense and they usually left with a new appreciation for what BT and the Osmosoft team are trying to accomplish in the open source space. There were still a few people unconvinced, but as I and the rest of the team gain more experience with open source software, projects and communities, I hope to strengthen our business case to a point where it’s bit more robust than my babbling above. I’m really looking forward to diving deeper into this world.

(image above from Hugh MacLeod’s genius)

Since joining BT in November of 2004, the message has been loud and clear from Al-Noor Ramji, our group CIO, and other senior execs and that is if we make customer service BT’s differentiator, we will succeed as a firm. With a message like that coming from our CIO, it was very refreshing, and I instantly knew our IT organization was destined for a much larger role in BT’s success than the traditional back office support roles that typify IT. Three years later, the customer experience focus has long since spread firm-wide, and while we’re still far from completing the job, we are making major strides in improving all facets of our company’s business via this basic focus.

So what is customer experience? It’s actually quite simple and just requires a person, a team, an organization to take the perspective of their customers and expect the same experience that they would expect if they were the customer. That means understanding that waiting even 30 seconds on the phone to talk to a support person is not optimal. Clicking through 14 confusing web pages when ordering a basic phone line online is not optimal. And finding out unexpectedly that the service you paid for is not currently working is just a few ways to turn away customers and doom your company. The example scenarios go on, but it really is as straightforward as just identifying the experience your customers expect and delivering to that goal, which is admittedly easier said than done (especially in large complex organizations).

Once you, your team, and your organization begins making decisions always with the impact of those decisions on the customer in mind, customer experience eventually becomes ingrained into everything you do. And the whole organization needs to be on board, no matter if your role is designing web pages, or ensuring back-end systems stay up, or the one keeping a tabs on a project’s progress. Everyone plays a critical role in ensuring the complete customer experience is one that is optimized, and not just a few parts of the experience. There’s obviously a lot more detail involved that could be explained further, but for my simplistic mind, as long as I focus on the above, and where I have the opportunity and ability to influence others, my organization will keep progressing and improving our ability to deliver on customer expectations and more.

Found the below JibJab link via a Techcrunch post. Lots of fun :-D.

So I just got back from a week (9 days in all) vacationing along the Amalfi coast and Naples area in Italy (see below map). The Amalfi coast, which is part of the larger Sorrento Peninsula, is absolutely gorgeous. The jagged cliffs and views into the Gulf of Salerno were just stunning. The small, secluded sea-side villages (see above picture of Positano) that dotted all around the peninsula provided scenes of life that is not much different from 100 years earlier. Even with all of this natural beauty, I came back to London with the feeling that I was trying to be ripped off at every opportunity (a bit exaggerated, yes, but my feeling).

It started with the taxi drive taking us from our hotel in Naples to the main train station to pick up our rental car. The final bill was €9.20, but after taking my €20 bill, I had to mention the change he still owed me. I got a 5 note and a smile. I mentioned again, but some Italian that I unfortunately did not understand returned with a shrug of his shoulders, and rather than fight, I wanted to continue my happy vacation and just left him be with his 50%+ tip. The second occurrence was at a small grocery store that felt the need to tell me the €0.65 cent marking on the shelf did not apply to the coke I had, which was actually 1. The third at a pizza restaurant that found me €3 change instead of €4 when I gave a €10 note for a basic pizza. The fourth involved our B&B hosts and again with change owed.

The fifth, although not involving money, came from some smart-mouth kid who mouthed out, and I quote “ching-chong-ching” to me while walking by me one night. I didn’t respond other than to turn my neck as he walked passed with a smirk. It’s been a while since I’ve been addressed in that manner, and to tell you the truth, I was more shocked that it had happened than anything else. I got a little mad that night, but thought even if I was presented with the situation again, I probably wouldn’t raise much of a fuss since I couldn’t even swear at him in the language he would understand, and what would that lead to at best… A childish exchange of unpleasantries? I don’t know. I suppose if I was in the US or another English speaking area, I might have responded differently. Frustrated with my inability to communicate with the locals and being repeatedly ripped off had taken its toll on me by then.

Big lesson for going to this region: If you don’t speak Italian, bring lots of small bills and change and only pay the exact amount if you can help it. Don’t even present the opportunity for any confusion on how much you think the bill should be.

To be fair, there were lots of wonderful moments as well. The mom and pop restaurant (Il Teatro) in Amalfi that we went back three times over 6 days to eat at. The extremely helpful rental car associate who gave me extra detailed driving instructions and told me to be very careful with where to park and what cities to visit. And the list goes on, but out of the 30 or so trips I’ve taken to various cities around Europe and North Africa this year, I’ve only felt less interested in returning one other time And that was when I had a short layover in Moscow at 5am. Even my two earlier trips to Italy, Cinque Terre earlier this year, and Rome/Florence two years ago were not nearly as negative per my memory, but suffice to say, I have a number of other places (e.g. Austrian Lake District, Spanish Andalucia, etc.) that I would return to before I consider Naples.

Safe travels everyone. (below: island of Capri)

Last week, I was fortunate enough to be on the invite list for our MD’s quarterly leadership team offsite. As expected at these exec gatherings, there were the usual briefings and updates, a good number of heated yet constructive debates, and some agreed-to actions to repair some of our mis-steps from the previous quarter. But rather than dive into the boring and likely nondiscloseable off-site details anyways, I wanted to write about one aspect that kept my mind pondering well into the following week: executive leadership styles.

Since moving away from small start-ups and to the inner workings of large corporation five and a half years ago, I’ve attended a significant number of leadership offsites, but this most recent one imprinted a lasting impression on me. It wasn’t the most motivational session, nor anywhere near the worst, but quite surprisingly, it was the diversity in the varying styles exemplified. In a small-ish room filled with successful execs and managers, our management team’s diversity clearly shined through. For example as we were wrapping up our two-day festivities with a closing message from our CEO, within a span of 36 hours, I had the opportunity to witness the styles of my boss (whom I interact with day to day), my boss’ boss (Managing Director, whom I interact with once every other week or so), and his boss (CEO, whom I interact with once a quarter if I’m lucky). And to each, they all had a style that was hugely unique from the others, but also distinctively unique from the previous VP’s, EVP, and MD’s that I have been witness to throughout my career.

From a hand’s on, personalized approach, to a visionary let’s change the world, and even a ‘you stink, so step up and do something because you have nothing to lose’ message were all part of the motivational speeches by our leaders. And each of the styles while refreshingly different, also delivered in motivating me to get off my middle-management butt and get back to dramatically improving our firm… To be fair, maybe I’m only now appreciating the messages that are coming out of these types of management team events, rather than my usual ‘what a waste of X days’ sentiment that I usually leave with, and that’s definitely a step in the right direction for me and the organization.

Oh, and one last thing, I was also reminded that these events are not just to get some high level leadership messages across, but also to bring together our leaders and managers to sync-up and socialize our successes and issues where opportunities to do so outside of these get-togethers are far and few in between. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to meet some of the new faces in the management team, as well as catching up with some old ones that I’d not had the opportunity to bump into in quite a while. For once, I’m looking forward to the next event and building on the positives from this one. Oh, and if I can out-perform a bit and deliver something customer impacting before the next one, I’ll be sure to chalk that up to some good leadership ;-).

(image borrowed from: http://tmgcanada.wordpress.com/2007/03/28/) 

If you haven’t read the history of how I got to this point with LA Fitness, take a look at my earlier post on how their incompetence and my laziness has dug me this hole. this morning, I received the below letter from an outfit called Trevor Munn Solicitors.

In the actual letter it states nothing except that I have an outstanding balance of £197.78. This is hilarious, as LA Fitness actually owes me (corrected: they owe NatWest £275 as NatWest has credited me that amount based on my dispute of the charges) money, not the reverse. I haven’t received any previous notifications concerning any outstanding balances and what the amount actually reflects. For all I know, this number was plucked out of thin air (which is probably where they calculate such things). There is also a weird referencing of ‘ARC’ in the letter, which I have no idea who or what that refers to. Since I have no experience with the UK legal system, I thought it would be prudent to get some legal advice at this point.

Another benefit of being a BT employee is an HR service that gives me access to quick, painless, and subsidized legal counsel. I called up and gave the lawyer (Debbie) the background to this case and she provided some key next steps for me to take.

1. When I walked away from dealing with LA Fitness after they overcharged me £275, that is called a ‘Fundamental Breach of Contract’ (Wikipedia definition) because of their ineptitude and failure to respond to my queries and charging an amount that was in gross violation of the contract terms.
2. Write a letter back to the collection agency stating the Fundamental Breach of Contract and state that if they choose to continue with legal action, then it will be strenuously defended and a counter-claim of £275 will made to recover the still outstanding amount owed by LA Fitness.
3. Call the collection agency and state that I take exception to the fact that their initial contact with me was a letter threatening legal action. The appropriate mode of contact should have been a letter inquiring why the amount was outstanding and provided me an opportunity to respond. I should also relay the same message as the letter in that the Fundamental Breach of Contract warrants the cancellation of the gym membership contract and if they proceed with legal action, it will be defended and a counter-claim made.

After writing down all of the points that the lawyer provided me, I took a deep breath and called the number quoted in the letter. I was received by a lady (Lisa M) telling me that I was outstanding two months worth of membership fees (how does that add up to £197.78?). She then began telling me what options I had in paying off the quoted amount and/or re-joining the gym. At that point, I kindly butted in and informed her of LA Fitness’ Fundamental Breach of Contract and a 60-second summary of what’s happened to date. We also figured out that the address LA Fitness passed on to them was slightly off, and I was holding supposedly their third correspondence sent, not first. I’m not sure how they can expect to send post to the wrong address and expect me to receive it ;-). I suppose it was a bit of luck that the post was accidentally delivered to me rather than the correct address.

After being taken back by the information I was throwing in her direction, she decided that it was best to hand me off to her supervisor and gave me the option of speaking to her boss. I kindly accepted and a guy (David C) came on the phone asking for my name, first line of address and birth date. I pushed back a little on the birth date part, but he insisted that was his firm’s way of verifying identity and I eventually relented so that we could progress. I restated the history of this situation, and he tried butting in here and there to incorrectly correct me. One case being my membership dues being £37.95 on his record, when it is actually £34.95. Incorrect address and monthly membership fee. I guess LA Fitness does a poor job of even passing on their customer records to their collection agency. No surprises there.

Once I finished my rant about trying to work with LA Fitness management to refund me the overcharged amounts, the guy backs off from aggressive and turns passive and tells me he’ll send back the info I have given him to his client and call me on my phone once he gets an update. I tell him, actually, if he can send it through by post, it would benefit me much more, so that I can have a running record of our interactions. He hangs up promptly eager to get off of the call. I’m about to write my response letter to the collection agency and look forward to hearing back what LA Fitness has to say. Maybe I can actually get the £275 back!

In the illustrious words of the Wu Tang Clan, the saga continues…

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been involved in a number discussions/emails on how open source plays in the enterprise space within BT, now and going forward. A couple of issues, both internal and external have bubbled up recently and I’ve luckily been getting involved because of my role on the Osmosoft team. This involvement has given me the fantastic opportunity to refresh and increase my knowledge of open source in the enterprise, which until just recently was only as deep as the basic articles in business magazines/websites that I usually read. I won’t dive into all of the messy details of our internal issues, as we’re still getting all of the background information and people involved at this point, but suffice to say, we could be doing a bit more to strengthen BT’s involvement with the open source community.

Open source in the enterprise is a fairly well covered topic with a number of magazines and websites already dedicated to the topic, so it’s safe to assume this is not new ground we’re breaking here. Far from it, we’re just catching up to many corporations who have already identified open source as a competitive advantage, with IBM being one of the best examples. BT, and our numerous research labs in Adastral Park and elsewhere, has been trialling with and implementing open source software/solutions/products for at least the past ten years if not longer. What we seem to be missing is a cohesive strategic direction for open source that spans group wide. Our CTO and Design organizations have led this area, but with the amount of energy that currently surrounds open source within BT, I would have guessed we would already have a much more formal strategic direction, rather than the existing segmented policy that differs from one line of business to another. I guess it’s about time we remedies this shortcoming…

Osmosoft and thus BT, contributes a tremendous amount to the open source projects and communities with TiddlyWiki as the obvious example and many others that I haven’t yet stumbled across. All of this is timed very well, with the addition of Osmosoft to BT, and one of our core goals being the much tighter involvement of BT and the open source community. I’m enjoying this opportunity and great learning experience to work with BT’s community surrounding open source, to identify and agree on the best way for us to embrace and interact with the wider community. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to increase the potential for and visibility of open source across BT and gain the right senior sponsorship to formalize our firm’s future and open source.

We’re still early on in the adventure, and lots of good progress and cool stuff is coming. As we make headway, I’ll be sure to share with everyone our progress.  Stay tuned for more updates!