Monday, September 03, 2012

“We serve close to 4,200 global customers out of our India centres”

Cable and Wireless (C&W) set up the first ever telegraph line between india and london in 1870. C&W worldwide’s nick lambert, managing director, global markets, reveals to B&E’s Swati Sharma why being a “Mission Critical Integrator” is extremely critical to him

B&E: Since inception 130 years ago, how has the journey been so far?
Nick Lambert(NL):
From a telegraph company to having a ringside view of the evolution of technology, we have successfully developed and deployed our business solutions within the burgeoning communications marketplace. With 500,000 route km of sub-sea cable capacity and presence in over 153 countries, our journey has been both exciting and challenging. Today, we aim to become the first choice communications integrator serving mission critical needs of large multinational telecom users. We work with large corporations, multinational companies, governments, carrier customers and resellers providing a range of high quality managed voice, data and IP based services and applications across the UK, Asia Pacific, India, Middle East & Africa, Continental Europe and North America.

B&E: What is your core strategy for such vivid expansions worldwide?
NL:
Our aim is to be a mission critical communications integrator. To achieve this goal, we are working closely with our customers and differentiating through a pragmatic customer service model that is ‘right first time’, stable, proactive and responsive. We continue to evolve a market-leading product suite of advanced network-based services and solutions for large users of telecom services, focused on our next-generation network and Multi-Service Platform technology. Furthermore, we’re looking at increasing the share of revenue generated by our strategic product set of Data, IP and application services, which attract higher margins and are in greater demand than products such as traditional voice and legacy services; and finally, and quite importantly, we continue to increase our focus on emerging markets in Asia Pacific, India, the Middle East and Africa to capitalise on increasing demand for telecommunication services.

B&E: But didn’t the slowdown hit you hard?
NL:
The recent economic meltdown compelled most organisations globally to take a long hard look at their business value chain and make new plans for the future. Spending decisions were postponed as a result. Companies started paying more attention to considerations such as Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), Return on Investments etc. Transformation projects were held back. On the brighter side, smart businesses tried to look beyond the current troubles – to the inevitable growth curve beyond. In the last four years, Cable&Wireless Worldwide has realigned its priorities to focus on delivering global network services to the largest corporate customers. We have concentrated on long term contracts and wider spread of customers across a broad array of vertical industries – financial services, manufacturing, global logistics, retail, high-technology, government, construction and telecommunications (carrier customers).