Partnering: greater than the sum of the parts

I entered Mobile World Congress with three things in mind – how we can demonstrate better focus by doubling down on the things we do best and partnering for the rest; how we can bring about consistently better outcomes for our customers; and how we can ensure a better tomorrow for all.

I left the event with my mind filled with the new wave of AI and digital solutions, whose potential to deliver transformational outcomes for customers opens up a whole new range of choices for companies like BT. It was clear to me that those choices would involve building relationships with key partners whose solutions would simply work better on BT.

Typically, the solutions are software-based, hosted in a cloud or across multiple clouds, and fed with data gathered from people, devices and machines across the globe. All this needs to be seamlessly connected and managed in a way that is financially and operationally efficient, addresses complexities such as cyber security, and delivers a consistent user experience everywhere, embracing the table-stakes demands for sustainability and compliance along the way.

Providing connectivity is what BT does best and is why we continue to invest and innovate with our fixed, mobile and converged networks in the UK and internationally. It’s also why we’re deepening our relationships with key vendors and technology partners — because we know their solutions will help us deliver better outcomes for customers.

Let’s take sustainability for example. It’s a top priority for customers. Not only do they want to reduce emissions directly from their own operations, they also want to reduce their supply chain – or ‘scope 3’ - emissions too. So we turned to our partner Johnson Controls who provide building management solutions to enterprises globally helping them monitor and control energy use. Sensors, controllers and other devices are deployed throughout customers’ buildings to capture data, which is processed and accessed in the cloud.

The combination of BT’s secure connectivity and Johnson Controls’ technology ensures that devices can be deployed everywhere — including traditionally poor network coverage areas like basements — to give a complete picture and control of energy use. This helps customers reduce their carbon emissions and energy costs — and supports Johnson Controls in delivering an excellent service.

We’re also partnering with Cisco to ensure Global Fabric, our new network-as-a-service (NaaS), uses the latest, most efficient network devices. As a result, it will consume 79 per cent less electricity than our existing international networks. This will help customers using our new connectivity services to reduce their scope 3 emissions.

We’re partnering in other areas too. In banking and security, we’ve been working with HSBC, AWS and Toshiba to pioneer quantum secure metro networks for secure connectivity to the cloud. In customer contact, we’re partnering with ServiceNow to combine its leading workflow management with a cloud contact centre and BT’s global voice network to remove complexity when digitally transforming customer service. We’ve already deployed this for UNHCR to support Ukrainian refugees, delivering on our purpose to ‘connect for good’.

And we’re continuing to innovate in our strategic partnership with Microsoft. By combining EE connectivity — the UK’s best mobile network — with Microsoft Teams, we’re making collaboration on the go easier and more secure with Teams Phone Mobile. In fact, BT is the first UK partner for Teams Phone Mobile.

Our partners help us deliver ever-better services to our customers, just as we deliver the rock-foundation that enables their digital future. MWC has taught me that with the range of AI and digital solutions in development, effective partnerships are the very best way of getting innovations to market quicker. With the pace of change we’re experiencing across the market, partnership is key allowing us to go to market faster than competitors with solutions that are simply greater than the sum of their parts.