3929 Clive Selley L

Good evening everybody and welcome to the BT Tower and welcome to a celebration event in honor of what is, I think, a truly massive, transformational success for you guys as a team and for BT as a whole. Because what we're here to celebrate this evening is the successful achievement of a really massive system separation milestone that we promised back in 2005 when we signed the undertakings with Ofcom. In that period, what you've achieved, you really need to step back and think about, because what you've achieved is the system separation of our entire retail consumer business from our Openreach business. And that's involved the migration of around 13 million customers from the old CSS systems that were absolutely entrenched inside the retail consumer system stack onto the new CCP stack. What an achievement. All fantastic. All of those customers now served off of CCP, and the interfaces between that CCP stack and the systems of Openreach all over industry-standard, industry-scale gateways.

Why does all that matter? Let's think about that clearly. What you've done is deliver on a massive commitment to Ofcom. We live here in the UK in a market that is regulated by Ofcom, and that Ofcom relationship is hugely fundamental for us. What you've done is empower us, empower particularly Liv Garfield and the regulatory team in terms of the ongoing negotiations they have with Ofcom to position BT well in the UK marketplace. Having as a backdrop to any of those negotiations the fact that you guys have delivered on the single biggest system separation promise that was core and upfront and fundamental to the undertakings positions us just so well. So please don't think that what you've done is merely a piece of systems work. What you've done is position us well with Ofcom. You've demonstrated that when we make a commitment to do something, we deliver on that commitment, no matter how large and scaled the ramifications of that commitment are.

But I guess as systems and process professionals, we should reflect on what it is we've achieved in those terms as well. And in terms of scale, it's massive. The thing that I'm most proud of as I think about what you've done is that you have delivered system separation and transformation at the same time. So you've achieved for us a double whammy, and that's really important. Because when I think now about those new consumer systems on the CCP stack, I think of the way that we can now support bundled propositions in a way that we simply couldn't do on the old system stack. So we're now able to allow John Petter and the consumer team to sell bundles of calls and lines and broadband, and by broadband I mean all of the variants: the ADSL1 variant, the ADSL2+ variants, and now of course the superfast broadband variants, both fiber to the cabinet, VDSL, and the new FTTP variants as well, with content and other value-added services like Vision. So we're now able to bundle all of those services, and that puts us into a much more competitive position in the UK consumer market. And that stack is genuinely more data-driven.

We all remember Al no and his fabled Seven Sisters. Well, actually that's no longer a fable, is it? Because it's for real now. You have really implemented a data-driven stack for Consumer which allows them to construct and reorganize and reprice propositions through data change, not through the business of software delivery. So you've made real the promise of a new level of flexibility in terms of the way we do concept to market, the way we deliver new bundles into the marketplace. You've also delivered much tighter integration with the online journeys. So if I think about CCP now, I think about the integration with bt.com, a new, easier-to-use, much faster-to-train sales interface. I think about the conversations with John Petter, he's very enthused by what that will do for his sales capability. And I think too about the integration with bt.com and the graphs that I review with Mar and Hamad that demonstrate how online transacting with our customers is ramping up very significantly. And you're doing that through reuse of the underlying capabilities of that CCP stack. So for me, the scale of your achievement is not just that you've achieved system separation, but that you have achieved the double whammy of system separation and genuine transformation for the consumer business.

And of course, CCP in a sense is only half of this story. What you've also delivered are those clear and industry-standard interfaces into the EMP stack. And I think that too is a significant achievement. We now have an EMP system there that genuinely supports to industrial scale and to industrial standards massive processing in support of LLU and WLR, our traditional services. And of course it's that same stack that you've delivered there that is now taking us into the world of superfast broadband and OpenReach ATA and all of those new services that will drive revenues for Openreach, but also expose service interfaces that enable Consumer and in fact all of the other CPS to innovate products on top of that new infrastructure. So a great job on EMP, a great job on CCP, double whammy: regulation and transformation. It's great stuff. You should stand back, chew on your BT sandwich tonight, drink a glass of wine, and puff your chests out and be proud of what you've done because it's a real, real achievement.

But of course this is BT, so the real prize for great achievement is more than just a quick sup at the top of the tower. It's that you get to think about and then tackle a new big challenge. You are the guys who have achieved system separation plus transformation for the consumer business. What I invite you to do now is repeat the trick, only in a tougher environment. The business environment we need to repeat what you have done, repeat your success please, for business customers. We have more and stretching Ofcom targets for system separation, particularly around the business community. What we've decided is that we are going to deliver on the UK Business Stack: one stack to serve BT business customers, also to serve wholesale customers, also to serve the business customers in the UK of BT Global Services. You are uniquely positioned to help accelerate that delivery program because of the lessons you have learned, many of them tough lessons, lessons learned through doing, finding issues, fixing, and embedding the learning for the future that we need to take into the business arena and leverage everything that you've learned in terms of lessons and skill sets that you've acquired along the way to help us accelerate on the delivery of UKBS.

But right now, get back to the celebration. Enjoy a glass of wine, enjoy some food, talk about the success not just to your colleagues here in the Tower today, but be proud of what you've done. Tell your colleagues across BTI, your colleagues across BT Operational, your colleagues in Consumer and the other lines of business, be proud of what you've done. And then go do it all again. It's all about being proud and celebrating what you've achieved and then demonstrating to the business that you have an appetite to do yet more tomorrow. I know you're up for that. Enjoy the evening. See you back at work next week. Thank you.