How Information Technology Transformed British Telecommunications

How Information Technology transformed British Telecommunications

Introduction

Technological advances are not just the products of scientific progress. They are created by organisational and social determinants, demand-pull. They happen because they satisfy a need, whether business or personal. Sometimes these needs are long-standing, perhaps having been dormant because no technology existed to satisfy them. They arise because of social, economic or political factors. Organisational IT is changing and IT departments increasingly see lines of business building their own fixes and applications.

Corporate IT is driven to provide architecture within which the business operates but lines of business are gaining more flexibility in terms of the applications they deploy and operate. Corporate IT has number of key drivers:

• Improving operational effectiveness through standardization, rationalization and offshoring of suppliers and infrastructures;

• Improving employee productivity. IT recognizes the need to provide flexibility and agility;

• Adhering to regulatory constraints, protecting company assets and increasing return on investment.

The paper aims to describe how British Telecommunications (BT) has transformed the way it conducts business with IT and how ICT has been the major driver behind its growth, improving operational effectives, changing work culture, providing flexibility and agility with critical analysis of benefits, inadequacies and key learnings. Applying IT approaches to its processes information is central to cost reduction, efficiency improvement and revenue generation. BT adopted new metrics to measure performance of ICT and is probably the industry leader.

BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in 170 countries. Its principal activities include provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services.

IT Strategy

BT developed an IT strategy 10 years ago based on three best practices (Rymer, 2010):

• Major business processes would be implemented on a single, modern and flexible platform.

• This platform would employ SOA to ensure it adapts to unforeseen needs.

• It would run in consolidated scalable and efficient data center of a service provider.

IT strategy alignment with Business Strategy

In 2004, BT sought to remake itself from a provider of traditional