With pay strikes ending, BT merges divisions to save £100m in annual costs

Just as one source of tension at BT ends, with unionized workers voting to accept the latest pay offer rather than to extend industrial action, the British telco giant is merging Global and Enterprise divisions to save costs. The former state-owned monopoly confirmed it’s bringing together the B2B units, rebranding them as BT …

[localzuk]

Gotta love management speak

"consolidation and rationalization of management teams, support functions, product portfolios and system"

Aka. "sacking people".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Gotta love management speak

Isn't that the purpose of IT? To automate and get rid of as many people as possible?

[Chris 15]

Re: Gotta love management speak

Euphemisms, surely?

Like this wonderful bit:

>>Rob Shuter, who runs BT Enterprise, will “step down from executive life and spend time with family and on his personal interests,”

Sooo... paid off to sling his hook then?

[sgt101]

Re: Gotta love management speak

Nahhh - they are all on rolling contracts, the may have chopped him as soon as the decision was in for the unit merge - which would have been months ago. He will be kept for a while to do handover and possibly some bits and bobs and then will get whatevers left of his 12mths.

Still nice money by normal lights. I expect he's on £1.5m + ?

[SIP My Drink]

Smash That Patty Mr Burger...

Make a BT Burger for us my man... Crafted from the finest ingredients of BT's Empire!

"BT Business is to be led by the wonderfully named Bas Burger"

[Elongated Muskrat]

The main rationale would seem to be “consolidation and rationalization of management teams, support functions, product portfolios and system, with annualized cost saving on £100 million” identified.

They're getting rid of one minor C-level exec?

[Potemkine!]

" B2B units, rebranding them as BT Business."

Expect big suitcases of cash for marketing and advertising companies to design a new logo, and others to update all the material linked to communication.

Reorganizations have their own vultures ecosystem.

== Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

[Anonymous Coward]

BT Group (the 'parent' company?) has just had a new logo... lots of randomly coloured, randomly placed stripes... think dodgy Freeview signal

Reminds me somewhat of the old(er) BT animated 'planet' logo that briefly demonstrated 'we work as one' by having the individual 'islands' all moving in different directions (I guess someone noticed and decided to stick with a static version shortly after)

[Eclectic Man]

Openreach

I thought Openreach had become an 'arms length' part of BT, to comply with Ofcom's requirements about treating all communications providers equally. What have I missed?

[localzuk]

Re: Openreach

"Arms Length" is only about 2 foot.

[Jurassic.Hermit]

Re: Openreach

It's a misspelling, they meant it to be 'harms length'.

[Richard 12]

Re: Openreach

By "arms length" they mean "in a headlock".

Oddly, for the last month there has been a team of "BT" fibre installers running fibre to the poles in the village, yet until last week neither BT nor Openreach claimed to be installing fibre here within the next year.

So maybe nobody has any idea what's going on at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

and no mention here or previously about the 400+ BT staff that they are "TUPE" over to TCS - hiding their legacy platforms by outsourcing it at the cost of their staff

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear. That won't end well. Please tell me HOBS isn't involved.

[Phones Sheridan]

And no mention that Plusnet are closing their business service, and are pushing their business customers to move to BT within 2 years either.

[bregister]

Give people well paid secure jobs and your C-suite bonuses over the long run will be HUGE.

More rationalisation to come in IT and the finance industries I suspect ...

[Anonymous Coward]

BT showed their exceptional judgment signing up to partner with Rackspace for cloud including TUPE of staff to Rackspace…

[Securitymoose]

73% of the ballot papers were returned

The rest lost in the post presumably. My mother still hasn’t received her birthday card posted in June.