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More than ever, ICT has become the innovative enabler that can increase a company’s competitiveness. At the same time, it remains important never to stand still and to keep looking for new opportunities, facilitated by ICT. That applies as much for Belgacom as for its customers.

“It is very important to be proactive,” points out Michel De Coster, Executive Vice President of the Enterprise Business Unit (EBU) at Belgacom.” In that regard, close communication with the client is of crucial importance. That is the great challenge for Belgacom. We have to talk more with our customers. We have to listen to their needs and concretely respond to them with innovative solutions. Often, our customers come up with good ideas themselves.”
The EBU’s clients range from independent workers to SMEs and large companies, each with their own specific ICT needs. The Belgacom Group markets the ICT solutions from the EBU under the brand names of Belgacom, Proximus and Telindus, primarily in the Belgian market, but also internationally. With revenues up to €2.7 billion, the EBU is the largest division of the Belgacom Group. 

Network and communication are at the core

“We are noticing an increasing need among our clients for end-to-end integrated IT and TC services, driven by IP,” observes Michel De Coster. “That is why we are allowing the EBU to evolve towards an integrated ICT business model. We are focusing on network centric, platform driven and end-to-end network solutions based on unified communications.” 

This means that IT is playing an increasingly important role within the portfolio of solutions offered by the EBU, as are Mobile Data and International Connectivity. “One of the challenges for 2009 is going to be allowing the EBU to continue to grow. To some extent, that will happen organically but we also want to zero in on selective, non-organic growth opportunities. A takeover can be worthwhile in cases where it would accelerate the materialiation of our strategy, increase our geographical coverage or expand our portfolio in a meaningful way.” At the same time the EBU is moving full steam ahead with network and communication services. 

United we stand

For those services that are not among the core activities, the EBU aims to collaborate with various pure IT players, for projects including intensive system and application integration at the customer’s site, concrete application development and business consulting. “In order to continue to grow, we are going to have to develop new businesses in ‘adjacent’ markets,” continues Michel De Coster. “I’m talking about markets where we could gain a certain leverage through our existing assets, which would allow us to assume a prominent position in these markets as well.” 

There are plenty of concrete examples. “We are pursuing opportunities in areas such as mobile payment for parking fees and public transport fares, solutions for smart metering for utilities, solutions for road charging and e-health.” 

A key enabler of the EBU growth strategy is to achieve standardization and automation of its processes and services. The resulting service delivery model should help optimize customer services. “We want to maintain a good balance between custom solutions on one hand, and solutions based on standardized components, on the other.”

Differentiated approach

Products and services designed to improve communication and collaboration within companies remain the cornerstone of the EBU’s range. “In order to maintain their competitive edge, companies are looking for tools to boost the efficiency and productivity of their employees. These are tools that can support the internal communication between coworkers as well as the collaboration with clients, suppliers and other partners.” In Belgium, the EBU wants to become the preferred provider and sourcing partner for network-centric ICT solutions, with a differentiated approach per market segment, from the Small & Medium sized to the Corporate Enterprises segment. 

“Becoming the leader in network-centric ICT will also allow the EBU to better position itself as the best-of-breed partner to cover the network and infrastructure part of outsourcing deals in the future.” In addition, the EBU intends to make integrated business applications possible by hosting, mobilizing and modernizing them. This will enable ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to offer their business applications on the basis of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. “We will develop an innovative eco-system of partners for application service delivery, in a project or hosting mode, or in any imaginable combination of the two.”

Convergence

Convergence is extremely important for the EBU strategy. “Our competitive advantage is in our capacity to integrate ICT solutions both commercially and technically,” explains Michel De Coster. “We can offer a fully integrated range, including voice & data, fixed & mobile, IT & TC and media.” Moreover, Belgacom Explore functions as the single converged connectivity platform that grants our clients access to all of the network-based services & applications. “Belgacom Explore is the reference platform of enterprised converged communication. It guarantees our clients seamless access – in real time – to multiple fixed, mobile voice, data, ICT and media applications.” 

This entails that along the way, the current portfolio of products that have been developed independently of one another, will need to evolve towards a fully converged package of ICT solutions. Clients need to be able to access these applications through any channel, along with the accompanying end-to-end security and high quality service. “Convergence also means that there needs to be one single point of contact for the customer, with a single contract and a single service level agreement.” During the transition phase towards these fully convergent services, Belgacom will be offering a single applications platform, featuring all of the services that our clients need today to set up the ‘Office of the Future’. “Our clients can access these applications through Explore or internet. They pay either a flat fee or an amount per transaction and per user. This way, mobility is completely integrated.”

Western European player

Michel De Coster divides the activities of the Belgacom group into four areas. These are the four pillars that form the company’s foundation. “With landline telephony (Belgacom), mobile telephony (Proximus), and integration (Telindus), we already play a leadership role in the market. I see it as a major challenge to add a fourth pillar to that in the fairly short-term by developing our international activities. Belgacom needs to dare to think more internationally.” Michel De Coster dreams of being a player in the Western European market. “For the time being, that is our boundary. It is also a realistic ambition. We are well aware that we mustn’t go trying to turn Belgacom into a worldwide player right away.” 

In the first place, the EBU will be concentrating on six countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, the UK and Spain. These markets should be able to grow organically, and ensure a commercial presence in the Europe of the nine. As a supplement to existing local strategies in the countries, the EBU will increase the amount of cross-border activities within the countries from this Western European core area. Michel De Coster: “To this end, we will offer a common set of cross-border network-centric services and solutions, in the domains of WAN, (W)LAN, Security and Unified Communications, as well as a selection of applications that we will offer and support throughout the entire Belgacom Group.” In this way, Belgacom Explore will also evolve into a European services platform. The EBU is in the process of constructing a competitive international range that builds further upon the international network of Belgacom ICS and its collaboration with strong local players in other countries.