Better on BT: Building the rock-solid foundations for Business

How BT is playing to its strengths to deliver for business customers and for the UK economy.

On 1 April 2023 we brought BT Group’s Enterprise and Global units together to create a single focused division serving business customers in the UK and internationally.

As a unified unit under the BT brand, we connect more than one million organisations, in around 180 countries worldwide. We run the fixed and mobile networks that cover 99% of the UK’s non-residential premises, underpin critical national infrastructure and public services and enable trade. We support more than three million more end-users through our UK wholesale operations. And internationally, we work with some of the biggest global brands and governments.

The last few months have seen our 24,000-strong team of colleagues come together to create better outcomes for our business customers. Today, I’m pleased to share a strategy that will see us build on BT’s rock-solid digital foundation to help businesses and the economy thrive.

Better Focus

Our strategy for Business is about focus. Focusing on the problems we know our customers need us to solve for them, now. And being ready for the problems customers will face in the future – from riding the AI wave to achieving Net Zero.

Because today every business is a digital business. Whether it’s a small shop taking mobile payments, a manufacturer using robotics on the factory floor or a multinational connecting people and customers across the globe, connectivity is the lifeblood of commerce.

Our customers expect us to deliver the rock-solid digital foundation on which to build their businesses, because they need stability, security and skills as the bedrock of their future growth.

1.  We’re doubling down on our core platforms: the fixed, mobile and converged networks that carry our customer’s voice and data allowing them to perform at their best
2. We’ll do fewer things, better: a smaller, but highly scalable portfolio built around customer outcomes with roughly half the number of product variants within five years
3. We’ll partner where others are better: we’re concentrating on the things we’re best at. For everything else we partner – collaborating where we know partner solutions simply work better on BT for customers.

We have simplified our portfolio into three core areas:

• Digital infrastructure: We’re investing in the fixed, mobile and multi-cloud networks to handle more connections and data in a secure, sustainable and scalable way
• Digital work: In a world of flexible working, we’ll connect people to the tools they need to collaborate securely wherever they are
• Digital services: From cyber security to the cloud, we’ll make the digital part of business easy for our customers.

Better outcomes

The success of our strategy will be defined by the quality of customer outcomes. And that quality will be defined by the performance of our stable, secure, sustainable networks – and the services that run over them. This is also where partnerships matter, so we’re working with the best in the business to help customers stay competitive in an increasingly complex digital world.

Our first step on this journey is to unveil our brand-new Global Fabric network. This is an entirely new type of network that will make it much easier and quicker for businesses to connect employees, customers and devices to multiple clouds – the clouds that host their ever-increasing workloads. This network-as-a-service will offer “pay-as-you-use” rather than lengthy fixed-term contracts. With legacy networks, setting up new connectivity could take weeks, while with Global Fabric, it happens in an instant. It will help customers innovate at pace and do so more sustainably. We estimate Global Fabric will use 79% less electricity than current international networks, helping customers reduce their Scope 3 emissions.

Better tomorrow

A big part of solving customers’ problems and delivering better outcomes is looking to the future. We’ve built the Business strategy around our shared BT Group purpose: We connect for good.

This means we’re using our products and our services to help customers lay the foundations for sustainable growth, even as their digital footprint increases. We’re empowering them with digital skills training and we’re developing tools to help them save a collective 60 million tonnes of CO₂ by the end of the decade.

Ultimately, when it comes to sustainability, we’re working to make sure tech is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

From planning to action

Now we’ve got our focus, it’s all about execution. With our people, networks and tech ready to deliver – we believe business is better on BT.