Peter Tebbutt, incoming Country Sales Director for UK&I at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, has wasted no time in driving forward with an invigorated strategy that includes seamless teamwork, the development of key target markets and the selective onboarding of new partners while continuing to invest in existing channels.
To say that Tebbutt relishes a challenge would be to greatly understate his bias towards setting ambitious personal objectives and realising his targets, which include three triathlons this year, plus helping to raise £12,000 for Marie Curie Cancer Research by organising and taking part in a two-day 170 mile charity cycle ride. "On a personal level it's about the strong relations and support I have with the teams around me," he commented. "Driving a team culture and having open and honest relations is what gives me a buzz."
Known within Alcatel-Lucent as someone who embraces challenges and does not baulk at opportunities, Tebbutt became the obvious choice for an EMEA role two years ago before taking up a global position last year. "Alcatel-Lucent rewards people who are willing to challenge themselves," he stated. "My previous experience as Global Strategic Business Development Director for Network Infrastructure has allowed me to see many examples globally of what works and what doesn't. I believe we can do more to drive our solutions with our partners and provide profitable growth for all. Already this year we have experienced success in the two key growth markets for data centre switching and converged networks, and we will build on these advances in 2014."
Contract wins of significance include data projects for Kingston University and the infrastructure for North Bristol NHS Trust's new £430 million hospital. "Customer references and case studies such as these drive our business," stated Tebbutt. "The end user wants to see and learn from the experiences of other organisations. We are winning market share in the UK and Ireland, and this is proved not only by our customer references but also in the reports of industry analysts such as Gartner and Infonetics."
According to Tebbutt, businesses and partners need to fully understand what they are buying or investing into in terms of real business value. "Brand in today's market can mislead customers from buying best in class solutions," he explained. "We have some great technology as do some of our competitors, but no one should buy anything just because it's been their tradition or because they assume they won't be fired for doing so. We aim to change this status quo with a competitive portfolio of solutions and more references in the UK&I than ever. We are working to build on our success by addressing the transformation in technology and business models."
Tebbutt is sharply focused on driving business through the channel as well as helping direct partners move to the cloud, UC and data. However, prioritising channel development and support for existing and new channels is not a volume discussion, rather an exercise based on quality and not at the expense of undermining existing partners. "We will of course be supporting our existing partners as we develop new channels," added Tebbutt. "We have a dedicated headcount to enable channel development and Alcatel-Lucent has invested 100,000 euro in a new Maidenhead-based demonstration facility for partners. We're seeing a distinct correlation between customer success and opportunity by showing the UC user experience."
One of the biggest challenges will be supporting channels and driving business as organisations migrate to a mobile enterprise model, noted Tebbutt. "We have to be flexible and offer our partners and customers solutions that enable them to meet and address this transformation, focusing on the user experience and making cloud services personal," he said.
Driving success in SMB is another key goal and Tebbutt has been busy visiting partners to talk about Alcatel-Lucent's new SMB cloud proposition which, he claims, offers an opportunity over and above just being a white label reseller. "Most importantly our proposition will give partners the opportunity to make more margin, revenue and differentiate in the market, versus the vanilla hosted services being deployed today," he said.
Tebbutt's clear view extends to a vision of UC that goes beyond the desktop to address the full mobile enterprise. "We have strong references including health, government, education, transport and hospitality and will invest in partners who want to drive profitable business forward," he added. "We will leverage our value proposition for Unified Communications and unified access and make sure our customers are fully aware of our strong position; and we will increase our direct touch activity into the key verticals we have identified to drive incremental business."
The word 'we' features heavily in Tebbutt's conversation, a trait that epitomises the high value he places on people working together as one unit towards a common goal. "The culture that I nurture is based on teamwork, open and honest communications and clear rules of engagement with our channels," he said. "We want to sell our full portfolio and solution set to end users via our channel. Communication is key and rewarding success is a priority. Everyone is accountable for their part of the business and we support each other, focusing on the methods that work and repeating successes." •