BT Wholesale
2001
Better morale, better performance
BT Wholesale is at the heart of the liberalisation and technological frontier of telecoms. Yet back in 2001, BT Wholesale was seen as the least exciting part of BT, with BT Retail serving end-customers, and BT Openworld pioneering in the internet world. A low self-image, poor morale and mistrust of the organisation started to affect the performance of the company. BT Wholesale needed therefore to signal change – big change.
No BT wholesale, no economy
Wolff Olins helped the organisation rediscover its sense of purpose, summed up as the ‘right to communicate’. BT tended to talk about its achievements in raw numbers and not about how vital it is to the economy of Britain. It links cash points to the banks, the banks to the supermarkets. Its network controls the traffic lights. It ensures that the whole of the NHS and every school in the country are wired up and that Orange customers can talk to Vodafone customers. No BT Wholesale, no economy. The organisation would champion the whole idea, believing that there’s no such thing as too much communication.
A shared idea
BT Wholesale is now an organisation with a new energy. Now, everyone in BT Wholesale is contributing to a shared idea–‘the right to communicate’ – and understanding of the BT Wholesale strategy soared in year one from 34% to 89% of employees
