NTT has amalgamated 28 (now 31 since it completed the acquisition of three more companies) under the NTT Ltd brand. But what does this mean in terms of how it is going to market?
Firstly, the company is ambitious – aiming to grow at double the market average. But it believes there are ample growth opportunities for it to exploit. It has plenty of land banked to build more data center space; it sees considerable opportunity simply from getting better at cross-selling to its existing customers; and it perceives that the market now wants a one-stop shop, which it believes with its broad data-comms-apps-security portfolio it can deliver.
Refreshingly, it is honest about its challenges and admits it won’t all be plain sailing to meet its ambitious targets, but it does have a lot in its favour.
It has acquired well and often, albeit resulting in a complex and somewhat confusing portfolio that has actually stood in the way of its ability to optimise growth at times. But there are plenty of solid assets in there for it to sort through as it pursues simplification and consistency of experience and pricing, in order to meet the needs of its large enterprise customers.
Where once enterprises bought familiar brands, now they buy connected experiences – making it less valuable to retain legacy names and more powerful to create a properly integrated global portfolio. Where once enterprises shied away from becoming too dependent on a single brand, now they seek to have far fewer throats to choke.
Although NTT is already performing better than many of its rivals in terms of cross-selling, achieving 1.75 sales per enterprise customer, it knows that it can do better. Really collaborating with its customers, and removing any internal barriers from doing so, may be challenging but is possible.
Interestingly, the rebrand places a strong focus on employees and the role they will play going forward. The company says that its customers perceive its employees to be a major asset. The trick will be to hold onto the best of them during the inevitable re-organisation. That said, not all are staying, but the company has been quick to explain that it will be removing duplicated internal back office staff across its businesses, and not vital customer support staff or R&D.
Ultimately though the test for NTT, as it acknowledges, is to continue a switch that started 6 years ago, from tirelessly pursuing new business to patiently upselling and cross-selling to its existing clients.
“We don’t really need to go out there and hunt for new clients. What we do need to do is bring our [full] capability to those clients. If we can take this much broader value proposition to this client base, it’s a huge opportunity.”
Jason Goodall, CEO, NTT Ltd
For more details see the attached PowerPoint presentation which contains key data and details about the reorganisation.