Vodafone Group has announced the creation of a new Group Enterprise unit, effective from 1 January 2013. Nick Jeffery, currently CEO of Cable & Wireless Worldwide (“CWW”), will be appointed Group Enterprise Director responsible for the new unit. The new unit will have four vertical teams, Global Enterprise, Carrier Services, Machine-to-Machine solutions and Hosting and Cloud Services.
The company has also announced it will speed up its integration of CWW into Vodafone, to meet “strong customer demand for combined products and services.”
The four new teams will be global business units with presence in 50 countries. In addition, these teams will be supported by dedicated Enterprise Channels and Sales Operations, as well as Enterprise Products and Marketing teams to provide standardised processes, tools, platforms and products across the Enterprise unit.
Vodafone said that following its acquisition of CWW in July 2012, it has decided to accelerate the CWW integration process ahead of its original schedule. As a consequence of this acceleration, from 1 January 2013 it will start the merger process of the following activities:
- CWW’s UK-based enterprise businesses with Vodafone’s UK-based enterprise businesses
- CWW’s international businesses, Carrier Services, Hosting and Cloud Services, and product activity with our newly created Group Enterprise unit
- CWW’s Customer Service with Vodafone UK’s Customer Operations
- CWW’s Finance, Human Resources, and Legal and Regulatory activity with those of Vodafone UK
- CWW Technology with Group Technology
The company said in a statement, “The creation of a Group Enterprise unit and acceleration of CWW’s integration will allow us to build on our strength in the Enterprise segment. As announced in September 2012, we expect to incur cumulative integration costs of approximately £500 million by March 2016. This is expected to deliver cash flow synergies of £150 million to £200 million per annum by March 2016, resulting in operating free cash flow for the Group in that year of £250 million to £300 million from the acquisition.”