Q. As the newly appointed CEO of Colt, what areas of the business will you be focusing on first?
The past five years at Colt have been incredibly transformative. From investing in our high bandwidth backbone - the Colt IQ Network - to being an early adopter of software-defined and on-demand technology. Colt’s focus on these areas isn’t going to change, however for me, what I’m really looking to do is to dig deeper into the overall customer experience and drive forward strategy with this focus.
Q. How does this appointment build on the role of CCO, which you held from 2018?
Although CCO and CEO are very different jobs, both have employees and customers at the front and centre of them. My role as CCO centred around ensuring that as an organisation, we were aligned to the market and therefore were supporting our customers. As CEO, this alignment doesn’t change; it just requires bringing the broader organisation together and ensuring Colt is focused on the market and how we can best serve it.
Q. As somebody with extensive experience driving teams, how will you look to build on Colt’s culture and success in different markets?
We have a fantastic culture within Colt, so I definitely have an excellent foundation to build upon. In terms of my first task in the role; for me, I go back to learning. I will be doing a significant amount of active listening and learning so that I can help make the critical decisions required to enable Colt to thrive 10+ years from now. This will, of course, differ from market to market, but this is why listening is so important. I want to hear from all of those who interact with us; staff, customers and suppliers globally to learn more about what we can do better and what we can do differently. Colt’s expansion road map in particular, but also product set, has always been informed by demand, so I believe our success moving forward will be underpinned by how well we listen – to our people, our customers, and all those that interact with us.
Q. When it comes to the customer experience, how has the role of connectivity providers changed, and how has Colt leveraged on this?
The last few months have really shown the essential nature of connectivity. Connectivity has kept businesses and societies running; it’s truly changed the way the world operates. However, with this responsibility comes the increased importance of customer experience. Our customers over the past few months have put their businesses in our hands. We haven’t simply been a provider, we have been a partner working as quickly as we can to provision new services or to dial-up their bandwidth so that they can handle the new normal. In terms of leveraging this, Colt has always put the customer at the forefront of what we do. However, this time for us further cements our strategy of high bandwidth networking and investing in new and emerging technologies, because we have now seen first-hand the value in having a network that is built to adapt and change to our customers requirements.
Q. How do you see Colt’s role in the data and communications industry growing?
The next phase of growth for Colt will be in next-wave technologies and also expanding on our role within the wider technological ecosystem. The technologies that are going to transform our industry, such as Blockchain, Edge and AI, these all need a dense, agile, high bandwidth network to power them and we’re excited to see how this next decade will really change the face of our industry in more ways than one.
