| BT USA & Canada: Dream Team |
| Cover Story | |
| Written by Jill Rose | |
| Monday, 01 October 2007 | |
 Careful selection and a live-and-let-live attitude toward acquired companies are helping BT USA & Canada achieve tremendous growth.  Michael Boustridge, President Of course, buying companies is not a game, and given the M&A failure statistics in the US, it’s a difficult, risky endeavor. That’s why at BT, M&A is viewed in a unique way, said Boustridge. “Most people view M&A as a tool to support strategy. We view it as integral to the strategy,” he said. Boustridge, a native New Zealander who joined the company in April and is responsible for BT operations in the US and Canada, said he’s seen many executives make acquisitions without a strategic goal. “Anyone can purchase a company, but without a clear plan to capture the growth once you’ve done that, you don’t get the integration or the synergistic benefit,” he explained. Taking the field Two of BT’s most recent—and most strategic—purchases were security firm Counterpane in 2006 and IT consultancy INS in 2007. Boustridge said BT’s interest in the firms was based on their ability to fill customer needs. “We’re about going where our customers want to go, rather than trying to fit one of our capabilities to a customer. I think that’s the difference between BT and other large companies doing acquisitions.” In INS’s case, the need was for IT consultancy from, as Boustridge puts it, boiler room to boardroom. Before the acquisition, INS had spent several years building a knowledge management system to support its 1,000 global employees. “It’s the foundation of our business,” said David Butze, president of BT INS, located in Mountain View, Calif.  INS is organized geographically rather than by practice, Butze explained. “We put consultants within a 60-mile radius of all the major cities, and we had to make sure they had the tools they needed for consistent delivery and knowledge sharing. That supports the rapid change in technology, affording much greater flexibility and speed to market as we expand or contract our technology practice areas.” Butze said INS’s knowledge management system will eventually be rolled out company wide as a foundation for a consulting-led, collaborative environment that will bring an enormous benefit to BT’s customers. Boustridge agreed, saying that very few companies have this level of knowledge management. “We’re very lucky to leapfrog this capability with this acquisition.” The team at BT had plenty of time to investigate the value of INS’s systems during the year-long discussion and due diligence activities. A similar amount of time was spent exploring Counterpane’s business practices and assets, according to Paul Stich, president and CEO of BT Counterpane, also located in the Bay Area. “We’d been working with BT for about 15 months before the acquisition,” he said. For Counterpane, which has more than 170 large North American clients, the merger was an opportunity to not only expand into Europe, but also to join BT’s 21st Century Network project, a completely IP-based network currently being built worldwide. Stich noted that the 115-employee Counterpane division was able to close a multi-million-dollar engagement with a large Hong Kong bank about 45 days after being acquired by BT. Energizing spirit Experts agree that the most difficult part of merging companies is dealing with intangibles like company culture. Highly sensitive to this issue, BT takes a proactive approach. “The key to a successful acquisition is not to destroy the culture base of the company you’re acquiring,” said Boustridge. This is particularly important with companies like Counterpane, whose founder, Bruce Schneier, is referred to by Boustridge as the Steve Jobs of security. “It’s not a suit-and-tie type of company,” Boustridge said. Indeed, rather than try to repress the company’s entrepreneurial spirit (Counterpane was only in business for seven years before being purchased by BT), Boustridge and his team want to take advantage of it.  “We have to capture that spirit and keep it. It infuses new blood into the company and gets people going. The last thing you want to do when you buy a consultancy is to destroy the consultancy culture when you integrate it,” he explained.Business today depends on the ability to sit down with C-level executives, understand their problems, and offer solutions, Boustridge said. “Both David and Paul have organizations that can do that.” Unlike many business models, consultancies have an open culture that values providing the highest quality product or service to the customer on the customer’s schedule. BT INS is a prime example. “The hardest part for any company acquiring a business like ours is making sure the culture doesn’t get broken,” Butze said. “In our case, the field salespeople and the customer-facing components of the business have been completely left alone to work with clients and find new opportunities. There has been zero downside so far.” Stich said the usual political issues stemming from combined companies have been avoided by viewing everything from the customer’s perspective. Noting that INS had partnered with Counterpane for six years prior to the companies being bought by BT, he said the thing all three have in common is a “maniacal focus on our clients.” “We’ve been spending a lot of time with our clients, understanding what their needs are and making sure we put together the best team to serve them, rather than getting caught up in politics,” he said. In fact, groups of executives from Counterpane’s top 30 clients were brought in to meet with BT executives. Stich said the clients’ main concern was Counterpane’s ability to continue to be flexible and responsive to work with. “They said, ‘We hope that doesn’t go away,’” recalled Stich. “We told them that wouldn’t happen, and we’ve now shown them it’s true.” Not only has Counterpane been able to better serve its customers by bringing in resources from other BT divisions, said Stich, but the company’s clients are being served by the same people they were dealing with before the merger. “Nine months into this, we haven’t lost one employee,” he said. Sounds like the beginning of a dream team. |
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American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
