Hillarys ditches BT for Virgin Media citing high prices and poor service

BT's failings laid bare by flagship customer Hillarys defecting over quote 'twice the price' of Virgin and poor service

British blind and shutter manufacturer Hillarys is to move its networking and mobile communications from BT to Virgin Media after BT's quote came in at twice the price of Virgin Media's - while service has declined in recent years after a decade or so that Hillarys has been a BT customer, according to Julian Bond, Hillarys' head of ICT.

At its high point, the partnership was worth more than £1m every year to BT.

Bond believes that BT's service has worsened over the past decade due to the loss of experienced engineers at BT, the consolidation of service centres and an inability of BT's legacy systems to fulfil customer needs.

Speaking to Computing at last week's SAP User Conference, Bond was also annoyed with BT over its approach to the tender, which suggested that the telecoms giant was taking Hillarys' continued business for granted.

"From being a strong business 'champion' and external advocate for BT, we are now about to move to only taking ‘calls and line' from them - and even that is under some threat from innovative new technology," warned Bond. "There are a whole pile of reasons for the move," he added.

Hillarys' new networking contract will include diverse-routed wired connections into its head office and factory complex in Nottingham, wide area networking (WAN) connecting its various sites, including its Washington, Tyne and Wear manufacturing facility, as well as mobile connectivity for its sales advisers working in the field and managed security services.

"We've moved to Virgin Media for internet/site links and mobile, with co-managed, unified threat management as part of the deal," said Bond.

BT's quote not only came in at twice the price of Virgin Media's, he added, but Virgin Media was also able to procure the second network connection via BT itself - providing a genuinely separate connection in case of any problems on Virgin Media's own network.

Bond believes that BT is not only struggling to pull together its various legacy systems into a coherent service to customers - one that a previous account director was skilled enough to keep from affecting service - but that as a long-time customer Hillarys has been taken for granted by the telecoms giant.

"It's ridiculous," said Bond. "BT will always try to maximise its margin and I think that there's an element that they see us as an incumbent. And not as an incumbent to be looked after, but an incumbent to be fleeced."

On top of that, BT's service in some key areas has declined markedly over recent years, he added, partly as a result of deep cost-cutting, and partly because of the glut of retirements of experienced and knowledgeable engineers - with too few of comparable quality coming through to replace them.

"There's a bulge in the age demographic of their field-based engineers who are opting for early retirement, leaving a real skills gap locally. But also, whereas when we first signed the contract we had all local guys, now when we call them out there'll be somebody coming up from Oxford. We're waiting for three hours just for them to drive here. In stripping out costs, BT has also stripped out support," said Bond.

The management of BT Mobile, as well, has not impressed Bond, with the inadequacies of BT's legacy billing platforms laid bare when Hillarys was hit by a "bill shock" one month.

"Four users had bills of more than £1,000 in one month. We went to BT to try and find out how that had happened and they said, 'We can't tell you - it's the Data Protection Act'," said Bond. The best itemised billing that BT could provide was, "Data - you've used a lot!", said Bond.

"We wanted more information from BT to understand and investigate the excessive costs, but they hid behind the Data Protection Act. Years later, they admitted that it wasn't the Data Protection Act, it was their corporate policy," said Bond. The reason for that corporate policy, believes Bond, is that BT's own systems are incapable of providing such granular billing.

Virgin Media is using the same mobile network supplier - EE - that BT has switched to, but has no problem providing detailed usage data when serious incidents need to be investigated by Hillarys. Outside of the BYOD policy in place with its nationwide field sales force, Hillarys operates a fleet of 300 corporate connections - and it is here that Hillarys needs the information to diagnose and fix any problems. One of the causes of the bill shock, said Bond, was a glitch with Microsoft Exchange that kept re-sending a rejected email with a large attachment.

"When we went out to tender, we stated that we needed the ability, when we have an issue, to drill down into our data usage," said Bond. "BT said that they couldn't do it, but that maybe when they moved onto a new platform they could offer it. Virgin said, 'We can do that; we've always been able to do that'."

Bond also wanted the flexibility in how to cap individual mobile account costs, among other services that BT was unable to provide. "They've got such a bolt-together environment of legacy billing systems that I don't think they can cope with such requests," suggested Bond.

"Virgin is giving direct access to EE's great online billing gateway with the flexibility and functionality that business managers expect. For the time being at least, BT is still hindered by its own legacy platform that 'wraps-around' its use of EE as a mobile virtual-network operator."

Bond's strategy as head of ICT at Hillarys has focused on cultivating relationships with trusted partners "rather than entertain every cold caller that manages to get past reception" so that they can build a deep understanding of the organisation and its needs, and proactively innovate in response to emerging business opportunities and threats.

"BT has been one of our key partners; since I started at Hillarys in 2006, we grew our business engagement up to a high watermark in 2013. As well as traditional ‘calls and lines', they provided our inter-site and internet connections, our mobile phones and had installed and maintained our contact centre and company telephone system," Bond told Computing.

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