Carl Robertson, CMO for Colt Networks, talks to Marketingmoves about being a CMO in this very competitive economy.
About Colt
Colt is Europe’s information delivery platform, enabling its customers to share, process and store their vital business information, providing major organisations, midsize businesses and wholesale customers with a powerful resource that combines network and IT infrastructure with expertise in IT managed services, networking and communication solutions.
Colt operates a 21-country, 35,000km network that includes metropolitan area networks in 39 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 18,000 buildings and 19 Colt data centres.
About Carl Robertson
Carl Robertson was appointed Chief Marketing Officer, in January 2010. In addition to the CMO role Carl is also responsible for CES Marketing, effective from January 2011. Carl joined Colt in October 2007 as Director of Marketing and Product for the SME Division and was responsible for establishing Colt as a leading provider of advanced ICT services to SMEs across Europe. Key responsibilities included transforming the partner community and developing a new digital channel to market. Carl moved to Colt from Orange where he held a number of senior sales and marketing positions covering the residential, SME and MNC markets. As Director of Marketing and Sales programmes at Orange Business Services he was responsible for driving the services transformation. Carl also held positions at Equant, including Head of Global Sales Strategy and Director of Global Product Marketing. Carl is based in Paris.
(Sandra Malone , Marketingmoves Director of Marketing, interviewed Carl)
SM: Hello Carl. Tell us what a Chief Marketing Officer at Colt is actually responsible for-
CR: Hi Sandra. We have 120 people in our marketing organisation, so first and foremost, I’m responsible for our marketing people as individuals conributing to our company, and then, their actual work. A CMO is responsible for real end-to-end marketing, so marketing that encompasses the customer experience, raising awareness of what we have to offer in the market place; Brand and Communications, Press and Analyst work; the P&L for 3 Solutions (Managed Networks, Unified Comms and IT Technology Marketing); Services Design and Business Strategy and Marketing.
SM: Wow! No kitchen sink?!
CR: Not really!
SM: Carl, in the recent IBM CMO study from ‘Stretched to Strengthened’, IBM had F2F conversations with more than 1700 CMOs worldwide. The results of the survey saw 4 challenges as pervasive: the data explosion, social media proliferation of channels and devces and shifting demographics. What are your thoughts on those challenges?
CR: I participated in that survey. We’ve just hosted a round table of 15 CIO’s discussing many of these topics. CIO’s are pretty stressed out because they need to transform themselves from simply managing IT infrastructure to delivering their IT as a service. The Harvard Business Review asked the question- “What does the ‘I’ in CIO mean?” It used to mean Infrastructure and it needs to move on the continuum to Information, Innovation and Intelligence. A CIO’s legacy is that they have spent 80% of their time on infrastructure. They agree they need to add value and understand the risks between the business and their internal capabilities.
SM: Your LinkedIn profile talks about your successful introduction of innovative sales and marketing techniques, can you give us some examples of what that means?
CR: I suppose its all around knowing how and when to add value. It’s about understanding the risks that businesses are experiencing and delivering a partnership model to ease the huge transformation that businesses must experience to be successfil and to survive. There are two types of innovation: The ‘Big Bang’ or small little innovations’ , so for example, launching a digital e-commerce portal for SME’s makes a huge difference to a large number of customers.
SM: Your career has spanned residential, SME and multi-nationals, taking multi-nationals, in your opinion, how have you see marketing change to address this market?
CR: That question brings to mind what I call ‘Speed Boat Methodology’ – traditionally, a company would develop products, build a team to sell them and then make a lot of waves and noise to get the market to be interested- it wasn’t a customer driven market. In today’s market, and in order to drive the cloud portfolio, we will launch releases that meet customer needs, not products. Our developers are now with customers every two or three days, so there is real customer integration with development – that’s what’s changed.
SM: Marketingmoves recruits marketing staff to support the IT industry. Can you give us your view on what a marketing candidate of today would need to do to impress you?
CR: They would need to demonstrate a deep understanding of what drives a customer and their business-what are the risks the customer faces and how can technology alleviate some of those risks? Our marketing people are closer than ever to the customer and launching propositions are today, more collaborative than ever. Knowing the financials of both marketing and the customers business is crucial – so is being able to demonstrate what value marketing has added to the equation. Speed, agility, flexibility and enthusiasm count for a lot.
SM: Carl, thanks very much for your time.
