Telstra combines all retail business units under Ballantyne

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 06 July 2011 10:00

IT Industry - Strategy

Telstra CEO, David Thodey, has announced a major restructuring of the company in move designed to "sharpen the company's focus on customers and position Telstra for industry changes including the National Broadband Network."

The biggest change is the unification of Telstra's entire sales and retail customer service workforce - from those serving the largest enterprises to the individual consumer - into a single business unit, from 1 August.

The new division, Telstra Customer Sales & Service, will be headed by Gordon Ballantyne as chief customer officer. Ballantyne - a former vice president of HP's Personal Systems Group in the UK - joined Telstra in June 2010 as group managing director (GMD) of Telstra Consumer and Channels.

He will be responsible for sales and service to all segments including consumer, business, enterprise and government customers. The heads of Telstra's current customer facing units - Business and Enterprise And Government - will report to Ballantyne and will be members of the extended CEO leadership team.

According to Thodey the new unit "will enable us to work as one team to serve our customers better, win in the market and become more efficient as we prepare for the National Broadband Network." Mr Thodey said.

To support of the new Customer Sales & Service unit, the company's marketing functions will be centralised under chief marketing officer, Mark Buckman.

Telstra says it will also "centralise key internal business support functions that do not directly serve customers, clarifying accountabilities and freeing-up customer-facing teams to provide outstanding customer service.

Also, Telstra veteran Stuart Lee has been appointed as group managing director, Telstra Wholesale. The present head of Telstra Wholesale is Glenn Osborne who has been acting in the role since early 2010.

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