ITWire

Optus said: "The majority of these roles will come from senior and middle management as well as operations, back office and support functions...Minimal customer facing staff will be directly affected."

Optus said the changes would give customers a stronger voice by creating "a customer division responsible for managing all aspects of Optus' relationship with its customers throughout the lifetime of their service."

"We have combined those and under that created three divisions under it: Marketing Sales and Customer," Optus corporate affairs manager, Liz Greene, told iTWire. "Mike Smith is heading marketing, Rohan Ganeson sales and Vicki Brady Customer.

"In addition we are centralising a lot of shared services: commercial and finance functions, and areas of HR and strategy. Before each business unit would have had its own functions."

She added that Optus Wholesale and Satellite would be relatively unchanged, but both would lose staff and their commercial, finance HR and strategy functions would also be centralised.

She declined to provide any indication of how the 750 redundancies would be distributed, saying: "These redundancies are just proposed at this stage. Most will take place in May and June and some in the second half of the year."

According to Ovum research director, David Kennedy the changes were essential. "Centralisation of sales, marketing and customer relations will provide the whole-of-company view Optus needs to manage its customer base more effectively," he said.

"The loss of positions is a necessary evil; as the industry becomes more competitive and revenue growth slows, cost control is essential. The alternative is for competitiveness, revenue and market share to erode.

"Optus' announcement is in line with industry trends to put the customer relationship front and centre in business decision-making. The restructure makes a lot of sense in a market where customer service will be a key medium-term differentiator in the Australian market."

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