Liberty Global

Overview

Mergers and acquisitions are a way of life in the telecommunications sector and Liberty Global is no different. This cable TV/telecoms behemoth grew rapidly, to the point where business in Europe, at the start of 2016, comprised some 12+ operating companies. Those businesses, linked with a significant backbone network across Europe, provided the group with a significant opportunity to re-structure its telecoms procurement, leveraging the group spend.

The Strategy

From early 2016, supporting Cartesian who held a portfolio of projects with the Liberty Global group in Europe, the team took the lead in helping the client manage a suite of identified savings initiatives and develop a strategy for leveraging spend to achieve greater savings. 

• Acted as Program Director for the existing savings programs, assisting by helping the teams refine their approach and ensuring that lessons learned in one group of companies, was shared and replicated in the other companies. 
• Reviewed and renegotiated existing agreement to improve the commercial terms.
• provided guidance on centralising telecoms procurement across the group, based on the logic of a ‘plan globally, act locally where needed’ philosophy.
• Led the development of a procured telecoms ‘product tree’ as part of the group’s deployment of Ariba software, to assist with procurement, supply chain management and reporting / business-intelligence information, needed to assist with key decision making. 
• Worked with the client finance team on mapping spend to the correct GL codes, so the resultant reporting was accurate and useful from both a finance and business intelligence perspective.
• Trialled the new centralised procurement model, by drafting and managing the RFP process for a new cloud-based Wholesale Voice Billing platform to be deployed across the group in Europe. This took a high degree of stakeholder management, as many of the group companies were reluctant to consider moving from their current, familiar supplier.

Knowledge & Skills

• Detailed Program Management and reporting capabilities.
• Our knowledge of procurement models relevant to large pan-European telecoms organisations.
• Practical procurement skills including understanding market rates, contract review and analysis, negotiations and the drafting for approval of final agreements.
• Strong analytical and financial skills relevant to large and complex business structures.
• The ability to define, draft and manage end-to-end Procurement RFP processes across large and conglomerate businesses.
• Our knowledge of a wide range of telecoms products including voice, data and infrastructure.

Results

• The realisation of over €8m in savings across the program managed projects.
• The relevant deployment of Ariba as a procurement tool for telecoms services.
• A road map for the implementation of a new, cloud based, Wholesale Voice Billing platform that was scaleable and flexible with respect to the need for future acquisitions and divestitures.
• A model that provided the best of centralised leverage and local procurement for telecoms.
• A complete handover of the work to the operational teams tasked with carrying it forward in the day-to-day life of the business.