BT boss's pledge for Shropshire centre
The new boss of one of BT's operations in Shropshire has said he aims to grow the business and create jobs in the county.
Jamie Ford, the former boss of Plusnet who oversaw the Yorkshire-based broadband provider's growth to become a national contender in the market, has now taken over as managing director at BT's Business Solutions arm.
It is a part of the company that employs around 120 of the total of 440 people in the two buildings at the Oswestry site, which combine with the 380 people at Shrewsbury and more around the county at exchanges to make BT a significant employer for Shropshire.
And Mr Ford said the ongoing success of the business could lead to additional jobs coming the way of Whittington House, the high-tech headquarters at Park Hall on the edge of town.
He said: "When I was CEO of Plusnet we grew the business a lot and one of the most exciting parts about that is creating opportunities and creating jobs.
"We have huge scale within BT. If we can find the right way to sell IT solutions we can grow the business and hopefully create jobs. We have the capacity here in terms of buildings to grow our managed services capability quite nicely."
BT Retail split into two separate businesses, BT Consumer and BT Business, last year, with BT Business Solutions emerging as a key part of the business segment of the communications giant.
The company has around 900,000 small business customers, around 9,000 corporate clients and works with around half of the FTSE 350 companies. It delivers one sixth of BT's total turnover.
"The idea is we can deliver many of the IT services businesses need, whether smaller or working from home to the corporate size, delivering everything from data centres, IT helpdesks, and linking back to BT products and services such as networks, telephones, and fibre broadband," Mr Ford, who si currently travelling between the different sites within the business, added.
