Verizon Business sees growth from MCI merger

16.01.2007

First is reliability and second, we hear a lot about the need for help to run the day-to-day network, both voice and data. They want it to be up, they want it available, they want it modern. So, we've moved to where we're managing the voice and data networks for about 3,500 companies. That's growth of more than 20 percent per year, which is nice growth. CIOs in many cases really want to spend their time more on how to bring technology and capabilities of IT to help the business achieve its objectives, including a lot of focus around revenue growth and customer retention. So on network management, if they are convinced we'll do a good job, they'll let us do that.

Where does Verizon Business need to improve? There's a couple of areas. We're going to invest in the business more this year than last for a couple of areas. One is continued new product development, particularly in capabilities around IP and managed services and IT services. The second one is that we need to get more efficient. We took two companies, the former MCI and the former Verizon. While we're well ahead of our targets, there's still a lot of opportunity to be more efficient. We are investing significant money in new systems. The former MCI had three or four operational support systems, the brains that allowed the business to operate. The reason for that is that they never integrated the UUNET, the MCI system and the WorldCom system. So we have a program called Single Stack to bring that down to one operational support system. It's an ERP system, and it includes the system to process orders, so there's opportunity to make it less people-intensive and more reliable. We have multiple billing systems. For the end-user customer, we do a pretty good job of doing summary statements and summary bills, but there are multiple underlying feeds. So, a great opportunity for Verizon Business is efficiency in the business.

Will you be laying off or hiring this year? Our workforce will probably stay fairly constant with where it is right now. In the first year, with the merger, we brought the work force down 10 percent, so it's more than 34,000 now for Verizon Business. We'll be adding skill sets around areas of professional services, IT and managed services, so you'll see a change in the mix of the workforce.