Global Crossing Reorganization Puts More Muscle Behind Customer Experience Initiative

As strategies go, “long-term mutual value” seems like a pretty good one. That’s the ultimate goal of Global Crossing’s latest corporate reorganization. It builds on a theme with which the company came early to the party: focusing on the customer experience.

The reorganization, not to be confused with the restructuring the company went through earlier in the decade, was designed to change the way Global Crossing operates and give it less of a global, corporate mindset and more of a regional, customer-facing focus. In fact, the company will be organized into customer-facing units.

Global Crossing's Anthony Christie

"Organizational structure changes are never terribly interesting, but the reasons for them can be,” said Anthony Christie, who became a combination CTO/CIO with the reorg. Below are Christie’s thoughts on the reasons for and results of his company’s structural changes.

“We had a global, functional organization, so in one way shape or form all roads led to corporate. We had a global head of sales, a global head of HR, of service delivery, of access management. But because of organic growth and acquisitions and shifting customer requirements, we began to migrate toward a more regional focus about two years ago. About three months ago, we formalized that with the creation of customer-facing units (CFUs.).

“We wanted to get even closer to the customer. But we had to do it while maintaining the value proposition of a global business. And because we aren’t a big-branded carrier, we need to work hard at providing a different experience.

“So we created CFUs, and within these units are three things: sales and support, access management and service delivery. We retain our global value proposition and our connective tissue between the regions by maintaining a half-dozen global functions, including architecture, global products, human resources, branding, finance and my group with technology platforms, IT systems and processes — we took IT out of operations and engineering, created the CTO function and put it together with IT and customer experience.

“Over the past three years we have been very focused on profitability, streamlining the operations and limiting our offer set and not being profligate with it. As a result, there are a number of key technologies we need to formulate positions on that will be generally available three years out. Those technologies include cloud services, virtualization, unified collaboration, mobility and subtending IT enablers. It is time to do that consistently with this move toward customer-facing units.