BT Sourced, based in Dublin, announces use of Globality AI-powered Smart Sourcing platform

BT Group is a multinational British telecommunications company and one of the world’s leading communications service providers. It is also the UK’s biggest fixed-voice and broadband provider, and offers TV and mobile services, catering for customers in 180 countries.

In February this year it announced a new standalone subsidiary procurement entity to be based in Dublin, Ireland (part of the EU) called BT Sourced. This radical shift in operations was part of a £2 billion savings effort and goal for 2025 while the company foots the cost for its major investment programmes in full fibre and 5G infrastructure. According to techradar.pro last November “Aside from the promised savings, BT believes a more streamlined, decentralized model will allow it to react more rapidly to market trends and get closer to customers.”

The organization is led by BT Group’s CPO Cyril Pourrat who explained to suppliers that BT wanted to be a company that was easy to both buy from and sell to. “As part of this modernisation programme,” he said “we plan to set up a new procurement company (or a ‘ProcureCo’) which will operate as a standalone entity from the rest of the organisation and radically change our existing procurement capability. In addition, we’ll be simplifying processes and introducing breakthrough AI-powered digital technology so we’ll truly be best in class.”

In BT’s own press release he stated: “BT Sourced will play a major role in BT’s transformation, drawing on the best technology and people to speed up and simplify the way we manage BT’s third-party spend worldwide.”

Today, Silicon Valley-headquartered tech firm Globality announced a partnership with BT Sourced to use its AI-powered Smart Sourcing platform.

“BT’s changing and so is procurement,” Pourrat said. “Digitization is the driving force for long-term growth and value to the BT customer and operating model. Partnering with Globality will help us to embrace digital technology and simplify our processes … Having immediate access to our current suppliers and Globality’s diverse global network will bring agility and new value to our teams.”

BT now uses Globality’s AI advisor, Glo, to quickly and easily source the best suppliers for consulting, marketing, IT, HR, legal and other service categories.

Joel Hyatt, co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Globality, said: “BT is revolutionizing the way it sources services in order to deliver exponential value to its stakeholders, while at the same time helping to create a more inclusive and sustainable global marketplace. I’m very proud to be partnering with Cyril and his team in unleashing the power of procurement to add value throughout BT — increasing efficiency, lowering costs, improving quality and advancing BT’s important ESG strategy.”

The move to a separate procurement entity for its internal sourcing is an interesting one for BT and follows in a similar vein to that of some other large enterprises. IBM for example has a successful shared procurement service which has become one of the biggest buying organizations in the world. Not only does it buy for itself, it offers the same service to its customers to provide business process outsourcing services. Perhaps BT in this latest move, once it proves successful, will consider offering procurement-as-a-service to its customers too. We will watch with interest.

Read the full Globality press release here.