Accountant in the fast lane

Chris Quin says Gen-I is preparing for the surge in demand for wireless Internet-protocol phone technology.

During his 15-year career with Telecom, Chris Quin has held management roles in marketing, sales, call centres and IT.

"I'm an accountant and lawyer by qualification but I don't tell many people that," he jokes.

Quin joined what was then Telecom Wellington in 1991 - "the year before there were any competitors in the market" - as a financial accountant.

For the past two years he has headed Gen-i, the IT services company Telecom bought in 2004 with Computerland.

Back then, Telecom Advanced Solutions was the house services brand, but the company realised it needed to change and grow to attack the market effectively.

That led to a merger of the three businesses under the Gen-i name.

"When we bought those organisations two years ago, part of the reason was to acquire those different cultures ... that different ways of dealing with customers from organisations that were used to computing in a very open market, who are probably a lot more proactive and a lot more innovative - and what we needed to be in the future," says Quin.

"That led to decisions like continuing to use the Gen-i brand.

"Over the past two years we've put about 60 large customers into a model whereby we've delivered their telecommunications and their IT all from one account manager in a converged or integrated way."

Some in the industry have been sceptical about the benefits of tying IT and telecommunications together; the fear being that getting both services through a single company restricts options to change suppliers and technologies down the track.

But Quin is pleased with the double-digit growth that the strategy has resulted in. Gen-i now has annual revenue of about $385 million and 1700 staff including 200 in Australia.

As evidence of its commitment to the IT&T convergence concept, Telecom announced this month it is extending the Gen-i model to its 4000 large and medium-sized "managed business customers".

"This is us saying let's take [those customers] an integrated IT&T story in terms of how they can get someone in front of them that can talk to them about the range of both IT and telecommunications and mobile services," Quin says.

Hosted services - where the service provider rather than the client manages IT infrastructure - are a key focus for Gen-i's future growth, he says.

Telecom's plans to build a "next-generation network" based around the internet-protocol technology required to deliver a raft of new services is an important enabler to offering hosted services.

"We have been investing in the platforms and the services so that we can offer more and more services by that method and we think that's the fastest-changing trend.

"In a lot of ways it's basically IT done the telco way."

Quin says the Government's unbundling decision has had less effect on Gen-i than on other parts of Telecom's business.

"These events haven't really changed our scene because for some time now people have had choices through technology rather than through regulation," he says.

"In the business market it's been possible to build your own voice-over-IP network or your own virtual private network or use the internet for many things.

"Our view has been the need to earn customers' business has not changed." Quin says Gen-i is preparing for a surge in demand for wireless internet-protocol phone technology, which is being seen as strong competition to traditional telco company services.

"We've seen this coming and said that's what customers are going to want next so we'd better be best at providing it."

Chris Quin

* Who: Group general manager of Gen-i, Telecom's ICT services subsidiary.

* Next big thing: Wireless IP voice services.

* Favourite gadget: "My new Samsung Blade [mobile phone]. It's just very cool."

* Spare time: Kart racing with his children aged six and 10. "That takes up pretty much all my spare time."

* Alternative career: Running a motor-racing team.

* Favourite sci-fi movie: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.