Summary
James Bird has 20 years industry experience, initially in engineering and
recently in marketing and sales, providing a valuable combination of
practical and holistic knowledge as shown by numerous papers presented at
commercial business conferences. His knowledge of the telecommunications
business and particularly the emerging field of competitive licensed
operators in Europe is both broad and comprehensive. He has moved recently
into consultancy. Most recently his role has been managing the European
sales team within Nortel's Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) group, responsible
for a '99 sales budget of $16m (US).
Present Position,
Commenced July '99
Business Consultant, Telecomms deregulation
Responsibilities Developing and contributing to the construction of
business cases used by various operators involved in the investigation and
application of telco licences in Europe. Providing technical 'due
diligence' to financial institutions involved in the funding of start up
operators in the market.
Previous Employment -
Sept. '98 to July '99
Sales and Marketing Director - Europe
Responsibilities Sales and orders responsibility for Fixed Wireless Access
(FWA) in Europe (on target to over achieve $16m '99 budget). The role has
included the building and recruitment of a team of both sales and sales
support staff to meet the budget. The role was created following the major
restructuring of the FWA division, and has involved development of new
routes to market, as well as forming new work practices with other groups
with in Nortel. Responsibilities have included the setting and monitoring
of the budget within the global organisation as well as the motivation and
target setting for the staff within the group. Sales and order forecasts
as well as cash flow, margin analysis and operating expense monitoring and
control have been within the responsibility of the role. As the one year
mark approaches, an active motivated team has been built to ensure the
business can grow substantially next year.
Jan. '97 to Sept. '98
Business Development Manager - Western Europe
Responsibilities Development of opportunities with New Licensed Operators
(NLOs) around Western Europe for the deployment of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA)
networks. This work involves the support of these NLOs at various levels,
from the creation of the business case via the development of a business
model to the selection of suitable technology solutions. Expertise in
areas such as Financial risk assessment, licence and regulatory affairs,
interconnect negotiation and technology selection has been built up. To
provide this service to the Nortel country organisations, I've been
responsible for a small team of business planners who have built up a
combination of financial tools and empirical knowledge covering the key
areas of risk and exposure experienced by companies embarking on the route
to gaining an NLO telecommunications licence in the deregulating EU
market.
Jan. '96 to Jan. '97
Marketing manager - FWA
Responsibilities Strategic positioning and marketing of the Proximity FWA
products in the deregulating European fixed wireless access market.
Recruited and run a small team, who provided the interface between the
customer facing account teams and the lines of business who provide the
product.
June '95 to Dec. '95:
Product marketing manager
Responsibilities Development of the European market for Proximity L, one
of Nortel's fixed wireless access products. Evaluating and prioritising
the likely opportunities for the product and providing direct support to
the account teams responsible for bringing in those sales. In a team of
just 2 in Europe, I had responsibility for ensuring the formal processes
need to start a new business were in place as well as running the A/B form
process for the bids.
Jan. '94 - May '95:
Channel Development
Responsibilities: Development of new channels, distributors and
territories in preparation for importation of cordless PBX (COMPANION)
products. Working with distributors to prepare them for sales and
marketing actively associated with the introduction of the new products.
July '91 - Jan. '94:
Product Manager, PCS
Responsibilities: Prime interface between the engineering function (BNR)
and the market development team. Support of existing COMPANION product and
specification of new product (DECT) and MCMO.
Sept. '90 - June '91:
Program Manager CT2 Developments.
Responsibilities: Managing a team of six engineers, developing
applications based on the primary CT2 products that STC were developing
for BT. This work split into two projects:- i. A development of telepoint
equipment for the French Pointel network on behalf of SAT ii. A proposal
to BNR Canada for the trial of CT2 plus.
Engineering responsibility
over hardware, software and budget control for the STC half of a joint
development with SAT. Interface between two sets of customers, the
internal commercial group at STC and the external group in the form of
SAT's engineering program manager. Spend of £100k managed over the first
six months of the program. Second half of the time involved developing a
'crash' program to demonstrate CT2 plus to the Canadian authorities, (this
option was not taken up by Ottawa as they were assured that Motorola could
do the work in a tighter time scale than STC (this then slipped by six
months and came out five months longer than our original plan).
Nov. '87 - Aug. '90:
Program Engineer CT2 Program, STC.
Responsibilities: System design and integration for the Nested 6 base
product. This product was one of a range being engineered by STC under a
development agreement for BT. The work consisted of hardware
responsibility for the design and co-ordination of the other aspects
needed to develop a working product (PCB layout, Radio design, audio
integration etc.).
'83-Nov. '87:
Development Engineer, Radio Paging Development STC.
Responsibilities: Various engineering responsibilities within the pager
development group at STC including production support at the factory in
Northern Ireland.
'80-'83:
Engineering Technician, Audio Products STC.
Responsibilities: Low level design and testing of systems and developments
in the consumer products division of STC. Starting as a tester of
push-button phones, and moving up to real engineering work leaving the
test side behind.
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