Dear Manufacturing Partner
As an important partner to Inmarsat, I am writing to update you on an exciting restructure of the Inmarsat group of companies, planned to take effect on 1 January 2012. The restructure outlined below is intended to make Inmarsat an improved and more market-oriented partner to do business with. The lion’s share of our business is delivered through our channel partners and a key element of the change described below is to improve our capabilities to work with our distribution channel in the future.
Following-on from the announcement of Rupert Pearce assuming the role of CEO of Inmarsat in January 2012, as I become Executive Chairman, it was a natural step for our management team to review how best to organise our business under Rupert’s stewardship and position Inmarsat for its next phase of growth.
At the recent Global Partner Conference in Barcelona, with record partner attendance, Rupert outlined the three pillars of our strategy:
- Proximity: to be closely oriented and responsive to the markets we serve and our channel partners and end-users in those markets
- Agility: to streamline our decision-making and focus to enable faster sales and marketing activities and support to our channel partners
- Efficiency: to be better aligned end-to-end in order to serve our channel partners and end-users efficiently and to ensure complementarity of our respective strengths and skills
Highlights:
- The restructure will align the distribution support capabilities of Inmarsat under one organisation
- That organisation will consist of four market-oriented business units focusing on Maritime, US Government, Global Government and Enterprise market verticals, reporting to Jim Parm, President of Inmarsat Solutions
- Within these business units there will be separate indirect and direct sales management activities
- No change to existing Distribution Partner, Service Provider and End-User contracts.
- The group technology functions will be brought under one organisation led by Ruy Pinto, Inmarsat’s new Chief Technology Officer.
- Product and service evolution will be consolidated under Padraig Dowd, SVP, Commercial and Sales Support. More detail on this is provided below.
Effective 1 January 2012, we will be aligning the Inmarsat Global, Stratos Global, Segovia and Ship Equip businesses under one brand name, Inmarsat, and we will be aligning the sales and marketing activities of these separate businesses into market-oriented business units. Central to this change is a clear separation of the direct sales and indirect channel management activities within each business unit, ensuring continued effective management of our channel partner relations in a confidential and focused manner. Central functions such as satellite and network management, finance, HR, legal and procurement will all be aligned across the Inmarsat group on a functional basis (for example, as noted above all technology functions will report ultimately to the Inmarsat group CTO).
The four new business units will be part of the Inmarsat Solutions division, which will become the sales, marketing and delivery arm of the Inmarsat group. It will be led by Jim Parm as President, Inmarsat Solutions, and comprise five (5) divisions:
- Inmarsat Maritime, led by Frank Coles, President, focused on worldwide commercial maritime opportunities
- Inmarsat Government - US, led by Mike Wheeler, President, focused on US Government opportunities, both military and civil
- Inmarsat Government – Global, led on an interim basis by Ronald Spithout, President, focused on worldwide civil and military non-US Government opportunities
- Inmarsat Enterprise, led by Ronald Spithout, President, focused on worldwide enterprise, energy, media, carriers, commercial aviation and M2M opportunities
- Commercial and Sales Support, led by Padraig Dowd, Senior Vice President, which will provide cross-business unit support in diverse areas such as pricing, product and service evolution, customer and services operations, inventory and logistics, marcomms and channel development.
A high-level organisation chart is attached for your information.
Perry Melton will assume the role of Chief Strategy Officer for Inmarsat and will be responsible for the change management programme we are implementing. He will work with Rupert Pearce, Jim Parm and the rest of the Inmarsat management team.
As noted above, there will continue to be a clear separation of direct and indirect sales to respect the commercial confidentiality of our channel relationships. We believe this alignment of vertical market and sales management will materially enhance Inmarsat’s ability to support channel partners and manage more effectively the natural tensions between our indirect and direct sales capabilities. As we mentioned at the recent Partner Conference it is our intention to continue to distribute our products and services predominantly via our independent channel partners.
Your existing product development and manufacturing contacts will generally remain in place though we expect to harmonise our interfaces with our manufacturing partners so that you have a clear view of the relevant contact points across the Inmarsat business.
Inmarsat is focused and committed to being the leader in mission critical satellite services in environments where terrestrial networks do not reliably operate. We are putting our resources behind that commitment by developing new services and launching new satellite constellations that will change the way your customers connect in these challenging environments.
If you have any questions regarding these changes, please feel free to contact me, Rupert Pearce, Jim Parm or Perry Melton.
In the interim, I hope this letter is helpful in understanding the drivers for change and the potential that Inmarsat’s new organisation has in working with you to grow our respective businesses together.
Yours sincerely
Andrew Sukawaty
Chairman and CEO
Inmarsat plc