ALLPOINTS FIBRE NETWORKS in the UK from a wholesale carrier point of view. aquila, in which APFN has invested significantly, is the networks and technology platform that“ glues everything together”, allowing the business to deliver seamless experience for our partners.
APFN’ s key value proposition is around empowering partners to manage their customers effectively and frictionlessly. While the platform is self-serve by design, these partners are backed by a 24 / 7 platform operations centre, with experts on hand to help if required.
This‘ frictionless’ ethos permeates across the entire company. Examples include issuing easy-to-understand partner invoices, partnering with suppliers whose service delivery is aligned with APFN promises to its customers and ensuring suppliers are paid on time. All these outcomes are a result of efficient processes and automation as well as alignment across the teams.
Natalia places further emphasis on the importance of value, which can be measured through the four dimensions of quality, cost, time and risk management.
She adds:“ It’ s the company that puts together the business case and the finance team that validates the financials, but it’ s the procurement team that goes out and finds the right partners to deliver across those four components.”
Stuart notes:“ Having procurement and finance working closely together, we can better forecast what we need in terms of our business requirements, buy it more strategically across the group and then work with our partners to make sure we get the best-value pricing.”
This value is passed on to APFN partners.
What next for APFN? Looking ahead, Stuart puts the focus into three categories: property consolidation, working capital and supply consolidation.
“ Property consolidation is a massive expenditure for us and the reason it’ s a number-one focus is because the procurement cycle for property takes so long,” he says.
“ Working capital comes next, but then you can only have the working capital conversation once you’ ve amalgamated the supply chain and understand your suppliers.
“ In terms of supplier consolidation, we’ ve reduced our numbers for the group, but we’ ve still got multiple different agencies for things like marketing and contracting.”
Natalia concludes by highlighting APFN’ s journey as it continues to evolve:“ The primary focus of our two functions is to enable the business operations and growth as we prepare to launch aquila. We want to complete process optimisation and automationto deliver a more seamless service to our stakeholders and to be able to supply valuable insights to the business in real time, which will, in turn, enable faster decision making.” allpointsfibre. com 21