Digicel Bermuda has brought a new man on board from Jamaica to lead its new Business Solutions division.Tom O’Neill actually holds two titles with the company: Business Solutions director for Digicel and general manager of Transact — the internet service provider Digicel acquired in 2011.Mr O’Neill, who hails from Limerick, Ireland, previously worked as head of business development for Digicel in Jamaica — where the company is headquartered.With 15 years experience in solution design and technology consulting, Mr O’Neill specialises in technology-led business transformation programmes for the financial services, hospitality and public sectors.Now he’s bringing his business technology savvy and passion for the customer experience to Bermuda — hoping to make Digicel a “one-stop shop” for businesses here.“Digicel’s strategy is to be a full network service provider to our customers in the global mantra of the BTs, the AT&Ts of this world — we have the same strategy,” he said. “The mantra of the business is to offer customers complete solutions for their business needs. One stop shop — come to Digicel for everything.“We’re not looking to copy the competition. We’re not looking to imitate what other people do here. We’re looking to offer the next generation of ICT (information and communications technologies) at a price that businesses can afford.”Mr O’Neill says he and Business Solutions team are in talks with businesses of all kinds — from small to medium business looking to save money and keep up with the latest technology, to corporate enterprise, including hospitality to financial services. He says in this economic climate, it’s about cutting costs.“When you deal with senior executives in those environments like the CIO, IT director or even the CFO of those environments, you typically find that they are dealing with multiple suppliers, multiple vendors managing all these different relationships, buying technology, buying services — the Digicel value proposition is that we bring it all together so you can deal with one organisation.“Like anything in life — the more you spend with one company, the better the price, the better the discounts and the better your relationship is managed because you’re more important to them.”Mr O’Neill says Digicel hopes to build on their already existing corporate relationships in Bermuda.“We have a massive customer base in the corporate mobile side. Most of corporate Bermuda are with Digicel, so we’ve retained those customers very well. Our goal is now is to expand that relationship into the business solutions arena and start talking about the different technology investments they have, their challenges as a business and how we can actually help them address those challenges or save money.”Digicel Business is offering a suite of solutions from hosted e-mail and dedicated internet access to virtual desktop and cloud services. Mr. O’Neill says many businesses are expressing interest in cloud services because it allows them to lease the latest technology from a provider like Digicel without spending a lot of money up front for desktops computers, servers and the like.“Why do companies love that and why is there such growth in that area? Organisations are in recession — everyone’s trying to save money. Most IT directors are getting their budgets cut 20, 25, 30 percent year on year and instead of you spending your capital on non-core activities such as e-mail, desktops, whatever, you get to spend it on your core business and your rent the service from us.”Many businesses are attracted to cloud environments because they pay per user and never have to replace hardware — keeping them up to date on the latest technology while cutting costs and minimising risk.“We call it evergreen — they’re always up on current technology. A big thing as well for a large organisation — and being that the reinsurance business is so big here and it appeals to them in terms of how their mind works around business — is that there’s no risk for them in terms of deploying a big technology project. If you’re an organisation and say you want to put a brand new desktop environment or brand new application environment or a new phone system or whatever — typically, you have to pay for all of that up front, then you have to pay a service company to put it in all of your staff are involved in putting it in, projects fail. Through our business model, if we don’t deliver for you, you don’t pay us. Because you’re only paying for the end result.”While Mr O’Neill admits the ICT companies in Bermuda are very strong and have done a good job, he’s confident his team can do better and for less.“The conversation we’re having is: ‘we can do everything our competition can do, we believe we can do it better but we can do it much cheaper that what you’re paying right now’ and that’s a real budget holder conversation. A lot of companies will say — ‘we’re very happy with what we have’ and I say, ‘great — now, go back and ask them to save you 40 percent’ — it’s a totally different conversation.”Digicel is leveraging two new partnerships with Cisco and Avaya to offer business products that can help companies work better, work smarter and work on the road — cutting travel costs.“Video conferencing, collaboration, how we can enable a mobile device to allow you to video conference in from your mobile which is going to be a huge thing — all of that technology is now being offered by those in the marketplace here,” he said.Another area of great interest to businesses in Bermuda is mobile technology and the “bring your own device” trend — letting employees choose what kind of phone they want for work — whether it’s an iPhone, Android, Windows Phone or BlackBerry. Mr O’Neill says it’s a hot topic and that Digicel has innovation in the works that will give employees freedom of choice and businesses peace of mind when it comes to data management and security.One of the greatest challenges for businesses allowing employees to choose their own device is the roaming charges they incur when they travel abroad. BlackBerry devices compress data, but other smartphones do now meaning there’s a significant increase in roaming bills. Part of Digicel’s strategy, Mr O’Neill says, is to offer companies a way around that — an offering he says is coming down the road.He says it’s all about listening to customers’ needs and helping them solve challenges they have.Mr O’Neill says he’s only been at Digicel Bermuda for a couple of months, he’s impressed with the staff and says with the new Business Solutions offerings, the company will be creating jobs.“The level of staff talent here is very high,” he said. “And we’re growing. We’re two months in and we’re going to double the size of the team, so we’re already going through the process of actively recruiting in the marketplace. We’re hoping to get as many Bermudians as possible onto the team to drive that forward.”