FCS Report & Accounts – 2013. Chairman’s report
2013 was truly a year of challenge and transition for your Federation. Both individually and collectively, FCS member businesses spent the year grappling with the challenges posed by converging technologies and increased competition, all against a backdrop of erratic economic recovery.
Meanwhile, in Westminster and Brussels, the policy-makers continued in the conceit that ‘comms’ is all about 4G auctions, state-subsidised broadband and on-demand sport services.
The need for a clear and all-embracing voice to speak out for business-to-business communications has never been clearer or more urgent. FCS’s excellent and long-standing relationships with Ofcom, PhonepayPlus and the various industry stakeholder groups is not enough, by itself, to gain the kind of traction our industry needs to ensure markets are transparent, competition is free, and the vital, enabling capabilities of high quality business-grade communications are understood and appreciated beyond the confines of our own industry.
So your FCS Board committed their time and experience in 2013 firstly to ensuring the Federation fully reflects the changing realities of our markets; secondly to developing FCS into an articulate and future-proof mouthpiece for the industry. While all the while maintaining our reputation for in-depth industry knowledge and detailed negotiations with the regulator and Openreach.
As Chairman, I wish to record my gratitude to your Board for the time and effort they put into attending extra meetings and strategy sessions to inform and refine this development process.
Your Federation now has a clear vision and a clear strategy to become ‘the single go-to organization for the converged business communications market’. Our new logo and our new website are the first fruits of reflect this commitment. Not only is FCS still what FCS has always been – a committed and knowledgable network of industry professionals, dealing with the detailed issues affecting our industry. But FCS is also the only organization with the history, the breadth and the membership firepower to represent our industry’s big-picture aspirations to policy-makers and pundits.
It’s a big vision that will see FCS growing and developing to embrace new members and new technologies in the years to come.