Further upheaval is taking place within Vodafone as the role of chief marketing officer (CMO) is scrapped and a new unit is established with a broader remit. These moves, seen as part of a wider overhaul of Vodafone's unwieldy organisational structure, will now see group marketing, business services, global enterprise and partner markets all combined under the new Group Commercial unit.
The new division will be led by Vodafone's head of Africa and Central Europe, Morten Lundal, who will take the title of group chief commercial officer.
The dumping of the CMO role will see the past incumbent, Wendy Becker, temporarily reassigned to work on customer experience and engagement. The company said that this change was part of a review of Vodafone's marketing team that has already seen about 10 per cent of the department being axed.
Notable positions that have been removed include brand director David Wheldon and director of customer insight Andy Moore.
While the marketing department undergoes drastic surgery, input from Vodafone's global enterprise unit has spurred the company into purchasing two billing companies, namely Quickcomm and TnT Expense Management, both of whom offer billing management services for big businesses running large fleets of mobile devices.
Vodafone global enterprise CEO, Nick Jeffery, said: "Our 570 multinational corporate customers tell us that they want help to reduce cost, increase visibility and improve management control across their global footprint. These acquisitions will benefit our customers by providing even greater visibility and control of their fixed and mobile spend and this, in turn, will further the business case for multinationals to adopt unified communications solutions."
Vodafone said that Australian-based Quickcomm, which has assets of US$6.9 million, and US-based TnT, which has assets of US$2.8 million, would continue to support and develop their own products at the same time as becoming part of Vodafone's telecoms management division.
For more on this story:
- read Marketing Week & Mobile Today
Related stories:
Vodafone restructures; minority stakes bundled into single group
Vodafone's head of web services quits - future strategy in question
Vodafone buys into micropayment developer
Vodafone rethinks mobile ad strategy