Vodafone boss slips in for NZ visit

Vodafone's global head slipped in and out of the country almost unnoticed on a flying visit to its New Zealand telco operation.

Vodafone New Zealand spokesman Paul Brislen said the whirlwind trip by Vittorio Colao, lasting less than 24 hours, was primarily to meet the executive team for the first time since his appointment as chief executive last year.

Colao took over from Arun Sarin in July having previously headed up the company's European division.

Brislen said Colao - who arrived on Thursday and left yesterday - met senior staff and briefed them on his vision for the company.

Colao stressed the independence of each of the individual Vodafone subsidiaries to make business decisions appropriate to their particular market, said Brislen.

Late last year Vodafone Group announced it would be slashing 1 billion ($2.8 billion) from its costs by March 2011 and have recently cut 500 UK-based jobs - roughly 5 per cent of its workforce.

Colao is pushing managers to eke out more profit from existing resources.

Vodafone needs to cut costs as "some users are spending less on their mobile plans and also exchange their handsets less regularly" as a result of the global economic slowdown, said analyst Julian Watson.

Vodafone New Zealand are currently investigating the outsourcing of its call centre functions to Salmat SalesForce, which manages some of the company's call centres from bases in Manukau and Vodafone's Viaduct head office.

Vodafone New Zealand also routes around 200,000 prepay calls to Vodafone Egypt's Cairo call centre.

The shift to outsourcing its call centre would see many Vodafone staff retain their jobs albeit with the new company.

However, duplicate roles would result in job loses.

- BLOOMBERG