Chief Commercial Officer — Digital-Services Division

The mandate

This digital-services division has built a promising pipeline around private wireless, edge computing, managed connectivity and industry solutions. The opportunities can deepen enterprise relationships, but the commercial model is inconsistent. Some proposals reserve scarce spectrum or network capability before demand is firm; others include bespoke integrations and service obligations whose lifetime cost is poorly understood. Gross contract value has too often been allowed to stand in for attractive recurring economics.

The group is appointing a Chief Commercial Officer to reset the portfolio around disciplined customer value. The CCO will own segment strategy, propositions, strategic sales, pricing, deal governance, partnerships, pipeline quality and commercial performance. Technology and network executives retain architecture and spectrum authority; delivery leaders own implementation. The CCO must ensure that the organisation pursues customers and use cases that justify those constrained resources.

This urgent, unplanned appointment follows the escalation of several investment cases whose commercial assumptions did not reconcile with capacity and implementation evidence. The incoming leader is expected to make decisions quickly: protect credible contracted growth, redesign opportunities with recoverable economics and withdraw from pursuits that depend on unfunded customisation or speculative scale.

Scope and operating context

The hybrid role is anchored in Sydney and influences approximately 750 employees and material partners across Australia and a wider international region. The perimeter includes strategic accounts, industry sales, commercial operations, pricing, product marketing, alliances, bids and customer success. Critical counterparts sit in mobile and fixed network, spectrum, cloud and edge engineering, cyber, solution architecture, service delivery, legal, finance and procurement.

Use cases range from controlled industrial connectivity and campus operations to video analytics, asset telemetry and resilient branch networks. Each has different performance, device, security, data, integration and support needs. A technically impressive demonstration may not translate into a repeatable service or a budget the customer will sustain after the pilot.

Spectrum and infrastructure economics vary by design and location. Shared licensed capacity, local licensing, unlicensed technologies, neutral-host models and customer-owned assets create different control and cost. The commercial team must not promise coverage, exclusivity or performance without the relevant technical and regulatory path, and the engineering team must expose opportunity cost in terms customers and sellers can use.

First-year agenda

The first eight weeks will produce an opportunity and commitment ledger. The CCO will review active pursuits, pilots, signed contracts and expansions, documenting customer outcome, sponsor, willingness to pay, spectrum and network dependency, capital, integration effort, delivery capacity, service obligation and exit. The largest cases will be reconstructed from initial proposal to current economics to identify where assumptions drifted.

The executive will select priority industries and use cases based on repeatability and right to win. Criteria will include a costly customer problem, viable deployment pattern, credible decision maker, technical maturity, partner role, data and security fit, recurring value and route to scale. Opportunities outside those boundaries may proceed only through explicit exception with priced complexity and executive ownership.

Propositions will be simplified around measurable outcomes and controlled options. Private-network offers will define coverage, capacity, device responsibility, spectrum basis, service level, change and lifecycle. Edge components will specify workload, location, resilience, security and support. Industry applications will be included only where ownership and partner accountability are clear. The CCO will resist presenting an ecosystem diagram as a deliverable service.

A joint commercial-technical gate will operate before proposal, contract and capital release. Sales will bring customer evidence and value; technology will bring feasibility and resource need; delivery will validate capacity and transition; finance will test lifetime economics. Disagreement will reach a named decision owner before terms are offered, not after the signature.

Pilot governance will change materially. Every pilot will have a customer decision, paid or explicitly funded scope, duration, success evidence, production architecture and closure path. Free extensions will require executive approval. A technically successful trial will not enter production until operational ownership, security, monitoring, billing and support are ready.

Pricing will account for scarce resources and uncertainty. The commercial model will distinguish one-off design, equipment, spectrum, connectivity, platform, managed service and change. Indexation, volume, minimum commitment and termination terms will align with the operator's obligations. Strategic discounts will be transparent and linked to specific reciprocal value, not used to hide an incomplete proposition.

Partnerships will be rationalised by role. Device, application, integrator and cloud partners must contribute a capability the division should not own, with clear sales, delivery, data, liability and exit arrangements. The CCO will stop alliances that generate announcements but no qualified customer pathway. Joint account plans will identify who controls the buyer and who carries service accountability.

By year-end, the division should have a smaller, stronger pipeline, more paid pilots converting through defined gates, fewer late technical objections and improved recurring contribution. Spectrum and capital requests should be traceable to contracted demand or explicitly bounded strategic options.

Leadership responsibilities

The CCO will run the commercial operating system and present pipeline, economics and resource commitments to the group sponsor and board. They will carry one version of forecast truth and must surface optimism, delay or scope change early. Sales leadership cannot be delegated to a reporting process; the CCO will participate personally in material customer and deal decisions.

They will build industry and account leaders who can understand technical and operating consequence without pretending to design networks. Incentives will reward qualified value, contract quality, conversion and stable service rather than signatures alone. Persistent selling outside approved propositions will be addressed through coaching, authority changes or leadership consequence.

The CCO will also be accountable for the commercial quality of customer success. Expansion and renewal should follow delivered value and service evidence. Where the operator has failed, the executive must acknowledge it and agree a credible remedy; where a customer's request destroys the model, they must negotiate a different path or leave the opportunity.

Measures of success

The board will track qualified pipeline, win rate by chosen use case, paid pilot conversion, contract-to-revenue interval, recurring contribution, forecast accuracy and customer concentration. It will compare booked value with capital, engineering effort, spectrum commitment and full service cost.

Deal-quality measures include exception volume, scope change, unbilled work, milestone collection, service readiness and margin movement after signature. Partnership measures cover sourced revenue, delivery quality and dependency. Customer outcomes include adoption, renewal, expansion, service performance and referenceability where consented.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years in enterprise telecommunications, private networks, cloud, industrial technology or managed digital services. They must have led a substantial B2B commercial organisation and carried deal economics through delivery. Experience converting pilots into standardised recurring services is essential.

The board will examine examples of withdrawing from a prestigious but uneconomic pursuit, pricing scarce technical capacity and resolving disagreement between sales and engineering before contract. Candidates should understand licensed and shared spectrum, edge, systems integration, enterprise procurement, service levels and partner models.

The successful CCO will be ambitious without confusing activity with value. They must earn credibility with technical leaders, conduct difficult customer negotiations and create focus in a market full of plausible use cases. Financial precision and truthful forecasting are non-negotiable qualities.

Compensation and appointment terms

The expected base range is AUD 620,000–850,000, plus annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will balance recurring contribution, contract quality, customer outcomes, responsible resource use and leadership development. Final terms will consider prior commercial scale, private-network experience and verified forfeited awards.

Confidentiality

The division remains unnamed because pipeline, spectrum plans, customer use cases, pricing and delivery constraints are sensitive. Detailed opportunity information will be shared only after identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must not provide named customer designs, spectrum positions, bid materials or partner terms from prior organisations.