Don't call Stéphane Boisvert the president of Bell Enterprise Group - even though that's his title.

"I do not call myself the president," says Boisvert. "I believe that leadership is not a position. It's something that has to be part of the DNA of the business."

Accordingly, he has attempted to change the genetic fabric of Bell Enterprise Group, the part of Bell Canada Enterprises that builds, designs and operates networks for thousands of companies - large and small alike - across the country.

He is also working to help Canada overcome its IT skills shortage.

Peter McCabe, Business Edge
Bell Enterprise Group president Stéphane Boisvert believes good leadership is intrinsic to the success of a company.

Business itself is in the Montreal native's blood ...

1. What did your parents do?

"My father was a white-collar (employee) at Hydro Quebec. He was in the management ranks. My mother was an editor (and layout person) with La Presse."

2. What were some of your early interests?

"If you go back in the '80, (my main interest) was computers. I did a lot of programming, and I was passionate about getting into management as well. That was my early work - being able to solve problems for customers and sell solutions."

3. What about when you were growing up?

"Skiing. I would say skiing is, still today, a true passion. I like to take at least two trips a year on the West Coast. I recently went to Utah and discovered that place. It's beautiful. I've been many times to Whistler. I also love food - and food from a lot of different countries."

4. What was your boyhood dream?

"I wanted to be an astronaut, to be honest ... a trip to look at the Earth from that vantage point. It must be fascinating to be in the cockpit or space shuttle, or working on any type of platform there."

5. What steered you toward a commerce degree?

Stéphane Boisvert

"First, I wanted to learn English, so I went to McGill. Prior to getting to the university level, I barely spoke English, and I love business. I like running a division. I wanted to get into management."

6. Did you have an idea of what business you wanted to get into?

"I wanted to go to a corporation where I could get great training."

7. What did you do in your first job at IBM?

"Sales. Mid-market customers in the retail and consulting business in Montreal. That's pretty tough. A lot of cold calling. Then, later on, I got into financial services with two banks in Montreal."

8. What did those experiences teach you?

"IBM really shapes you in their relationship with customers - how you provide high-level satisfaction, how you maintain it, how you better understand needs ... (I was there) 17 years. In my last job, I was in New York. I was in charge of marketing worldwide for small and medium-sized businesses. I was at many different levels of management (earlier) and executive positions for the financial services and entire services sector in Canada for IBM. I left Montreal for Toronto in 1992 and worked there for many years until I joined Sun (Microsystems) in 2002."

9. How did you end up joining Sun?

"Headhunters. I was working in New York. At that time, in 2002, the (share) price of Sun crashed by a significant percentage. The troops were down. They were unable to sell anymore. They had some product issues and they asked me to take on the Canadian operation as the president. At that point in time, there were 14 regions (within Sun) and we were No. 14. I was able by 2005 to become No. 1."

10. How did you do that?

"I rebuilt the team. A lot of sales management. A lot of speaking opportunities where I was able to tell the audience and the market the value prop (proposition) behind Sun Microsystems and their operation in Canada. I was absolutely clear about what we could provide to customers."

11. Sun is well known for its hardware. How did you introduce a new software element?

"We kind of (folded in) a software and business services side as well. We hired the talent. We had a hitlist of customers and we knew that our value prop in our software business would be ready to mix with them. We beefed up our professional-services practice and (were) able to hire top talent in the marketplace to do our professional services work. My background was such that I was able to bring those leadership elements in to foster a team that could focus on software and professional services. The previous management team was one that had tremendous success in selling hardware. That was their background. They had done amazing things with that background. There was a shift in the marketplace - less of hardware, more of software and services. I just jumped on it. A good (test) of leadership is to be able to understand market share and be able to get ready for it."

12. Did you reduce a lot of staff there?

"Yes, I did. They went from 370 to 200 and we built from there back to 300. We built to have fresh new blood - about 100 new individuals in the business."

13. Why did you decide to give up the Canadian helm?

"They offered me a position to be second-in-command of all sales worldwide. I had all the sales specialists. There was the core sales specialist who had the relationship with the accounts and there was the individual that would be covering our servers, storage and software products. There were two sales teams worldwide and I was in charge of the second one. Then they gave me additional mandates. They asked me to look at acquisitions they were making that year and do the (post-acquisition) integration. So I was in charge of post and (server, storage and software) sales worldwide. That was a bigger role ... Keep in mind, I was commuting every week from Toronto to California. That was a bit of a drag. In the midst of thinking about moving to California, the Canadian team here of Michael Sabia (then BCE's president and CEO) and George Cope (now BCE's president and CEO, who was then chief operating officer) tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I'd be interested in running this business.

"It's another turnaround, because we were able, in a matter of 15 months, to provide growth at the profit level."

14. What made you ultimately decide to go to Bell?

"The turnaround proposition.

Secondly, they did an extremely good job of saying, 'It's kind of a shame to have talent going to the U.S. instead of keeping the talent here in Canada.' I was still living here and that really struck a chord with me."

15. How does the Enterprise group fit within the whole BCE operation?

"Well, there's three businesses (within BCE). There's the mobility business, which is cellphones. Very easy to define. There's the residential market, (including) the phone and the Internet connection and, in our case, Bell ExpressVu, which is satellite TV. There is the small and medium-businesses (section) which (serves) mainly small. You know, your barbershop needs a line. And you have the enterprise (section) which, I would say, (caters to) the top 1,500 businesses in Quebec and Ontario, including governments. We sell connectivity services and IT services."

16. How are you looking to grow the Enterprise business?

"It's a question of pure understanding of our capabilities. We're doing a better job at educating our customer. In certain accounts, we are growing at double-digit rates. We do have a better, well-structured set of solutions that are in tune with the marketplace and professional services in terms of security solutions (and) contact-centre solutions as well as supply-chain and wireless solutions. What we find, too, is that more and more customers want to outsource in Canada to a partner like Bell, like the call centre. They have the agents, but they want to have the platform managed by us. It's a double-digit growth rate for us. Since we are the largest technology reseller in Canada - $250 million - we get into building the solution with our technology partners. That's a value prop we are putting out there as core to our business. It wasn't really the case in the past. It's truly the case now."

17. What do you see as the challenge for your company going forward?

"There is always competition out there - the Teluses, the Allstreams. This is true. The challenge is to make sure that our customers comprehend the value we bring by delivering high-powered networks. This is extremely key for us, because if we don't do that - sell the value - the benefits will collapse and we'll commoditize ourselves. Which is an environment where you don't want to get to."

18. How would you describe the challenge faced by the IT skills shortage?

"Every single enterprise in Canada is facing a challenge and they tried to solve it in the past by themselves ... Everybody is chasing the same talent. It creates inflation because of the pure law of demand and supply.

Exposing the problem, the size of it (and) looking at what Germany and Ireland are doing in terms of how many individuals we need in X (number of) years, really is a way for us to solve this. It's a potential economic issue and a real impact on the GDP."

19. How is Bell involved with the Canadian Coalition for IT Succession?

"I'm the leader of it. We started this research and this survey and the announcements with the Conference Board of Canada. We share it with our customers and we created this platform for the coalition. We just want to solve the issue and work with the private and public sector on policies and program initiatives to try and mitigate the 89,000 jobs that might go unfilled in about three to five years. We have a charter now. We've become a legal entity. There's a role for academic partners, corporate partners and subject-matter experts."

20. If you weren't running Bell Enterprise anymore, what would you do?

"I would love to have a restaurant. Not full-time, but a few restaurants. I enjoy greeting people and having good food."

Stéphane Boisvert

* Title: President.

* Born/raised/age: Montreal/45 * Education: Commerce degree from McGill.

* Family: Married, son, 14, and daughter, 9.

* Career: After graduating from McGill, Boisvert began his career with IBM and spent 17 years there before joining Sun Microsystems, where he rose through the ranks to become chairman of Sun Microsystems Canada and senior vice-president of global client solutions sales. He joined Bell, in his current post, in 2006.

* Moonlighting: Boisvert sits on the boards of the Montreal Heart Institute Foundation, the Sainte-Justine Hospital Foundation and Wellspring, an organization dedicated to offering support to cancer victims, and the Canadian-American Chamber of Commerce.

* Passions: Business, family.

Bell Enterprise Group

* Brass: Stéphane Boisvert, president Enterprise; Matthew Hurley, VP Enterprise business management operations and controls; Salvatore Iacono, SVP connectivity services; Blair Makin, VP technology and market development; Claude Rousseau, SVP enterprise sales; Josie Scioli SVP business customer service; Vanda Vicars, SVP enterprise solutions design and delivery services

* Profile: Bell Enterprise Group provides technology platforms to small, medium and large private and public companies and governments. It designs, builds and operates network infrastructure on behalf of some of Canada's largest companies while also serving small and medium-sized firms.

* Stats: Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE), the parent company of Bell Enterprise Group, does not provide stats for Enterprise Group. BCE has 28 million customer connections across the country and Enterprise Group's clients are included among those.

* Structure: Bell Enterprise Group is part of Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) Inc., which is this country's largest communications company. Its other interests include the Globe and Mail newspaper and TSN. The parent company is in the process of being acquired by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.

* Website: www.bell.ca/enterprise
* HQ: 1000, de La Gauchetière Ouest, Bureau 3700, Montreal, H3B 4Y7 * Phone: 1-888-932-6666

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)