I nearly fell off my chair after reading the stuff served up by KAZ Group CEO
Mike Foster in yesterday’s Crikey. He wrote the following:

I am writing to address a number of inaccurate articles about KAZ published by
Crikey over the last month (“Telstra vs NAB – two giants at war,” 17 February
2005, “Why Telstra wants out of KAZ super,” 14 March 2005, and “Has Telstra no
confidence in KAZ Super?,” 15 March 2005). First, Telstra has a very good
working relationship with NAB formed through many years of working together as
demonstrated by the NAB commercial team rating Telstra highly on a recent
relationship survey.

As a Telstra insider with knowledge of the NAB customer account, I can confirm
that the NAB and Telstra relationship is not rosy at all. The survey (which
apparently shows such a close bond between the organisations) is a nonsense. In
fact, the last survey was so difficult to complete that Telstra and NAB agreed
to give a ‘fair’ rating overall. Besides, the survey is industry based,
comparing peers in a generic sense and does not drill down to the real issues.

The fact is, Telstra has run the NAB business poorly. It’s a mess. Many good
people have left the organisation. If things are so happy, why:

a) Is the number-one Telstra customer still running industry unsupported
desktop technology (Windows NT 4) – discussions and negotiations to move to
Windows XP have been in play for two years;

b) Is Telstra’s Service Delivery team (currently overstaffed and way over
budget) fighting fires everyday just to stay alive in the contracted deal;

c) Is there a backlog of commercial disputes between Telstra and NAB the length
of my arm, which explains why it is so hard to get anything done to fix the
situation.

CRIKEY: Over to you, Mike!