The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition BlackBerry's new chief operating officer has set an early priority -- make sure the upcoming launches go more smoothly than they have in the past. The Post's Armina Ligaya quotes Marty Beard as saying his first mission is to make sure that all the different divisions at the smart phone maker are on the same page as it prepares to launch the Passport and Classic devices and BES 12 by the end of this year. "Not to say that there's not discipline, but… let's make sure the connection between all those groups is as efficient as possible," said Mr. Beard on the sidelines of a BlackBerry sales conference in New York. "That's a big goal, a big focus for [CEO] John [Chen]. I think he sees a lot of upside opportunity for us, if we get that absolutely right, we can be even more bold." Before joining BlackBerry, Mr. Beard was chairman and chief executive officer of LiveOps, a provider of cloud applications for customer services. Before joining LiveOps, he worked at Sybase Inc., the software company where Mr. Chen earned his reputation as a turnaround CEO by bringing it back to profitability. Mr. Beard will remain based in the San Francisco Bay area.