DTWS: Telia execs look to model hyperscalers’ success
Executives from Sweden’s Telia Company explain how they are taking a leaf out of hypescalers’ book as they undertake a long-term transformation that aims to return the communications service provider to growth.
22 Sep 2021
DTWS: Telia execs look to model hyperscalers’ success
Executives from Sweden’s Telia Company explain how they are taking a leaf out of hypescalers’ book as they undertake a long-term transformation that aims to return the communications service provider to growth.
Allison Kirkby took over as President and CEO of Telia in May 2020, just as the world was hunkering down during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the second half of 2020, Dr. Rainer Deutschmann left his role as Chief Operating Officer of Dialog Axiata to join her, becoming Senior Vice President, Group Chief Operating Officer, Telia. They spoke during TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series event about their ambitions to digitally transform their company.
Kirkby is not the first CEO to try to transform Telia, but she believes her plans for making profound changes will help the company succeed this time.
“What we set out to do was a transformation that was for the first time customer experience-led and for the first time was not going to be just a short-term fix,” said Kirkby.“We have said we are going to be fundamentally and structurally changing the company in a way like probably you and I haven’t seen anywhere else before," she explained. "It encompasses all our markets. It encompasses all our functions."
Telia aims to redefine how the company works to serve customers by taking a much more harmonized approach to what it calls the five 'Ps': products, processes, platforms partners and people. As part of its strategy, Telia wants to adopt some of the models that have worked so well for hyperscale cloud providers, according to Deutschmann.
Telia was previously a very decentralized organization, explained Kirkby. “But by bringing the thought leadership of Rainer and his team, we’re really starting to leverage scale and skill for the whole group.”
Developing in-house brain power
One of the changes Telia is making is to develop skills in-house.
“We have embarked into a massive insourcing, where we say we got to be a software company,” said Deustchmann. “We have got to change … [from] having the brains of the company in the hands of other people. We’ve got to have the core competence around the software, around the analytics around the user experience design, in our operations, in our people.”
At the same time Telia wants to draw on the strengths of its key partners.
“I described this integration being more like a Google, being more like an AWS across all our markets,” he explained. “We are working very closely with our partners, to have the kind of scalability across markets where we…cater for market differences. However, we don’t customize everything. So, we are pushing the boundaries on all the dimensions, whether it’s analytics, whether it’s user experience, design, whether it’s the softwarization of not only IT but all the way down to the networks.”
Digital service aggregation
Amongst the many changes the company will undertake is a fundamental change to the company’s service assurance backbone “to provide the service orchestration experience that is really one of our USPs [unique selling propositions],” said Deustchmann.
It is one of the steps Telia is taking to become an attractive digital services aggregator for potential partners as well as customers.
Applying standards
Telia also stressed the importance of making sure IT transformation is based on standards.
“You’ve got to be using modular components, when it can be much faster in terms of our time to market, we will leverage the best-in-class software processes,” said Deutschmann. “I think what we appreciate in the work with the TM Forum is that we are seeing now a movement which really drives the standardization that we have seen from the network side very much globally.”
Despite Telia’s bold ambitions, starting a new role and a major transformation program during a pandemic has not always been plain sailing.
“I guess the unique difference in this transformation program is we’ve all started in the last 16 months. So, we actually haven’t met our team because we’ve been working virtually,” said Kirkby.
“And when it’s been such a complex organization operating in a very siloed way, that is slowing us down. So, the redesign of the ways of working and getting the operating model working as is also being critical and that still being worked through, to be honest,” said Kirkby. “I think working in a Covid world and that lack of speed that we’re used to in challenger environments has been the most challenging for me. But we’re looking forward to getting everybody back in the next couple of weeks.”
Allison Kirkby took over as President and CEO of Telia in May 2020, just as the world was hunkering down during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the second half of 2020, Dr. Rainer Deutschmann left his role as Chief Operating Officer of Dialog Axiata to join her, becoming Senior Vice President, Group Chief Operating Officer, Telia. They spoke during TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series event about their ambitions to digitally transform their company.
Kirkby is not the first CEO to try to transform Telia, but she believes her plans for making profound changes will help the company succeed this time.
“What we set out to do was a transformation that was for the first time customer experience-led and for the first time was not going to be just a short-term fix,” said Kirkby.“We have said we are going to be fundamentally and structurally changing the company in a way like probably you and I haven’t seen anywhere else before," she explained. "It encompasses all our markets. It encompasses all our functions."
Telia aims to redefine how the company works to serve customers by taking a much more harmonized approach to what it calls the five 'Ps': products, processes, platforms partners and people. As part of its strategy, Telia wants to adopt some of the models that have worked so well for hyperscale cloud providers, according to Deutschmann.
“We are quite a distinct setup as compared to some of the other operators…and we [are] much more like what a Google, one of these hyperscalers ...would look like with a common production and a common product and technology core,” he said.
Telia was previously a very decentralized organization, explained Kirkby. “But by bringing the thought leadership of Rainer and his team, we’re really starting to leverage scale and skill for the whole group.”
Developing in-house brain power
One of the changes Telia is making is to develop skills in-house.
“We have embarked into a massive insourcing, where we say we got to be a software company,” said Deustchmann. “We have got to change … [from] having the brains of the company in the hands of other people. We’ve got to have the core competence around the software, around the analytics around the user experience design, in our operations, in our people.”
At the same time Telia wants to draw on the strengths of its key partners.
“We are really looking at strong partners and have refocused dramatically across all our domains, whether it’s analytics, whether it's service assurance, whether it’s IT, whether it’s … skills transformation [around] our core partners,” Deutschmann said.
“I described this integration being more like a Google, being more like an AWS across all our markets,” he explained. “We are working very closely with our partners, to have the kind of scalability across markets where we…cater for market differences. However, we don’t customize everything. So, we are pushing the boundaries on all the dimensions, whether it’s analytics, whether it’s user experience, design, whether it’s the softwarization of not only IT but all the way down to the networks.”
Digital service aggregation
Amongst the many changes the company will undertake is a fundamental change to the company’s service assurance backbone “to provide the service orchestration experience that is really one of our USPs [unique selling propositions],” said Deustchmann.
It is one of the steps Telia is taking to become an attractive digital services aggregator for potential partners as well as customers.
“The aggregation point is key,” said Kirkby. “For telcos to win in the future, we need to become better partners to our customers and better partners to the key players in the ecosystem, so that we can aggregate all of the digital services all of our customers need.”
Applying standards
Telia also stressed the importance of making sure IT transformation is based on standards.
“You’ve got to be using modular components, when it can be much faster in terms of our time to market, we will leverage the best-in-class software processes,” said Deutschmann. “I think what we appreciate in the work with the TM Forum is that we are seeing now a movement which really drives the standardization that we have seen from the network side very much globally.”
Despite Telia’s bold ambitions, starting a new role and a major transformation program during a pandemic has not always been plain sailing.
“I guess the unique difference in this transformation program is we’ve all started in the last 16 months. So, we actually haven’t met our team because we’ve been working virtually,” said Kirkby.
“And when it’s been such a complex organization operating in a very siloed way, that is slowing us down. So, the redesign of the ways of working and getting the operating model working as is also being critical and that still being worked through, to be honest,” said Kirkby. “I think working in a Covid world and that lack of speed that we’re used to in challenger environments has been the most challenging for me. But we’re looking forward to getting everybody back in the next couple of weeks.”
