Hlynur Guðmundsson, CIO, Síminn, discusses the three guiding objectives in the company's transformation journey: happiest customers, operational excellence and continuous innovation. How would you describe your organization’s enterprise-wide digital transformation strategy?We aim to transform Síminn by empowering employees, minimizing low-value repetitive tasks, creating an Uber-like customer experience with our products, simplifying processes, increasing personalization and transparency for our customers, adopting an agile way of working and being an all-round more innovative company.
This means drastically simplifying our product portfolio and digitalization of all sales and service channels. Our customers should stay with us because its easy to do business with us and receive value that they don’t get elsewhere.
What targets does your organization have to guide this strategy?We have defined a number of key objectives in three areas to guide us on this journey. The three areas are:
- Happiest customers
- Operational excellence
- Continuous innovation
For each area we have defined 3-5 KPIs that guide us on how we are progressing, and we measure all our projects against those objectives when prioritizing.
How does TM Forum help you to achieve your digital transformation objectives?Our technical environment needs to be totally transformed if we are to be able to achieve our goals. To be able to achieve agility and flexibility in our BSS we need to follow a well-defined architecture that ensures that we are ready for the challenges ahead; there is no better source for this than TM Forum.
What’s the biggest ‘win’ you’ve achieved so far?We have been running a few of our IT projects using our new methodology for the past year or so and the results have in all cases been much better service for the customer and fewer complaints. This has given our staff more confidence in our transformation journey.
What are the biggest challenges you face in achieving your digital transformation aims?Culture… it should not be underestimated how much gravity company culture has on all changes. It’s a force that needs to be realigned to embrace change and agility if we are to succeed in changing the company.
Digital transformation is not just about changing processes and technology; it also involves a shift in organizational culture. How is your teamwork changing and what’s your role as a team leader?Historically we have been a siloed company. Part of our digital transformation is about joining IT and business in projects; we sit and work together from project start to end. My role has been to ensure that IT understands the benefits of this close cooperation and talking to the business about their needs and to break down the cultural barriers that still exists today.
A diverse workforce is defined as one that is made up of individuals with a wide range of characteristics and experiences, such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, ability and sexual orientation. What initiatives does your company have to become a more diverse and inclusive workforce?Síminn has implemented a framework to remove all differences in salary based on gender or other characteristics. All jobs have been evaluated against a set of criteria and we are actively tackling the gap that we found. We have also been running multiple initiatives to tackle unwanted cultural behaviour that may hinder diversity. In IT we have been focusing on adding to our diversity when hiring to ensure a better mix between gender and age.
As a leader, what are you doing on a daily basis to address diversity?Trying to be a role model for my team in all behaviours and taking initiatives to ensure that all feel that there is opportunity to grow within the company.
In terms of the wider societal impact of digitization, what are you looking forward to over the next decade?Digitization helps eliminate repetitive jobs and creates new, more interesting job opportunities where the focus is even more on the end consumer.
In terms of the wider societal impact of digitization, what concerns you?That we somehow forget how important human face-to-face communication is. Digitization will put huge pressure on our society as more jobs will be consumed by it. How do we make sure that everybody feels part of society when only part of the population has a job?
To meet more digital leaders and read about their transformation journeys, go to https://www.tmforum.org/face-digital-leadership 
