LIVE FROM AMDOCS AMERICAS SUMMIT, ORLANDO: Phil Jordan, Telefonica’s CIO, revealed lessons learnt from working towards digitalisation across 15 countries, calling the process “the hardest thing you will ever do.”

So far, the European and Latin American giant has found that online payments by customers have gone up by 86 per cent, it has saved on 7 tons of paper and its contact centre training time has gone down by 53 per cent, among other factors.

Jordan named his presentation “End-to-end digitalisation: do or die,” to reflect the importance of digital transformation for operators, which is “super urgent” and “super important” in order for them to stay relevant.

3 focus areas
He explained that there are three key elements that operators should focus on, the first being that they are providers of outstanding connectivity, first and foremost. This may seem obvious but, in his opinion, “for a number of years we got carried away with digital” and “forgot about our core asset”.

The second is bundling together all offerings with a seamless experience – be they fixed or mobile, core connectivity services or value added services – and the last is customer value and experience, helping users understand privacy and their rights and cultivating a relationship of openness and trust by keeping their data secure.

To achieve these, he explained that there are three key enablers: investing in big data and innovation, simplification and end-to-end digitalisation.

“We have done a great job of simplifying. We have services that have reduced their product portfolio by 90 per cent and we have reduced our systems by half in the last four years” by making some tough decisions, he observed.

As for digitalisation, he said this means “operating in real-time in an automated way” and being digital both in the front-end – interacting with customers and knowing their needs, for instance – but also in the back-end – speeding up business models to be real-time being one example.

He also said that “zero back office” is not a possibility but something that should be aspired to in order to become efficient.

He added that digitalisation is a complete business transformation, from process and policy to technology, product and commercial models.

“If you are not terrified by this you don’t understand what I am saying,” he remarked, adding that “this is the hardest thing you will ever do”.

He said the decision to digitalise will come from the CEO, but the implementation will come from the IT department, adding that IT will become “I3” – integration, innovation and information.