Discarding internal processes that cannot be automated or are not in real-time is central to Telefonica’s digital transformation strategy. This stark attitude covers the entire system encompassing both back and front ends processes, according to the company’s global CIO, Phil Jordan.

“This is a three pronged approach. We will transform how we interact with the customer, the way we work, and how we operate internally. This will mean the replacement of systems, but it’s more than just changing IT,” Jordan said in a keynote session at Operations Transformation Forum 2016 in Wuzhen, China.

The Telefonica exec admitted that this transformation of the company’s end-to-end (E2E) business systems would not be trivial, and is already underway in 15 countries where Telefonica has operations.

To illustrate the magnitude of the task, Jordan said that this radical overhaul involved applying a common set of business processes, standardising its systems architecture, ensuring its operations and infrastructure were capable of delivering a scalable network, and the implementation of new security systems to provide a step change improvement over its legacy systems.

The three providers of BSS systems to Telefonica, which includes Huawei, are said to be working closely with the company on the digital transformation initiative. “We won’t be working alone,” said Jordan, adding: “Changing a business is tough work, even though we are now over the worst.”

Improvements already achieved include a 70 per cent reduction in manual procedures, a 50 per cent drop in training timescales and a huge 300 per cent boost to sales effectiveness.

However, Jordan was adamant that these changes have to be customer-centric – and measurable.

“The outcome of E2E enablement has to result in an internal cultural shift and positively impact the customer experience,” he said.

“We found that each front office channel often had its own process. This has changed to customers now receiving a personalised offer with the ability to accurately track in real-time many aspects of their account.”