A look into the head of an IT Head in Telco

Enterprise IT News takes a peek into the head of another IT professional who overlooks IT for a local telco operator.

He has asked to keep his identity and organisation anonymous, but what he has to share could surely resonate with other IT professionals in industries where cost-efficiency and agility are key KPIs.

EITN: What is the role of the IT organisation within your organisation?

IT: We used to be IT chop shop in the older days, now our organisation is better managed to become a consultative centre for the business side of the organisation.

IT and business are in symbiosis, one can’t live without the other.

EITN: Can you share about the top three areas where your organisation uses IT?

IT: We use IT for the following:

a. Consultancy and business alignment for go-to-market strategies, to be able to provide better approaches and ensure we are maximising IT systems’ capabilities for the business. So providing the business information on how they can leverage and also for IT to understand the needs of the business, so as to be able to maximise outcomes.

For example, we want to reduce time-to-market and increase the net outcome of campaigns which have no effect on revenue.

b. As an Information source –sharing of insights, analytics capabilities through the analytics systems
(BI) with all the data points from difference sources. We are moving away from reporting house to analytics with insights. Our objective is provide accurate and timely information.

c. Business enablement – traditional role play to enable business to bring in revenue, ie ensure lights on for all the systems, operational and support. Now, we are undergoing modernisation to be able to better manage our customers’ information journey and also to empower our internal users with more capabilities. We want to reduce costs and turnaround time and response times, as well as increase productivity. All of these have net effect on our margins.

EITN: How does IT help your organisation achieve its business objectives?

IT: We no longer provide pure IT enablement for business, but already embed IT into the very fabric of business. This is on top of what we need to do in traditional IT.

The lines between IT and business are getting blurred as time progresses, we talk IT to our IT Team and we talk in business lingo to our business team.

EITN: What are your views of current trends like cloud computing, social media, mobile-first, big data and analytics?

IT: These will continue to grow and we continue to require more intelligence in serving our customers.
We are no longer in the era where customers have patience to wait. Also, customers expects to be treated holistically as a person rather than just another business relationship.

EITN: How important are these new technologies to your business?

IT: These are important technologies required for any serious player in any industry, any organisation that does not have them are at losing end and running blind. The question is not about how big an organisation is, the question is about how quick an organisation can turn around. The keyword is agility.

EITN: What are the challenges that IT faces for a business in the local Malaysian industry?

IT: It is always about the cost as products are usually in foreign currency; against our currency which is not so strong in terms of conversion value.
It would be very much ideal if there are local companies supplying products at Malaysian Ringgit rates.

Otherwise the next best option is to go open source. Not only in Malaysia, lots of organisations everywhere in the world are adopting open source. This can help to reduce cost and enable customers to continue to enjoy the same quality of product/service at a good value.

EITN: What are the top tips you have for potential vendors/service
providers who wish to approach your organisation to sell what they have?

IT: Understand our business and its’ challenges first.