Singtel Group CIO Wu Choy Peng has followed a multi-prong strategy to create a digital business.
The case study prepared by technology research firm Forrester provides lessons to other CIOs to to their own digital business journeys.
Singtel, a Singapore-based communications group, embarked on a program in 2013 to re-engineer core systems and capabilities to align with Singtel’s business priorities.
She understood that the efforts to improve Singtel’s digital customer experience would only be sustainable if they went hand in hand with improvements to the company’s digital operational excellence, says Forrester.
As a first step, Singtel, which serves 630 million mobile subscribers in 23 countries, integrated tech staff into its business units to enable a strategic partnership.
Singtel modernized legacy systems without disrupting the company’s day-to-day business operations.
Singtel Group’s technology team developed deep and broad technical expertise to make its transformation success. The team also needed customer-centric thinking and skills focused on business outcomes.
Singtel understood that it could not achieve the transformation by taking small or cautious steps. To the contrary, it would require an ambitious multiyear journey that would rejig the DNA of the tech management team and its operations.
They named the mission “One.IT” and shared responsibility. Singtel Group IT created a business relationship manager (BRM) role and embedded BRMs into each business units.
Singtel established a customer experience learning program for its more than 800 IT employees in Singapore and Australia to infuse customer obsession in to the organisation.
Singtel took an agile approach and developed services such as the My Singtel app and pushed its suppliers to use such services.
As Singtel’s tech management organization and culture started developing the digital foundation to walk hand-in-hand with the businesses, it was better equipped to start delivering the digital goods.
By rebuilding the culture and structure of the tech management organization and embedding it into the lines of business, Singtel Group IT was able to build trust with business leaders and align with their key strategic initiatives.
Since the overhaul, Singtel was able to improve customer experience significantly, reduce operating costs, and the company became able to launch innovative digital businesses.
From its experience, Singtel tells how bold CIOs should be when it comes to digital transformation. It says CIOs must be ready to face reality that they must deconstruct their organisations and rebuild them using the customer-obsessed operating model required for digital business success.
Arya MM
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