Men4Technologies&Innovations
Jason King, CEO, Yettel
Mr. King, Telenor Bulgaria became Yettel in March. What has changed since the rebrand? How are customers responding to the change?
Telenor was one of the most loved brands in Bulgaria – a strong brand that became established because of its openness and transparency towards customers. This approach, both from a marketing point of view and as a service approach to customers, was unprecedented in our country. Now with Yettel, we are building on this approach and bringing it even deeper into our balance-based corporate culture. As part of our ESG strategy, we have committed to being a paperless operation. We are introducing tablets to our sales network, which in practice makes our colleagues even more mobile and closer to customers. When introducing the 5G network, we also applied our open approach that sets us apart from other operators. The goal was never to be the first to introduce a service, but to do it in the most meaningful way for our customers. We launched an open dialogue with customers, conducted a large-scale information campaign about the benefits of 5G, and only then launched the network.
Yettel is a modern, digital brand that meets the high standards demanded by our customers. Research and feedback have shown that the new brand is being received just as well, if not better, than the previous one.
During the COVID crisis, telecommunications have become one of the most important services. Has the philosophy at Yettel changed then and now?
Our philosophy has always been to be where customers want us to be, without stepping into territories that are too far from our core business; the main ones being digitization and mobile services with uncompromised quality. In this sense, our focus remains the same – we have the ambition to offer the best of the world of technology, carefully selected products and services delivered through our first-class network. It is a good example of our consistency – we have been systematically investing in infrastructure for years, which has brought us five best network certificates from umlaut, which globally sets the gold standard in our industry.
In the telecom industry, quality is something you can feel right away. I believe that anyone who has travelled outside of Bulgaria can appreciate the quality of calls, coverage and speeds that are provided within our Yettel network. The COVID crisis proved that this investment was right because we were able to provide connectivity to millions of Bulgarians without interruption and in unprecedented conditions.
People are the most important part of a company’s success, and in recent years the staffing crisis has accelerated. How do you find and retain talent?
The best way to keep employees engaged is for a brand to represent a place at which people want to work, spend time, and build their careers. At Yettel, we have a culture oriented towards self-improvement, mentoring, and creating conditions which reveal everyone’s true potential. I say this because sometimes underperformance may come from a so-called skills gap (i.e., reskilling or scope breadth). Therefore, I believe leaders should not easily give up on their employees. For a person to develop and build upon their inherent talent, they must be placed in an environment that values diversity and encourages creative potential. That way, you can put the right people in the right roles who perform activities which make employee lives easier and more fulfilling.
As an example, I can point towards our “Side by Side” Programme. We were the first major employer in Bulgaria to open jobs to people with various disabilities at different levels of the organization – from marketing through sales and into finance. For the last eight editions, 36 people joined the program, most of whom remained at the company afterwards. Another example is our Internship Programme, where several our top managers started their careers. It promotes mentoring and supports younger people in the early years of their careers. Yettel has also for years provided an opportunity to provide higher education and scholarship support to our employees.
Everyone should be able to participate in building the company’s brand. Many employees from Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary participated in the creation of Yettel by contributing ideas making our new brand come to life. That’s how Yettel Town appeared – our internal space – a digital city where modern and innovative people work.
You have over 20 years of leadership experience in transformations, restructuring and growth in a number of companies in challenging markets in Europe. Would you describe your work at Yettel Bulgaria as challenging?
Although it may sound like a cliché, the telecommunications industry is indeed one of the most challenging ones. Present day telecoms not only offer connectivity to millions of people, devices, and businesses, it is also an environment for digital transformations and the foundation on which customers step upon to create their own digital and innovative products. In this sense, working at Yettel is a significant challenge, because the responsibility we have towards society is great – and our technology and processes are always evolving to meet demands.
How are modern organizations transformed? What is the key to success?
One of the biggest challenges for any business is to continually transform its business model – factoring in the right timing and potential opportunity. The truth is that many restructuring programs fall flat and deliver lacklustre results. COVID accelerated processes in this direction, but there are several main reasons behind these issues.
First, companies often set overly optimistic goals for both the time and scope of their transformations. The second reason lies in insufficient management, prioritizing the technology rather than the users’ needs while using the wrong metrics etc. Finally, the speed of managing the transition from the old operating model to the new one has a big impact.
Completely underestimated is the capacity for human change management. People need to be brought onboard and to understand exactly why change is important for the specific business, as well as, where change will bring them to a “better place” in their working lives.
For a transformation to be successful, it must go through three main stages, which in most cases are not linear but often occurs simultaneously.
The first phase simplifies and digitizes existing processes. From a consumer perspective, this could mean innovations in mobile self-service applications. For example, we’ve upgraded our digital channels and the MyYettel application with capabilities to let people better manage their own services all in one place. For internal operations, this means connecting products and completely redesigning core processes. From the employees’ side, HR processes get automated as well. In such, we created a completely new solution called Digital Office which literally puts elements of an employee’s work life into their pocket. With it, employees can digitally sign documents, find colleagues’ contacts from another department, follow internal events and open positions, answer surveys and much more. This phase does not fundamentally transform the organization, but it is often overlooked, and it is useful because it lays the foundations for a stronger and smarter company.
The second stage is based upon the complete transformation of the organization; complex change that gets introduced across the value chain. For example, completely reformatting the way one physically and digitally interacts with customers may have hundreds of touchpoints. This also involves automating, changing, or completely eliminating processes which brought limited to no value.
The third stage is one of the most difficult because its goal is to expand or discover new sources of growth. For example, with Digital Office, we solved several internal challenges and asked ourselves how we could help other companies deal with similar problems. We began offering Digital Office to our business customers, which achieved a double effect of giving a basic internal transformation as well as monetisation our homegrown innovation.
At Yettel, we intent to continually transform our business with the best interests of our key stakeholders in mind.
