Vinay Prakash, Tech Mahindra (00:11):
Hi Ashish, pleasure to have you today and thanks for the opportunity to discuss with you and have this fireside chat. We know each other for many years and I know you have traveled across the globe. You have a global experience, work with telcos, you work with system integrators, you work with software provider, product providers. So how do you describe your global experience with respect to how different your current role is in Telefónica?

Ashish Kar, Telefónica Germany (00:46):
Thanks Vinay. Thank you very much for this and think this is a very nice question to start off with. So yeah, absolutely. I think when comes to transformation, my first serious program was with sra, which was in Australia and then several in UK with Vodafone, BT Proximus, also in the US with Verizon. For me, the transformation program that we have here within Telefónica Germany is very unique in many, many ways. Let me just hide a few. First of all, I think the tremendous connect and support that we have with our business thanks to the leadership of Mr. Molik Row is something which is not seen in most transformation programs. Second of all, if you think about it, the transformation in Telefónica, this is the fourth time we're doing it and it's been tremendously successful. We have a complete composable IT cloud native stack, the first of its kind across the globe. There's no other telecom that can have or make this claim of migrating over 15 million subscribers onto a complete cloud native stack with best of breed in a period of less than 18 months. And thanks to your support as well, tremendous talent from the team of tech, my handsworth and continuous support for the leadership has made a successor.

Vinay Prakash, Tech Mahindra (02:10):
My next question is, you said Telefónica Germany try transformation four times and this is the successful transformation. 14, 15 million subscribers are already on this new stack. Can you explain what was so different among these four transformation program? What Telefónica tried and now what is the key ingredient of the success of this program?

Ashish Kar, Telefónica Germany (02:39):
We've been trying to transform and then acquire the same type, and that was also one of the challenges that we had, say the first transformation that 10 that we made. Later on, I think we were looking at more from a business perspective, run it from a business process simplification and try and come top down and completely look at every single complexity we have with a very pure play single cost product perspective. And I think that was also not successful. The third time we try to do it is we are changing too many furniture at the same time. It was not really planned, it wasn't coordinated. Now what we've done is we've taken it step by step. We started with the prepaid brands, we did an MVP, we did a pilot, we made sure there is success behind it. We got the whole business to support.

(03:30):
It started off a technology, then became a business and technology led transformation. But today it's business led transformation, which basically means that we have all the bits and bobs in place from a product point of view with the SM board of Salesforce Hanson, compact Matrix, Nokia and a lock. And one of the other key points of differences, we have a complete bespoke spoke channels layer. We have built it again with the hub of Tech Mahindra. We have built the channels layer rounds up with our own bare hands. So all the products we bought were headless, which basically meant that we could define how we white label every single brand going forward. And it gives us a lot of flexibility to be able to manage the simplification of the solution and the processes going forward.

Vinay Prakash, Tech Mahindra (04:20):
Great. So just continuing in the transformation itself, you are leading in the mass market transformation or in Telefónica B2C from a technology perspective, entire BSS and there are niche products, best of the breed as you described. Did you face any challenge during this journey? What we have gone together so far? How do you describe, maybe it'll be also helpful for other telcos, for the other companies who are aging the transformation, what are the key factors to taking into considerations?

Ashish Kar, Telefónica Germany (05:05):
Definitely. So for me, I think first is to maintain the core team resource retention is at the heart. I'm a very people driven person myself, so I invest in my team, in my partners. And I think maintaining the talent cool because there, and for four years, I can probably say we haven't lost anybody full has contributed as a key person to the transformation program. So people is very far. The second for me is quality first.

(05:31):
So we had, well the rough times, I won't say that four years has been absolutely smooth. We've had some challenges and we've had to quickly recalibrate and see where we need to make some course corrections. So that level of making a turnaround and making sure that we can correct and maintain that quality is very important. And finally, it's all about prioritizing what is most important to the value that brings value to the coupling. So we don't do transformation just for the sake of it. It is not a legacy modernization or reinventing what we've done in the past. It has to be very value centric around what does it manage and matter to Telefónica Germany in terms of time to market, in terms of revenue increase, in terms of customer satisfaction. So if you keep those three things in mind, I believe that with the right team, with the right focus on managing quality, which also talks about performance and resiliency of the stack and stability and with the right level of prioritization, we can be successful and we have been successful.

Vinay Prakash, Tech Mahindra (06:40):
Now the rate transformation, this radical architecture and IT transformation is almost, if I may call halfway, because prepaid is already is alive. You already have more than 1 billion euro revenue flowing through this particular platform. What is the key business benefit which Telefónica is already seeing or Telefónica businesses already seeing, having so many prepared brand already launched on the new platform. In terms of the KPIs, which business has in terms of customer experience, time to market reduction, have you got some measurement or have you got some feedback from business? What is their view

Ashish Kar, Telefónica Germany (07:30):
From a time to market perspective? We have got tangible proof that for the brands that have migrated and are now the new stack, the time to market for a product catalog change to be able to launch a campaign, to be able to make it relevant, to make a portfolio update is more than 50% less than what we did in the past. Right? The single thing is around the CapEx shift. We're spending a lot in legacy

(07:56):
And that for us was also a bit of a grainer because we knew it was bleeding, we knew it, it's old, it had to be decommissioned now. So for us, it was very important to spend the money in the right place. And I can say very concretely that far more than half of what we spent on legacy is now invested on the new transformation stack, which again makes it relevant for the next 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. And finally what I would say is that in terms of the stability, the stack, the resiliency, let's say the major incidents or the problems we had in corruption, they have also reduced by almost 70%. Now when we do have a sev one, we know it needs to be resolved and rely on it very quickly. We don't have a flow of stack that's not stable. So very stable new stack and is cloud native, which gives us the edge of being able to reduce costs given the future.

Vinay Prakash, Tech Mahindra (08:54):
Excellent. You have some last words, which the other operators, other providers can actually follow and they can get a kind of guidance from you.

Ashish Kar, Telefónica Germany (09:08):
Absolutely. So for me, transformation is a should not become a habit or a noob. It's more like a religion. You need to have faith in yourself. You need to have faith on your thief and has to be very purpose driven to the future of the copco fisher of customers. Whether it opens up new revenue streams for you, whether it is, gives you the level of agility to capture new market ground is very important that a transformation is not branded as just another program. And the quicker you complete a transformation, the quicker you could enable your business as usual streams to leverage the new stack that you have just created, the most successful and happier you will be. Thank you very much.

Vinay Prakash, Tech Mahindra (09:55):
Thank you. Thank you.

Ashish Kar, Telefónica Germany (09:56):
Pleasure meeting you.