Sean McManus, TelecomTV (00:07):
Hello, I'm Sean McManus from TelecomTV and I'm delighted now to be joined by Bart Weijermars, who is the Chief Customer Success Officer at Circles and by Toshiro Akiyama, who is the CEO of KDDI digital life. Bart, tell us about your role.

Bart Weijermars, Circles (00:23):
Yeah, so as a Chief Customer Success Officer, I help the customers of circles implementing digital telcos and also making them successful digital telcos when they grow them.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (00:37):
Toshiro, tell us about your role.

Toshiro Akiyama, KDDI Digital Life (00:39):
Yeah, I'm responsible on running for a KDDI mobile sub brand. The brand name is Pobo, but we got the mainstream brand like EU YouTube, but my brand is a third brand under KDDI umbrella. That's what I'm doing.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (00:54):
Let's go to our first question. Circles enables a cloud native software-defined approach. Tell us about the operational benefits a digital first model provides over traditional telco infrastructure. But

Bart Weijermars, Circles (01:07):
Yeah, so the cloud native implementation has the big advantage that it's very scalable solution and also a solution that's not so capital intensive. Besides that, it allows for data-driven insights into what customers are really doing and obviously with AI nowadays then you can also create personalized experiences for those customers. And overall it leads to operational efficiency, so much lower cost to run your telco, really

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (01:39):
Toshiro. Let's talk about how your companies have been working together. Tell us about that.

Toshiro Akiyama, KDDI Digital Life (01:43):
Yeah, it was back in 2019 and KDDI tried to have a new brand in the market because we just want to explore a new way of doing business in this industry. And two things we thought about it numberwise a new technology, the other one is a new way of working. So Sarcos has been doing good in the different market and they got the new technology they can bring in new DNA into our company. So that's the reason why we started talking to them and close the deal and during the Covid period. So we haven't met with them face to face, but we felt good enough about how SAR was doing that time. That's where we come from.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (02:30):
Cloud adoption is an important enabler for Telco transformation. How does the Circles platform help KDDI to scale operations efficiently? Bart

Bart Weijermars, Circles (02:41):
Yeah, I think one of the big advantages is that with a growing customer base, it is easy to actually scale and to do that seamlessly. I think also a very important aspect to this is that it really allows for insight into what customers are doing and adjusting offers to that. And I think those are some of the key advantages of adopting to a cloud native architecture.

Toshiro Akiyama, KDDI Digital Life (03:09):
I think the most significant things to the KDDI has been more like a flexibility and scalability and agility. Agility is the most important things and traditionally whatever we want to do in product wise or marketing wise, we got the one shot in a certain period. It takes time for us to prepare so many things and so many stuff to go to the market, but with the Circles platform that allow us to go to the market quite fast and tweaking our products on the way on the fly. So instead of having one shot during that, for example, one month KDDI could have two or three or five 'shots' and we can keep tweaking listening to customer's voice. So that made a big difference for us.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (04:04):
Circles was built as a digital native disruptor. What can established telcos like KDDI learn from this model to, Toshiro

Toshiro Akiyama, KDDI Digital Life (04:13):
I keep repeating myself, but Circles brought in a new way of thinking, how are we going to change the industry? And the legacy type of people may not be able to do it by ourself so that we thought we just need to bring in a new blood into our organization. The platform is one thing, but the way of thinking and the people working together in between KDDI, legacy technical people and the people from the new industry. So that will be the key thing for KDDI and it's been going great so far.

Bart Weijermars, Circles (04:49):
Okay. Akiyama-san already mentioned that. I think one of the key things is that it also allows to launch services quickly. Typically it would take months to launch new services on the cloud native platform. You can launch services more or less on the fly, or it takes only a few weeks to actually launch completely new services. I think that's one of the big advantages of this approach.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (05:12):
Thank you. Now with finances always under pressure, telcos need to move beyond traditional revenue models. What are the new monetization opportunities for your partnership?

Bart Weijermars, Circles (05:22):
I think one of the key things is that what we do with our platform is that we actually enable entire ecosystems to connect to the telco world, but also bring the telco world to other industries. And it allows for partners to connect to the platform seamlessly and fast while making sure, let's say that you also get the insights from the actual customer usage and I think that enables telcos to actually drive non telco revenues, whether it's financial services, whether it's gaming, you can think of many things that you can offer as additional services to your customer base as well.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (06:04):
Toshiro, what would you say?

Toshiro Akiyama, KDDI Digital Life (06:06):
KDDI diverse? It's a business portfolio beyond the teleco, like all financial services, video streaming, entertainment to sometime education. So we already have a very diverse portfolio and recently we got a retail convenience store business, the strong partnership locally, just like we demonstrate how we are going to move forward with the Teleco and like a retail. So my brand Provo third brand. And with partnering with sarcos, we just want to bring a new innovation into that area as well.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (06:47):
What role does cloud native infrastructure play in helping telcos to scale internationally? Toshiro.

Toshiro Akiyama, KDDI Digital Life (06:55):
Yeah, it's a cloud so you don't have to go to each market and build up the new infrastructure and everything. So reducing those kind time to market and cost is one thing, but at the same time, sharing the same cloud, the services, we don't have to go through the order running process again, yes, you need to adjust for the local market or local people, but in a basic playbook with this platform stay same. So like the time to learn how to run the business, we should be able to shorten those kind of learning process with their platform.

Bart Weijermars, Circles (07:38):
Thank you. And in addition to what Akiyama-san has mentioned, I think one of the advantages of that as well is that especially with partnerships with non telco partnerships that tend to be with global players, you can actually do these partnerships for multiple countries and if you've already integrated them on the platform, you can easily roll them out internationally as well. So I think that's one of the additional advantages.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (08:06):
Now the success of a large scale transformation is highly dependent on how it's executed. How does circles and KDDI ensure a smooth transition?

Bart Weijermars, Circles (08:16):
So the way we approach this is that we actually have digital transformation playbooks that we use to help our customers make their transformation. And that comes, that includes obviously cloud migration, but also very much about customer data. How do we create insights, but also how do we do digital marketing and create a digital brand that's actually successful in this day and age, I would say, because that's not straightforward and that's not necessarily the DNA of a traditional telcom. So I think helping, not just with the technology, but also with building the digital brands and making that digital brand successful is one of the key ways that we do that.

(09:00):
Toshiro, tell me more.

Toshiro Akiyama, KDDI Digital Life (09:02):
Having a right platform like Sarcos brought is one thing, but at the same time people need to change the mindset, how to run the business, how to make most of the tool we have. So KDDI decided create a new subsidiaries, KDD Digital Life, which is my company right now, setting up an independent culture and bringing people from the legacy technic side and for the new industry and create a new culture, new DNA. So that has been the key for TDDI.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (09:37):
Looking ahead, where do you see the telco industry in five years and what advice would you give to CXOs in navigating this shift Toshiro?

Toshiro Akiyama, KDDI Digital Life (09:46):
Well, that's a very tough question, but people told you about ai. AI things should be differently coming, but I don't know everybody has been figuring out yet. So this is a time people or industry need to try so many things and iterate those loops and we are going to make a big the many failure, but to keep learning from those failure will be the key. So how many times you can try on this area, ai. So that should be the key. So the same time we got to keep trying new things and learn from it and try to figure out to become great teleco or TechCo next five years. So that's how I see.

Bart Weijermars, Circles (10:34):
It's a very difficult question to answer obviously, but everything is digital and obviously AI will play a role in that. But I think the most important thing is that we keep focused on the consumers, on the customers and understand what triggers them, but also do rapid experimentation because in this world things are changing very fast. Consumers are changing very fast. So you have to have the data to understand them, but you also have to do the experimentation to find out what works and what doesn't work. And I think those are key elements in how telcos will look in the future. So it's all about data and how to bring insight from consumers into actual action.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (11:16):
Gentlemen, thank you very much. It's been great to hear how you're working together to prepare KDDI for the next era of telecom innovation. Thank you.

Bart Weijermars, Circles (11:24):
Thank you very much.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (11:25):
Thank you.

Toshiro Akiyama, KDDI Digital Life (11:26):
Thank you.