Page 62 - SAMENA Trends - September-October 2020

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

Business has rapidly changed. The most companies is to hop on the “digital state can be a difficult transition for a large
consumer has changed even faster. Spoilt transformation” bandwagon in an effort to traditional company. With that in mind,
by on-demand choices, the world is at your be in line with the new digital era. Often this we opted for a multi-phase rollout (which
fingertips. With seamless “single click” involves a glossy design refresh, shiny new is currently in play) to ease the change
user experiences, you can stream content, tools, and fancy processes that promise to management process, especially from
group conference, get anything from streamline and modernize. Unfortunately, an operations and customer experience
your city delivered within few hours and this is where things go wrong. standpoint.
anything from the other side of the world
within days. Reaching digital maturity While a bit unconventional, this phased
from an unaware state can rollout has yielded strong results, showing
Digital Transformation is a key pillar of steady month-on-month growth in
Mobily’s GAIN strategy. The ‘Digitalization’ be a difficult transition digital and customer experience maturity.
end result at Mobily has been synonymous for a large traditional Our target solution was broken down
with incremental gains rather than just into smaller, actionable, design-driven
rocking the boat. Soon after GAIN came company. With that in experiences that could be meticulously
into effect, we were engulfed by the mind, we opted for a multi- planned and individually implemented
COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated while plugging into the other pieces to
the need for accelerating three years of phase rollout (which is form our product vision.
digitalization across the entire operating currently in play) to ease
model in this year. One of the largest drivers of our industry
the change management leading digital experiences is our close
True to GAIN’s strategic objective of process, especially from an integration with the customer experience
being an Integrated Telco, we started operations and customer department. Our digital team is driven by
by tackling both internal and external experiences not commercial or engineering
integration on a solid digital foundation experience standpoint. teams. We’re able to align across the
of globally standardized APIs. We strongly company and look at things simultaneously
believe that when complexity is addressed It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting a from two views. The first being a holistic
correctly and permanently, the business grand reveal that shows an “overnight” 30,000 foot view, a single experience map
becomes much simpler to operate. Hence transformation, but this tactic can come at of our CX journeys, where each cx journey
our focus for internal integration was a high cost if executed improperly or too has its priority and maturity assessment.
“simplification”of processes leading to hastily. Processes fall to the wayside, tools And second, dig into details by designing
internal digitalization. This enables our go unused, and eventually all that’s left is each customer journey, in a myriad of
infrastructure to be open and ready for only a nice-looking brand design without multiple possible user journey flows. For
integration with external partners, to any substantial long term value delivered. example, where others design a single
offer better and more varied services to So, when Mobily moved forward with a payment flow, we may design 10-20 user
our customers. Serving our ultimate goal, massive design upgrade two years ago, journeys: we carefully design and monitor
achieving customer excellence through we decided that we wanted to powerfully first time experiences to be different, easier,
operational excellence. While this is easy hone in on our digital maturity as opposed step by step, with less visual noise and we
to summarize in a few sentences , there to the often vague and superficial concept design returning customer experiences
are several on-going initiatives currently of digital transformation. to be almost like AI, already present you
to achieve on-going value realization for with your preferred options so you speed
customers and employees. We weren’t interested in satisfying through and get back to living your life.
symptoms of an underlying problem or That’s not all, prepaid, postpaid, fiber, all
Using “Design” As A Differentiator turning ourselves into a feature factory have their unique journeys and so do credit
Luckily for us, Mobily’s strategy to invest as we tried to transition to digital. It is card, vouchers or cash options etc.
in creating a digital department with a superficial changes like a freshly built
dedicated design unit 2 years ago paid website and a mobile app. or a new tech One of the largest drivers of
off. When Covid-19 hit, our digital app stack to underpin them that misguide our industry leading digital
experience was already easy to use, ready corporates into thinking they are digital. experiences is our close
to scale, earned the position of the number Knowing this we were committed to
1 telco app rating in the middle east ensuring that our internal operations and integration with the cus-
and flexible to quickly adapt to the new processes were well-prepared to support tomer experience depart-
changes that the pandemic required. and sustain the complexities that would
come with this kind of long-term change. ment. Our digital team is
Telecom, a typically traditional industry, Our teams rolled up their sleeves to begin driven by experiences not
isn’t at the forefront of innovative the “True digital marathon”.
experiences and design that delights commercial or engineering
and inspires anymore. The instinct of Reaching digital maturity from an unaware teams.

62 SEP-OCT 2020