Text: Huang Haifeng's correspondence life.
MTN Group, the continent's leading telecom operator, is currently providing voice, data, financial, digital, government, wholesale and API services in 19 markets. In 2021, MTN announced its Ambition 2025 strategy, hoping to deliver a best-in-class business experience and achieve rapid business growth. How's MTN going?
According to MTN's financial report for the first half of 2023, its business revenue increased by 15% to about $5.6 billion, data revenue increased by 24%, and voice revenue increased by 6%. In terms of the number of users, as of June 2023, the user base of MTN has reached 29.2 billion, an increase of 4% over the same period last year.
More than two years have passed since the release of the new strategy, and the implementation of the new MTN strategy has achieved good results. We wonder how MTN is implementing the Ambition 2025 strategyHow do you provide users with a business experience that's second to none?How to achieve rapid growth in performance?
Mohamad Kiwan, Group Operations Officer, Central and West Africa Region, MTN, as a guest in the winwin high-end interview studio, to answer the above questions one by one.
Accelerate digital transformation with the PACE strategic framework as a sail
In recent years, various industries have been actively embracing digital transformation, and operators have embarked on the road of digital transformation.
In 2021, MTN launched its Ambition 2025 strategy, which includes four pillars to build the largest and most valuable platform, provide industry-leading connectivity services, create shared value, and optimize portfolio transformation to build leading digital solutions and lead the digital transformation of African operators.
In order to further effectively implement the Ambition 2025 strategyMTN released the PACE Strategic Framework last year. "The aim of the framework is to accelerate the execution of the Ambition 2025 strategy and enable the transformation into a platform company. Mohamad Kiwan introduced.
According to Mohamad Kiwan,The PACE strategic framework focuses on four main aspects in digital transformation.
1.Platform, Ecosystem & Services (P): Leverage the platform and associated digital ecosystem to achieve revenue growth;
2.Agile Operating Model (a): Agility in ways of working, governance, and organizational culture;
3.Connectivity and Infrastructure Optimization (c): Enables best-in-class ubiquitous connectivity and infrastructure monetization based on converged networks
4.Ultimate Experience: Delivers the ultimate user experience through connectivity, platforms, and ecosystems.
MTN further breaks down the above four areas into 15 strategic pillars, covering 45 related projects in the areas of networking, IT, digitalization and operations. For each project, MTN has a maturity index that measures the maturity level of MTN's operations and defines a well-defined roadmap.
It can be seen that reasonable quantitative standards are one of the keys to guiding the success of digital transformation of operators.
Take steps to create a business experience that's second to none
Extreme network performance and service experience are the core differentiated competitiveness of operators, and they are also the prerequisite for unleashing and monetizing the business potential of networks. In MTN's PACE strategic framework, "E" stands for Business Experience that is second to none. "The business experience is a direct reflection of the health of the network and has a direct impact on revenue. Mohamad Kiwan said of the value of the experience.
How does MTN create a business experience that is second to none?Mohamad Kiwan shared two major initiatives from MTN.
Action 1: Define experience metrics. In order to achieve a service experience that is second to none, MTN uses network NPS rankings as a measure of experience, enabling MTN subnets to be compared side-by-side with competitors.
Initiative 2: Achieve superior network performance with digital transformation. With the support of the digital platform, MTN has built excellent network performance through digital operation transformation, using cross-domain data fusion and analysis to achieve NOC and optimization collaboration. "For leading subnets, we've even implemented NOC, SOC, and optimization collaboration to deliver a guaranteed superior service experience. Mohamad Kiwan preached.
When asked how MTN has done in digital infrastructure, digital operations, digital experience, and digital business to create a business experience that is second to none, Mohamad Kiwan shared the following three points.
In terms of digital infrastructureMTN builds site security resilience, upgrades sites to sustainable green sites, realizes AI- and machine-driven Xi-driven operations, and focuses on reducing data center PUE, thereby achieving leading network performance.
In terms of digital operation and maintenanceMTN believes that experience is the most important touchpoint between the customer and the network. To this end, MTN uses NOC and SoC collaboration to actively manage experience issues in the whole process based on perception, analysis, decision-making, and closed-loop. "With these means, we have achieved a business experience that is second to none. Mohamad Kiwan said.
In terms of digital businessMTN will continue to drive 4G and 5G subscriber growth, WTTX and FWA development, fintech subscriber development, and Ayoba subscriber growth to achieve business success.
In the digital field, the harvest is fruitful
If digitalization is the new field of service growth for operators, then the digital innovation practices and use cases that MTN continues to implement in subnets have reaped "fruitful results". Mohamad Kiwan gave two examples.
in GhanaMTN has faced tremendous pressure from its competitors on the network's NPS (Net Promoter Score, Word of Mouth) scores. But later, the gap between MTN's network NPS scores and its competitors gradually narrowed. How is this done?
It is reported that MTN innovatively effectively correlates network NPS with customer experience index (CEI), realizes visual and manageable user experience based on the digital platform, and then finds the reason for the low network NPS score and optimizes it.
In addition, MTN realizes the active management of VIP customer complaints through digital solutions, and realizes the closed-loop experience problem through scenario-based optimization, which gradually improves the network NPS score, and ultimately helps MTN maintain its leading position and achieve business success.
in Nigeria, MTN is focused on elevating the Facebook experience. Previously, MTN's user experience in Nigeria lagged behind its peers at one point. To this end, MTN proposed the concept of a benchmark city, using network data, using digital means such as scenario-based optimization, intelligent alarm compression, and real-time task tracking, to build Abuja into the first benchmark city in Nigeria through the digitalization of the whole process from optimization to operation and maintenance, and achieve the first place in both NPS and Facebook experience.
MTN not only surpassed its competitors in Facebook experience, but also achieved the number one ranking in both Facebook experience and web NPS scores. Mohamad Kiwan shared.
Behind the fruitful results, it is inseparable from the cooperation of partners. It is reported that as early as 2017, MTN worked with Huawei to complete the deployment of the digital platform. Since 2020, the two companies have leveraged AUTIN to improve digital O&M efficiency, automate troubleshooting, ticket issuance, and auto-diagnose use cases, and implement SoC operations and customer complaint assistance (CCA) based on SmartCare. Starting in 2023, both parties embark on a new journey to drive leading customer experiences and enable business success through digital platforms.
The author's observation: Experience improvement is the key to operators' competitiveness
With the popularization of applications such as smart home, cloud office, webcasting, education, and games, consumers need to experience a better network. At the same time, a good network experience is also the key for operators to win the competition, gain users, and increase revenue.
"MTN believes that operators should shift their focus from efficiency improvement to experience improvement from now on to provide better services to end users in order to achieve business success," said Mohamad Kiwan in a high-end interview with WinWin. ”It can be seen that experience improvement has become the key for operators to enhance their competitiveness.
How can you build a network with leading performance and deliver a service experience that is second to none for users?Through this dialogue, we can see that there are three highlights of MTN that are worth learning from global operators.
Highlight 1: In the process of digital transformation, carriers need to start with top-level design, build a complete digital transformation strategy, and design a development path for their own digital transformation.
Highlight 2: In terms of improving service experience, operators should start with quantitative standards and network performance, and use digital means to comprehensively improve infrastructure, O&M, experience, and services.
Highlight 3: In business practice, carriers should actively implement digital solutions, explore digital business methods, and ultimately achieve service leadership.
We expect more operators to leverage advanced digital platforms to enhance network NPS and continue to deliver the best service experience to end users."