Axiata Group accelerates its digital talent transformation ambitions

• Embarks on the next phase of its digital talent transformation journey with Digital Jam 2017
• Celcom’s digital vision is to have the company organised like it was made up of 100 startups

AXIATA Group is embarking on the next step of its digital transformation journey by investing US$6 million (RM25.06 million) over the next three years to scale up its employees’ digital expertise across all levels and roles. (US$1 = RM4.18)

Digital talent development is at the core of the group’s transformation strategy to become a modern, agile and digital work culture.

For Axiata, with employees spread across subsidiaries in six countries, it becomes imperative that each company places digital transformation at the forefront and cornerstone of its business strategy.

Money certainly speaks as the group has deployed close to US$40 million on talent development since 2009 and is taking active steps to realise its ambition to be a digital champion.

With its business spanning six countries and four time zones, Axiata realises that its employees across all its businesses be it in Malaysia or Nepal are core to their success.

“Today as digitalisation gains rapid momentum, talent becomes more critical to the group and determining our ability to compete and grow in our markets. The objective is to transform our company in the way we, as employees across the region, think, act and work and create with a digital mindset,” said Axiata president and group chief executive Jamaludin Ibrahim.

To show that it is serious about this transformation journey, Axiata is staging a group-wide employee digital training programme across its six markets.

Digital Jam 2017 to be held on Nov 23 is an activation day where 12,000 of the group’s employees will come together online to experiment with and experience new digital work tools, BOT interfacing games and many more digital learning experiences.

Axiata hopes to use a chatbot named DJ to encourage its employees to take part, engage in conversation and learn from one another.

Using its Workplace Online collaboration tool to connect and collaborate with one another, Axiata is hoping its employees will incorporate it into their daily work and get into the routine of using the technology.

“We need to reconfigure the DNA of our workforce and tell them that we need to work in a collaborative manner and be bold to try ideas quickly,” said Axiata group chief talent officer Badrunnisa Mohd Yasin Khan.

The Celcom factor

Celcom Axiata chief executive officer Michael Kuehner said technology is not the sole driving force behind this transformation as people too are essential for Celcom to provide an awesome customer experience.

“We are making steady progress internally within Celcom and we will fundamentally change the way we address our customers’ needs by re-imagining customer facing sales, marketing and care engagements with digitalised channels, processes and practices,” he said.

Beyond the transformation of its workforce, Kuehner sees the biggest challenge for Axiata as being its omni-channel project that seeks to integrate the customer experience from its retail stores, website and app in a way such that the system remembers the customer’s last request and continues it no matter which channel they approach.

“Analytics will play a big role and we need a lot of data that comes in, to be real time. This means having real-time voice monitoring for customer calls, real-time surveys and enhanced social media tools complemented by chatbots.”

Celcom's digital vision is to have more than 80% of its transaction be automated through the use of Artificial Intelligence by 2021. Kuehner adds that he also wants Celcom to be run like it’s made up of 100 startups, a number not so much to be taken literally but embodying the same energy and drive of an emerging startup.

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