Saudi Gazette report JEDDAH – In the face of the undergoing rapid changes in the telecommunications industry, telecom companies are under the constant threat of customer churn - and managing the customers' experience as well as satisfying their wants is not simply an advantage but a prerequisite for a company to stay on top. With less than a decade since its establishment, the Riyadh-headquartered Etihad Etisalat Company (Mobily) is Saudi Arabia's second-largest telecommunications company – achieving a litany of industry awards and obtaining many firsts through its visionary leadership. In an interview with the Saudi Gazette, Karl Michael Henneking, Chief Marketing & Commercial Strategy Officer, Mobily revealed some insights about the company's success. Excerpts follow. Q: Mobily posted a 22 percent rise in profits for the second quarter of 2012 compared to the same period last year. What are the factors of this success? A: As for the second quarter, the increase was due to the growth in data usage, business sector revenue and increase in smartphone sales. Mobily's data revenue reached 24 percent of the total revenue of the first half of 2012 while business sector revenue recorded a growth of 63 percent as compared to the same period last year. In general, what is driving Mobily's success is the implementation of the GED strategy (growth, efficiency and differentiation) that we introduced in 2010. Our leading edge broadband networks are driving the growth and allow us to differentiate from our competition in the Saudi market. At the same time our employees and work environment, you might call it the unique Mobily culture, are cornerstones of the successful execution of our strategy. Q: Mobily started a new campaign targeting customers to innovate their world. How does innovation fit in Mobily's strategy? A: Innovation is key to Mobily's strategy. It is a means for us to grow and be more efficient in how we do things. We started innovation from the inside with building up the Mobily innovation center (MIC). Among others, the MIC identifies the latest trends in telecom and IT markets which are relevant for our private as well as business customers. We are currently innovating the way we are learning about new opportunities by internal crowd sourcing. This means that we use a social media platform similar to facebook to generate and evaluate new ideas that are brought up by our own staff. You can say that we use the wisdom of the Mobily crowd. Q: How does Mobily help its customers to innovate their world, can you give us an example? A: Yes, easily more than one example. We always strive to bring the latest and most innovative technologies first to the Saudi market. This includes the new mobile broadband technology LTE (4G) that enable our customer to browse the Internet at even faster speed than 3G. At the same time we are rolling out a world class fiber network across the Kingdom and will launch Internet TV services soon. In addition, business customers can benefit from the latest cloud service offerings to run their business more efficiently, with far less costs and better quality. Other than that, we are always eager to find new ways to interact with our customers: We are proud to be one of the first companies in the world to integrate the social media platform twitter with our call center and CRM system. And beginning of this month we launched with i-bill a new intelligent bill service, which is not only delivered via e-mail, but also uses interactive features to present the bill in a clear and transparent manner. Last, but not least, I would like to mention our easy charge app that allows recharging prepaid vouchers by using the camera of a smart phone - an app that we make available to all mobile users in KSA, not only our own customer base. It is a first of its kind worldwide. Q: Do you identify and implement all these innovations in-house? A: If we think of how fast the telecommunications and IT industry has developed over the past decade, with the emergence of the broadband Internet, smart phones and social platforms, it becomes evident that a company like ours needs to know in which area it has core competencies and in which areas it is better to move ahead with partnerships or acquisitions. Foreseeing the huge bandwidth demands on the Internet, we acquired the data service provider Bayanat and the Internet service provider Zajil some years ago. We are now benefiting from these acquisitions since they allow us to roll out our innovative and powerful mobile and fiber networks faster and more cost efficient. In some areas it is not necessarily acquisitions, but also partnerships that are success critical. We have put considerable emphasis on partnerships as an enabler of our GED strategy. To drive our growth in the business service segment, for instance, we formed a partnership with Pacific Controls to bring the latest machine-to-machine services to the KSA market. With regard to private cloud and managed security services, we are proud to embark on a very strong partnership with IBM this month. The IBM partnership also extends to joint research and development as well as first-to-market trials of innovative services for enterprises and governmental institutions. We expect a stream of innovations coming to the Saudi market in the near future - resulting from the various partnerships we have formed. Q: How important are customers' needs when launching any of Mobily's offers and services? A: Mobily has a dedicated research team that focuses on studying customer needs and preferences. Before we launch our Mobily services, we make sure that the offer brings additional value to our customers and meets their needs. We see customer insights as a critical factor to our success and we take market intelligence very serious. We do not only try to understand customers' actual and future needs, but consistently look at how satisfied they are with using our services or what we can do to serve them better across all customer touch points. What is also worth mentioning is that we are innovating our market intelligence constantly. We are for example closely monitoring how people talk about us on social media with advanced social media measurement tools. Q: Can you tell us about your CSR programs? A: For us, corporate social responsibility means much more than donating money or just supporting charity events. As a leading company in the Kingdom, we want to give back to the society and help where help is most needed. Supporting training and development of the Saudi youth is one of the major areas we are exploring. With our school and university activities, we show our commitment to the society. Furthermore, we have launched a new service some weeks back that enables deaf and mute people to access religious and cultural content via their mobile phones. We also care about the environment with our e-recycling program and have implemented various energy saving measures. These are just a few examples of how we show our responsibility for the environment and society in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is more to come in the future.
