Transforming Vodafone from a UK 'Voice' company to a Global Data focused Giant through Innovation and a 'Hero Product'

Vodafone was a UK success story in Mobile Telecoms, and looked to expand its market reach Globally. In 1999, when I joined, the Global market expansion was indirectly progressed through partnership agreements with a German industrial conglomerate – Mannesmann. Every local Vodafone Mobile operator Partner. remained Independent and maintained its own Brand, Products and Commercial/operational activities. For example there was D2 in Germany; Omnitel in Italy, and Europolitan in Sweden.  In October 1999 the Mannesmann partnership was irreparably damaged as they acquired Orange, Vodafone’s most dangerous competitor in the UK market. To protect their Global Footprint, Vodafone initiated an aggressive acquisition of Mannesmann, and secured ownership in a $190B Deal.

In parallel around the same time the UK Mobile Network Operator Auction for 3G Data Service licenses was opening up, concluding in March 2000. Vodafone paid out £6B to secure its license, whereas the other UK operators each paid £4B.

Vodafone quickly planned to set up a new semi-autonomous company ‘Vodafone Multimedia’, eager to develop a Global Brand and apply it to its now fully owned operating companies across Europe. There was now a race to identify, create and launch standardised products and services that would generate data revenues and start paying back on the Mannesmann and 3G investments. Without true Global scale the investments would create financial losses.

In October 2000 a new Leadership team were established, coming from IT Business Development and Commercial backgrounds to accelerate efforts to generate Global Data Revenues.

As soon as the new Managing Director arrived in October 2000, he asked me to help him and the new teams establish ‘where’s the money.’ My challenge was to look at the full range of Multi-Media opportunities and Roadmap the Size of Market for each and the likely timing for Market traction/critical mass. This would be the foundation for the company P&L and in particular Revenue forecasts.

My next Task was to become the Product Manager for the first targeted Revenue Generating Global Product – Mobile Broadband for Corporate Global Accounts.

My first Action was to develop relationships with leading Analysts from Gartner, IDC and Forrester to see which Analyst/Provider had the most credible view on forecasting market sizes. IDC turned out to be the leader in really understanding the markets and having an appetite for collaboration. I was able to establish the likely market sizes for Vodafone, but also to develop market share estimates, I wanted to include partnerships and was able to model the value chain – which partner can gain what revenues within each market, with validation from the IDC Analyst.

Now I was in a position to recommend the priority order markets, partners and customers. I mapped each one out in turn in collaboration with the Product leads for each area. Having done that I was given my first ever Product Manager Opportunity , to plan out, develop and launch the first Globally Branded Product – Mobile Broadband.

I was able to leverage my work with IDC as a foundation and then set targets/forecasts for each country. I was also able to collaborate with Global Brand to specifically research/validate Global Corporate pain points around Mobile Data Access, and establish’promises’ and ‘proof points’ around each Pain Point. These were ‘stretch’ promises but realistic. I collaborated intensively with lead Techs to see what was possible as the Mobile Data Speeds and quality evolved as Technologies such as 3G were developed and improved. I extended my network to the Global account Managers to line up lead Trial customers.

I received 7 Prototype Mobile Data ‘Cards’ for slotting into customers’ Lap Tops, and Tech developed Client Software to make it possible for our customers’ users to self install. One of our key promises was ‘Simplicity.’

To really prove we were heading in the right direction and make our promises realistic I forged a partnership with Accenture’s Marketing Director. Accenture were keen for Vodafone to promote their relationship with Accenture, I wanted them to test my 7 cards to destruction and surface what was working well and what needed to be improved. The cards went to the UK and Ireland CEO and 6 Global Managing Partners in Accenture.

We encountered one issue, and it was diagnosed and fixed very quickly in a call between my Tech Lead and the UK Accenture CIO. Once fixed I was able to promote Accenture as a case study, applying the newly developed Global Branding standards in collaboration with WPP. After Accenture I was able to repeat with Cisco, IBM, Dell and Tetra Pak.  Now we knew what we were really capable of delivering to our customers.

I took on responsibility for the Lead Markets, engaging them and helping them develop their plans locally. I specifically took ownership for The UK, Germany, Ireland and Italy.

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

• What did you do to help… Improve access to skills, capabilities and expert availability
• What did you do to help… Improve clarity of responsibilities and capabilities to deliver against them
• What did you do to help… Identify, agree and prioritise new ideas and opportunities to generate business value
• What did you do to help… Ability to demonstrate, socialise and communicate concepts, outcomes and business cases
• What did you do to help… Validation and endorsement of decisions and approach
• What did you do to help… Enhanced cross-business collaboration, communication and buy in
• What did you do to help… Improved internal satisfaction, loyalty and customer value
• What did you do to help… Agree and define actions and a feasible roadmap
• What did you do to help… Gain context and insight to enable faster, more informed decisions and actions
• What did you do to help… Clarify initiative dependencies and definition of success
• What did you do to help… More perceived objectivity without political bias
• What did you do to help… Improved clarity, accuracy & confidence in documentation or in decision making

• What did you do to help… Reduce time in delivering change from skills gaps or capacity issues
• What did you do to help… Reduce ambiguity around vision, goals, strategy and roadmaps
• What did you do to help… Understand weaknesses and capability gaps to better plan for structured, feasible improvement
• What did you do to help… Reduce uncertainty around performance and time to delivering effectively
• What did you do to help… Reduce time in proving concepts, hypothesis and business case creation
• What did you do to help… Reduce blockers to progress due to personal and structural agendas
• What did you do to help… Reduce or remove resistance to change & innovation
• What did you do to help… Reduce political bias and credibility challenges across silos
• What did you do to help… Reduce ambiguity around ownership and responsibilities
• What did you do to help… Reduce time and errors in decision making, learning and adoption
• What did you do to help… Reduce inconsistencies in approach, communications and associated reputational damage

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

• What did you do to help… Identify, agree and prioritise new ideas and opportunities to generate business value
• What did you do to help… Enhanced cross-business collaboration, communication and buy in
• What did you do to help… Agree and define actions and a feasible roadmap

• What did you do to help… Reduce ambiguity around vision, goals, strategy and roadmaps
• What did you do to help… Reduce blockers to progress due to personal and structural agendas
• What did you do to help… Reduce or remove resistance to change & innovation

The Case Studies, proof of the power of our first Product to address customer pain points and powerful Vodafone Global Branding/Positioning won the hearts and minds of the formerly independent and locally branded operating companies.

We were able to launch in the first 5 countries in collaboration with their teams within 4 months of our first idea about developing the Globally Branded Mobile Data Card. Every market hit the ground running and became a highly effective sales machine for our Product. We gained immediate market leadership, having been able to satisfy the demands and address the pain points of some of the biggest companies in the world. Vodafone went on to dominate the European market for the next 6 years and beyond – at one point building 60% Market Share.

In 2004 the Product I took from Idea through to Multi Market launch won the Innovation award at the GSMA Awards in Cannes. This established Vodafone’s global reputation for Corporate and Business Data solutions. Vodafone gained leadership in the Corporate, SME and SOHO markets with the Globally Branded and Customer Centric DataCard. The card was a key contributor to $1B Revenue generated in the first full year of Vodafone Global Products and Services. The Global Accounts formed the core generators for business.

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

Typical areas where value is realised:

• What did you do to help… Enabling competitive differentiation and increasing market share
• What did you do to help… Increase customer acquisition, advocacy and lifetime value
• What did you do to help… More consistent and sustainable profitability and business growth
• What did you do to help… Improved business agility and ability to rapidly respond to change and opportunity
• What did you do to help… Increased credibility, confidence and influence across the business
• What did you do to help… Enabling positive behavioural change
• What did you do to help… More satisfied and engaged employees with increased retention and productivity
• What did you do to help… Effective delivery against financial targets
• What did you do to help… Viable, scalable and actionable roadmap to deliver innovation and change
• What did you do to help… Direct positive impact on internal and external customer satisfaction
• What did you do to help… Successful, timely delivery of evidence based transformative change

Pains typically relieved include:

• What did you do to help… Inefficient or misaligned operating model and lack of business agility
• What did you do to help… Lack of exec sponsorship and track record
• What did you do to help… Lack of appropriate capabilities, skills, tools and methods
• What did you do to help… Unclear business strategy and requirements
• What did you do to help… Unclear or inefficient internal communications
• What did you do to help… Disconnect between culture and future vision
• What did you do to help… Misaligned goals across business and silos
• What did you do to help… Lack of clarity around the internal business ecosystem
• What did you do to help… Lack of clarity around market landscape
• What did you do to help… Lack of customer insight
• What did you do to help… Poor data strategy resulting in siloed, incomplete and poor quality data

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

Typical areas where value is realised:

• What did you do to help… Enabling competitive differentiation and increasing market share
• What did you do to help… Increase customer acquisition, advocacy and lifetime value
• What did you do to help… Improved business agility and ability to rapidly respond to change and opportunity
• What did you do to help… Enabling positive behavioural change
• What did you do to help… Direct positive impact on internal and external customer satisfaction
• What did you do to help… Effective delivery against financial targets
• What did you do to help… Viable, scalable and actionable roadmap to deliver innovation and change
• What did you do to help… More consistent and sustainable profitability and business growth

Pains typically relieved include:

• What did you do to help… Unclear business strategy and requirements
• What did you do to help… Misaligned goals across business and silos
• What did you do to help… Lack of clarity around market landscape
• What did you do to help… Lack of customer insight

• International markets
• Innovation Strategy
• innovation management
• Customer Success
• Voice of the Customer
• collaboration

• Accelerated Solution Delivery
• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness

• Technology
• Telecommunications