WHAT IF… Vodafone Business became a TechComms player within 6 months | Vinod Kumar

Business will not be the same post-Covid-19. The way we work and the way our customers work will be
fundamentally different. I believe there are six key macro trends that we all need to reflect on and watch carefully.
They should influence our thinking and our propositions, prepare us for the future and help us come out of this
crisis stronger.
The main macro trends relevant to us
1. Where people work will change dramatically, and the definition of the “workspace”/”workplace” will be
rewritten, with new hybrid working models emerging. This is not limited to office workers spending more
time working from home, but also includes work on the street and in the field; in maintenance, delivery
and supply chain.

2. Business models will become more digital and automated across all segments and industries. There will
be an increased need for technical and commercial solutions that scale easily and enable businesses to
adapt to greater volatility in the economic environment and on the demand side of the equation.

3. Supply chain models will be redrawn for resilience after years of focusing purely on cost reduction rather
than business continuity. Businesses caught out in the crisis will be redrawing their supply chains and
some will be caught in the crossfires of the debate between nationalism and globalisation.

4. Many Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) will die and be reborn. SMBs are the most vulnerable at
a time of economic crisis; it’s expected that 10-15% could go out of business as a result of Covid-19.
However, they were created by entrepreneurs whose entrepreneurial spirit and desire to do great things
will never stop. SMBs have played an important role in every economic revival in history, and they will this
time too.

5. Public sector and governments will dramatically rethink their role in society. The resilience of
infrastructure will be brought to the forefront and public investment will go into rebuilding critical
national infrastructure. They will be acutely aware of the need to react to future crises, with a particular
focus on what they can do to avert them.

6. Unemployment will rise globally, but more than that the whole construct of employment will change.
The fluidity of the labour market will change – there will be more contract workers, more freelance
workers, more gig economy dynamics. This will result in the contract and obligations between employees
and employers being recast.
The “so what” for Vodafone Business
Businesses will need full solutions that enable the new “workspace”/“workplace”. Those with employees spending
more time working from home will need more sophisticated and integrated collaboration tools; current lockdown
set-ups will not work long-term. Those with fieldworkers will look to us for more creative technological
enablement that allows their workers to be more effective and work in new ways.
As business models become more digital, our propositions need to evolve beyond just providing enabling
components. We need to support our customers with digital and possible business advisory services. The demand
for simplicity will rise and we need to find new and simpler ways to provide end-to-end solutions that are easy to
consume and work seamlessly in their environment, straight out of the box.
As SMBs reinvent themselves in tough economic circumstances, they will need solutions that help them be more
agile and scale faster to beat the competition. Web presence, e-commerce and digital marketing will be more
important than ever. What advisory services and agile solutions will we offer to help entrepreneurs expedite their
return to commercial activity?

C2 General
 Large and multinational customers will demand highly scalable business internet services available in multiple
markets. They will need intuitive device management solutions that not only cover their mobile and laptop
estates, but extend to devices such as always-on PCs, worker safety devices and AR/VR for field maintenance and
support workers.
Public sector spending will go up as they invest in readiness and they will be looking to us as a trusted partner to
help them navigate new ways of working. We must continue our focus and dedication to this sector.
We need to think about the changes in the labour market in two ways – how can we serve people moving into this
new dynamic, helping them quickly enable themselves as talent in a competitive marketplace? And how can we
change how we work to turn this into an opportunity – how can we make use of this pool of skills on key
programmes in a flexible way?
Creating our future as a TechComms player at speed
As the rules are rewritten we need to move quickly out of our connectivity comfort zone, accelerate our shift
towards being a TechComms company, and create a new space for ourselves. Crises are a great catalyst for
accelerating cultural transformations. We have experienced this with the Spirit of Vodafone, but we need to
maintain this mindset shift while leveraging our traditional competitive advantages – our size and scale – in a new
way. Success will be determined by speed of action, and hence we need to find ways to contain risk rather than
exercise extreme caution.
We must get digital urgently. Today parts of our journey are digital, we are not as streamlined as we should be, and
our customer experience can be clunky. To realise our true digital potential, we need to communicate effectively
with our customers through their preferred channels, making our digital marketplace and My Vodafone App for
SMBs more important than ever. We need to find creative ways to provide a seamless digital end-to-end
experience, without replacing our entire legacy IT infrastructure.
We need to be more agile and move resources around quickly as priorities change. The competitive landscape is
changing, with OTT players directly entering the fray as a result of Covid-19. Let’s use this paranoia to leapfrog the
competition, and be more like them: be creative, try new things and innovate.
We will find new ways to think about how we prioritise and invest. Big results don’t always need big budgets, and
some of the greatest inventions have come out of modest spending. We will find that we do not have “adequate”
resources if we apply our old ways of thinking. I am confident that a more agile approach, dynamic reallocation of
investments and seeking the “art of the possible” will help us come out with bolder ideas and solutions.
Vodafone Business’ initial response
We have five specific work streams in place already, starting with (1) a propositions task force focused on
experimenting with different combinations of products and services, and empowered to identify and accelerate
those that make most sense to our customers in the context of the new “workspace”/ ”workplace”. In the SMB
space we will go one step further and (2) explore how we can offer Digital Advisory services to help them reinvent
themselves and play their part in the economic revival.
In our quest to become more digital ourselves, we are (3) expediting our end-to-end digital journey, with a
relentless focus on how digital can help improve customer experience while also boosting revenues. To ensure we
are interacting with customers in the right way we are also (4) reviewing and modifying our own distribution
strategy to find the optimal mix of direct and indirect channels for the post-Covid-19 world.
Finally, it has been essential to (5) closely manage payment terms, suspensions and cancellations to ensure we
can continue to offer the right support to our customers and act with a degree of consistency across our global
footprint.

C2 General
 WHAT IF… we took this as an opportunity to emerge out of this Covid crisis as a TechComms company,
with a more digital way of operating, a faster product development methodology and most importantly
with a Spirit enabled growth mind-set?
This is our space to own, but if we are to succeed, we must move quickly and get it done, together.

C2 General