Interview
We spoke to Guillaume Boudin, CEO of Sofrecom, about the changing telecoms ecosystem and why unifying your team behind the company’s raison d’être is so important.
Can you tell us about Sofrecom and your role within the company?
Sofrecom is a consulting and engineering company focused principally on the telecoms market. We are accompany telcos in their business development and transformation, with a primary focus on Africa and Middle East.
Our main sites are in France, Tunisia, Morocco, and Dubai.
As a subsidiary of Orange Group, we are working, of course, with all Orange countries around the globe and also with other telcos, as long as they are not directly competing with Orange.
As CEO of Sofrecom, in very fast moving markets, I must ensure that we continue to meet our customers’ expectations and that we anticipate changes in the digital sector with the proper skills and expertise, the proper offers and organisation, and by capitalizing on our different assets globally.
From your perspective, how do telcos need to evolve to remain competitive in the modern connectivity ecosystem?
I will mention five key evolutions for telcos from which they can differentiate in very competitive environments. These five evolutions are: becoming more Green, more Agile , more Intelligent, more Innovative, and more Secure.
- More Green: This is a key trend in all sectors. Green services and green providers will be more and more requested by customers, both for consumer and B2B markets. With the drastic increase of energy costs, programs to reduce networks’ energy consumption have already been set up everywhere.
- More Agile: There should be more agility for network management thanks to network virtualisation and softwarisation, more agility for new services development through close interactions with customers, and more agility within the teams and organisations in very fast moving markets.
- More Intelligent: With the roll-out of data ad AI use cases, we can improve customer experience, automate parts of operational activities, and help prevent negative network events, like outages and frauds.
- More Innovative: Innovation being not only on technology and new services, but also on new business models in our rich and complex ecosytems.
- More Secure: With more resilient infrastructures for networks and data centres, and with stronger cyberdefense capabilities.
As Sofrecom, what are the key areas your company is assisting telcos with?
Sofrecom, as a consulting and engineering company focused principally on the telecom sector, can intervene on most of the above points. This includes helping telcos to define and roll-out action plans to reduce energy costs and their carbon footprint; implement agile and digital models across organisations; design and migrate to new networks or IT infrastructures; identify and deploy data and AI use cases to improve customer experience or internal operational efficiency; analyse market evolutions to build new business models and launch new offers; and improve network coverage, quality of service, resiliency, and security.
You spoke on the Company Culture panel at Total Telecom Congress looking at a variety of subjects such as cultural transformation, diversity and inclusion, and building a successful working culture. What do you consider the key elements telcos must consider when trying to improve their company culture?
To improve company culture, we need first to be clear on the basis: what is the company’s raison d’être and the mission of the different teams?
We need to involve the teams in common goals where everyone is encouraged to take part. We need to ensure our staff continue to develop and at the same time attract new talent. We need to be clear on the values we want to promote and lead by exemple.
In very fast changing markets and complex environments, three values are very important for telcos but also for many other companies:
- Team spirit, with the capacity to work transversally
- Agility , with the capacity to adapt quickly
- Diversity, with the capacity to have multiple different profiles and get the best from the teams
Regarding inclusion and going beyond company culture, I would even say that digital inclusion is part of a telco’s mission when providing communication services, internet access and mobile payment services.
For their incredible work on improving gender equality in thet telecoms sector, Sofrecom Tunisie was awarded the People & Culture Award at this year’s World Communication Awards.
To learn more about how your company can take part in the World Communication Awards 2023, celebrating 25 years of excellence in the telecoms industry, please contact Total Telecom MD Rob Chambers at rob.chambers@totaltele.com.
