Digital transformation of far EasTone Telecommunications

        Far Eastern Group's "BTS talk" is a sharing and exchange platform promoted by the IT Committee. Experts inside and outside the group are regularly invited to share issues and trends in business innovation, technology application, sustainable operation / development and other fields with inspiring practical cases. This time, far EasTone telecommunication Chee Ching president is specially invited to talk about the digital transformation of far EasTone telecommunication.

        Why should far EasTone telecommunications transform?

        When enterprises grow to a stable stage, there are not many people who can be prepared for danger in times of peace, but people have no foresight and must have immediate worries. Therefore, we begin to think about how to find new growth drivers and create new growth curves? If the industry can not continue to grow, can it develop a second curve? This is the trigger point for far EasTone telecommunications to move towards digital transformation.

        The revenue trend of Taiwan's mobile market can be divided from the opening of 4G in 2014. In the previous 3G era, it was generally a seller's market. However, with the gradual saturation of the market, the high bid price of 4G and 5g bands, and the price cutting competition among peers, the profits of the telecom industry have been compressed. Especially after the outbreak of the 499 information fee war in May 2018, the profits have dropped significantly, In the past, far EasTone telecommunications claimed to have the highest gold content in the industry because it had many customers with high information fee. However, in the 499 rebellion, it also suffered the most.

        Transformation of far EasTone Telecommunications

        Douglas Hsu reminded us long ago that we should turn to the new economy business, so my first task when I entered far EasTone telecommunications was to serve as the transition director of the transformation office. The goal was to use 5g, cloud and "big people and things" technologies to provide solutions for consumer digital services and enterprise information communication, so that far EasTone telecommunications could transform from a traditional telecom company to a technology service company. At that time, a team of relevant technologies and products was specially selected from the business departments and it departments of enterprise customers, and then new recruits were recruited. The whole transformation office became like a "small it" actively developing the ICT and IOT markets.

        In the personal consumption market, far EasTone telecommunications has launched "far EasTone telecommunications heart life" around the "action life circle". In addition to providing telecommunications related services, far EasTone telecommunications also includes life payment, invoice carrier, cross supermarket coffee mug, exchange for far EasTone telecommunications coins, and other discounts. It can even watch wonderful exclusive audio-visual content to meet the needs of daily life. As for the enterprise user market, it is a key point that needs to be broken through. Especially in the face of government agencies, its competitor Chunghwa Telecom has a congenital advantage. Most public departments in Taiwan use its telecom services. Fortunately, smart ICT has brought new opportunities to far EasTone telecommunications. Because it is a new field, we can give play to the characteristics of agility, quickly integrate and adjust. With a professional and serious attitude, in the past few years, Far EasTone telecommunications has already achieved great success in the government bidding. Taking the national policy of "air conditioning per class" in primary and secondary schools as an example, of the 18 bidding projects in Taiwan, the "energy management system (EMS)" independently developed by far EasTone telecommunications has won nine bidding projects at one go.

        Why 5g, cloud and "big people and things"?

        Why does far EasTone telecommunications focus on 5g, cloud and "big people and things" among many technologies? First of all, wireless network transmission has more advantages than wired transmission, which is also the industry of far EasTone telecommunications. Compared with 4G, the new generation of 5g has the characteristics of high speed, low latency and multi connection; Moreover, once more and more data is collected, cloud storage and AI analysis will be required. However, AI requires powerful processors, various models, and it teams. Most companies, especially before digital transformation, can't have these. If they build models from scratch, it's actually too late. If far EasTone telecommunications implements these devices and models and shares them on the public cloud, it can save them the cost of building software and hardware, save them the time and money to train it teams again, and adjust the consumption according to demand, instead of buying all the top equipment at once. For start-ups with insufficient funds, such operational services are particularly needed. Far EasTone telecommunications is one of the largest cloud computing users in Taiwan, and also has a complete hybrid Cloud Architecture to provide related services.

        Of course, before officially promoting it to enterprise users, I insist that far EasTone telecommunications must be used internally to know how to avoid failure and what method is the most economic. In fact, Hon Hai will choose far EasTone telecommunications because it trusts our mastery of various clouds, can provide compound operation management, and has practical experience, This is also the biggest selling point of far EasTone telecommunications.

        Non digital conditions of digital transformation

        1. Organization should be in place: take far EasTone telecommunications as an example. At that time, the transformation office was responsible for promoting digital transformation. Unlike ordinary program office, the transformation office was actually an IT team. Considering that the existing IT team needs to maintain the stable operation of the telecommunications industry, I set up a small IT company, and did not focus on tracking KPIs, but only on how many ICT and IOT platform solutions were made.

        2. Culture needs to be updated: the core values of far EasTone telecommunications were originally integrity, innovation, collaboration and agility. However, I want to emphasize the company's care for employees, customers and society, as well as the mutual care among colleagues. Therefore, in the town hall, everyone agreed to add "care" to the core values.

        3. Employees need to communicate: before entering far EasTone telecommunications, I worked in the United States for many years. It is undeniable that the cultures of the two places are somewhat different, but I think that as long as we can compare our hearts, our colleagues will definitely feel it. In the past, the town hall of far EasTone telecommunications was only attended by supervisors. Later, I let every employee participate through online live broadcasting, so that everyone could fully understand the company's policies and vision. In addition, before the first staff meeting, I also introduced the net recommendation value (NPS), an indicator often used by at & T to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. Its scoring method is that 9-10 points represent recommendation type, 7-8 points represent no active recommendation, and 0-6 points represent no recommendation (critic). The net recommendation value is obtained by subtracting the critic's score from the recommender's score. If it is higher than 50 points, it is excellent. I understand the employees' views on the company through it. I want to know whether employees will recommend their relatives and friends to work at far EasTone telecommunications or recommend far EasTone telecommunications products. When the first evaluation was held in 2019, only more than 1000 employees participated. Many people were afraid to fill in and answer the open-ended questions because they were worried about being billed in the autumn. As a result, the net recommendation value was negative 2. In other words, two more people criticized far EasTone telecommunications than recommended. Later, I reviewed and handled the problems raised by my colleagues one by one, actively communicated with you through the staff meeting, and encouraged my colleagues to put forward constructive opinions. The evaluation result in 2020 was 47 points, and the most recent time I even got 74 points. Of course, what I value is not the score, but whether there is a trend of progress. Moreover, the impression of employees on the company is often related to the units or supervisors they serve. If I find that the score of a certain department is low, I will further understand. If employees misunderstand the company, they need to explain clearly. But if it is really unreasonable, they need to solve it. At present, far EasTone telecommunications conducts evaluation twice a year. I believe that the net recommendation score can rise all the way because we have done a lot of communication.

        4. Talents should be cultivated: excellent talents are the assets of enterprises, but those who are not good enough or idle are the concerns of enterprises. Therefore, far EasTone telecommunications strives to activate talent assets and provide perfect training and transformation opportunities. For example, in order to develop cloud technology, we have selected colleagues to participate in external training, and now 600 people have obtained relevant certificates; In addition, the internal lecturer team trains talents with data analysis ability through "data analysis camp"; In order to promote and deepen the cultivation of AI skills, we have also cooperated with Microsoft and Amazon Web services to hold far EasTone telecommunications AI Hackathon competition. First, external experts provide leading training for employees from different departments, and then through the competition, employees can give play to their expertise and use technology to solve problems faced in operation.

        At the same time, we are also actively looking for talents and cultivating technical elites through the 5g elite program and 5g solution boot camp. Of course, there is inevitably a high turnover rate of new technology talents, but I hope to make good friends. As long as they think that they can get nutrients from far EasTone telecommunications, they will naturally trust our services and products. Even if they go out to spread their branches and leaves in the future, they may still have a positive impact and may return to far EasTone telecommunications with better capabilities. Therefore, I will ask the human resources department to provide a report every week to understand the resignation status of personnel. If a person with short service years or good performance suddenly wants to leave, I need to understand the reason. Even if I can't retain him, I will give my blessing.

        Moreover, we will also maintain relations with the education sector through campus recruitment or collaboration between industry and school, including 5g lab research and development with Asia Eastern University of science and technology, or it project research and development with Yuan Ze University, Asia Eastern University of science and technology, Donghua University, Tamkang University, etc, It also holds business competitions with National Taiwan University Global MBA, and each department also provides internship or full-time job places according to strategic needs.

        5. Implementation should be pragmatic and KPI should be carefully set: in the past, at & T, all units created many KPIs in pursuit of KPIs, but in fact, there was little success. Therefore, I insisted that transformation should be pragmatic, and KPI should be carefully set without adhering to KPI.

        6. Those who understand technology should understand business: although it technology is very specialized, which is not easy for ordinary people to understand and communicate, I think that to expand digital transformation, it is still necessary to combine IT technology, so that it personnel can fully understand why they should do this and what the steps are, and then work closely with business departments to provide professional technology output services.

        7. Those in charge should adhere to: there will be resistance to transformation, and it is impossible to go smoothly at the beginning, so the management must have a firm understanding. Take far EasTone telecommunications as an example. Besides Douglas Hsu's insistence, as president, we need to know what problems we need to solve? What route should I take? Of course, in the process, we also need to observe at any time and correct according to the situation. We can't just rush forward and give up when encountering obstacles.

        Far EasTone telecommunication's new economy business continues to grow

        The first phase of far EasTone telecommunication's transformation has successfully driven the new economy's revenue to continue to rise, from 5% of the total revenue in 2016 to 17% in 2021. This year, it is expected to increase by 19%. However, my goal is 25%. I hope all circles can see that far EasTone telecommunication will not only focus on the telecommunications industry, but also draw a second growth curve by transforming its new economy business. As for the second phase of transformation, it is through "back office" to make the human resources, accounting and other logistics departments more digital; The third stage is to rebuild our industry and make it digitally transformed. In short, once the transformation starts, there will be no end. The most important thing is that you really start moving!

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