Digital transformation for the customer IN ASSOCIATION WITH THREE IRELAND
DIGITAL REPORT 2020
Three Ireland: digital transformation for the customer 02
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Stephen Reidy,CIO of Three Ireland, tells us about the benefits its transformation has enabled for customers, the dawn of 5G and its COVID-19 response
T
hree Ireland is one of the major players in the Irish telecommunications market, as its CIO, Stephen Reidy, tells us.
“Three was a disruptor 10 years ago. But then, when we acquired O2 in 2014, it really became the major player that it now is. We provide a number of 04
services, but our vision is really about connecting people and connecting things. It’s about being the telco of choice, to be relevant to people’s lives and to provide them mobile telephony.” The business has a broader strength in the B2B space. “We provide a lot of services around managed security, we take on people’s call centres, and so there’s a lot we offer around the whole mobile space.” As CIO, Reidy has overseen a comprehensive, wholesale digital transformation. “We’ve recently concluded and delivered a completely new IT stack. A new CRM system, billing, ecommerce, self-serve, order management, rating, integration and a big data platform and storage infrastructure. So pretty much across the company, we’ve delivered a lot of new technology and changed a range of systems.”
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“ Three is very ambitious, always striving to be better and to be the best it can be” — Stephen Reidy, CIO, Three Ireland
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Three Ireland - AI + Automation CLICK TO WATCH
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07 Before that came the systems
When it comes to data, Reidy has
change involved in the merger of
ensured Three has a comprehensive
the Three and IT technology stacks,
approach. “We have Hadoop, a data lake
which presented its own challenges
which we procure through our partner
and opportunities.“Big, complex
Amdocs. We have a BI platform from
transformations are very challenging
Teradata. We use IBM’s Datastage for
because they require a lot of focus,
our ETL platform, and we are about to
commitment and even belligerence.
go live with a new and exciting real-time
For me, it’s key that there’s top down
next best offer /action engine, which
support from the C-level across the
we’ve also procured through Amdocs,
organisation. Because it’s generally
and all of these platforms are built on
never just an IT transformation, it’s a
flexible and scalable storage infrastruc-
business transformation. That’s some-
ture with data protection from Dell.”
thing that was key to our success.”
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Such technology is used in line with
a particular type of agility - which you
a strategy of understanding the cus-
often can get from cloud as opposed
tomer’s needs. “We want to be able to
to an on premise solution. But we have
offer our customers relevant services
very much a hybrid setup, appreciat-
at relevant times. So, like many telcos,
ing that public cloud isn’t always the
the question is: ‘how do we monetise
right answer.”
the data that we have in a more efficient way?’” Reidy is not considering, as some
Emerging technologies have also found their place in the transformation, such as the machine learning used
are, a wholesale move to cloud
in its aforementioned next best action
systems. “We use the cloud where
/ offer engine. “AI is something we’re
appropriate,” he says. “That’s based
looking at to improve our efficiency.
on cost benefits, or where we need
In terms of our customer care, we
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E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :
Stephen Reidy Title: CIO
Company: Three Ireland
Industry: IT
Location: Ireland
Stephen Reidy has been Chief Information Officer for Three Ireland since 2014. Stephen has responsibility for Three’s IT systems. Prior to taking up the role of Chief Information Officer, Stephen was Head of Technology for Telefonica O2 Ireland from 2011. Previous roles include Director of IT, Head of Programme Management, and Head of Service Management for Orange/EE in the UK whom he joined in 1993. Stephen has extensive experience across all technologies and specialises in driving transformation and collaborating across complex organisations. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Limerick. www.t h r ee. ie
Three modernizes with Dell Technologies At Three, data generated by new business operations and systems was overwhelming legacy infrastructure. So Three turned to Dell Technologies. The solution? A modern, scaleable PowerMax storage platform from Dell Technologies, powered by Intel™ Optane™. With PowerMax, Three reduced billing runs by a factor of five and experienced a 26% reduction in hardware footprint, along with a 24% reduction in power. What’s more, Three is now ready to do even more with data, including AI and machine learning functions.
Modernize Your Business
How Dell Technologies enables Three Ireland’s transformation Jason Ward, VP and General Manager at Dell Technologies Ireland, on the technology support it provides to Three Ireland. Jason Ward is VP and General Manager at Dell Technologies Ireland. He has extensive experience managing teams across Europe, and favours exactly the culture in place at Dell. “If you’ve got a very happy and contented workforce that have a good work life balance, and are all focused on the customer, leadership becomes quite an easy job,” he says. The company’s mission is to create technologies that drive human progress. “Our vision is to become the most essential technology company, from the edge to the core, from data centres to the cloud and everything in between. We as a company can help organisations transform themselves from the world of legacy IT right into the digital world we’re in today.” Its efforts are delineated into a number of complementary offerings, as Ward explains. “Dell, as a family of companies, has created technologies and solutions that feed into four categories. We go to market around Workforce transformation, security transformation, IT transformation and digital transformation.” One such beneficiary of Dell’s approach has been Three Ireland. “We’ve been working with them for five years now. One of the great things about working with Three and Stephen Reidy, the CIO, is that they are a real disruptor in the marketplace in terms of telecommunications and mobile.” That disruptive capability has required Dell’s technology. “We’ve been working with them primarily around supporting them on their core business systems. Support systems, analytics, CRM, and the management of data across Three is critical to their business requirements, and that’s very much how we’ve partnered with them to support that.” That’s involved the use of some of Dell’s latest and greatest technologies, such as flexible and scalable high end storage infrastructure known as PowerMax. “PowerMax underpins virtually all of the mission critical workloads and appli-
Dell Technologies partner video cations that Three needs. PowerMax changes the game for Three business applications. It is designed with a multi-controller, active/active scale-out architecture and industry standard, end-to-end NVMe and SCM powered by Intel Optane™ technology. Inline, global dedupe and compression add extreme efficiency to their data centre - we’ve reduced the time it takes for billing runs to one fifth of what it was. All of the core, mission-critical systems from billing right through to real time analytics and AI for customer data are being supported by our underlying PowerMax technology, whichis very exciting.” Going forwards, as the telecommunications industry evolves with the likes of 5G and software-defined data centres, Ward is confident that the partnership will also go from strength to strength. “The fundamental basis of a good partnership is firstly understanding what our customer’s objectives and challenges are,” he says. “We work closely with Stephen and his team to understand Three’s business requirements and what they are trying to achieve as an organisation. Only from that can we architect our solutions. We value the relationship tremendously, and we’re looking forward to continued expansion and growth over the coming years.”
Three’s ultimate seamless omnichannel customer experience Three delivers on its promise to make their customers’ lives easier
In the quest for a full, business-driven digital transformation to support its consumer and enterprise customer base, Three Ireland engaged Amdocs to fully manage the project from end to end. Powered exclusively by Amdocs DigitalONE Experience360 Layer, the fully-digital, omni-channel customer experience drives personalized, proactive actions for customers, agents and employees in real time, on any channel. The interfaces were created using design-led thinking and a “build-once-deploy-many” widget approach. Three and Amdocs were recently selected as finalists in TM Forum’s Excellence Awards in the Customer Experience & Trust category.
Contact us to learn more.
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Three Ireland - Data Strategy CLICK TO WATCH
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13 use AI in our chatbots, so we have a combination of human interaction and automation. We also do a lot of robotic process automation (RPA), where we’re using technology for repetitive activities, as opposed to people. That frees them up to do more value-added activities.” Three’s transformation was enabled by the assistance of a number of key partners, such as software and services provider Amdocs. “It’s certainly a partner relationship, and we work well together. Amdocs are always looking at where they can add value to our www.t h r ee. ie
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Three Ireland - The Cloud CLICK TO WATCH
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14 business. When we have challenges in our transformation or in terms of delivery, we always work on those challenges together.” Reidy emphasises the fact that Three’s trusted partners mutually deliver value to each other. “Transformation requires both parties to work and be successful together. With Dell, we procure the majority of our laptop and computer estate through them, as well as leveraging their PowerMax platform for our storage infrastructure. Tech Mahindra, in partnership with Amdocs, provides us with a lot of operational and delivery
“ It’s really about how we can continually evolve and enhance the customer experience”
5G is the next frontier for the telecommunications industry, and something for which Three Ireland is excited to enable. “We’re certainly very busy at
— Stephen Reidy, CIO, Three Ireland
the moment,” says Reidy. “It obviously
services, both here in Ireland and in
IT systems.” Reidy sees the benefits
India. BT is very much a crucial partner
of 5G as being transformational for
for us in the IP space. The technologies
society at large. “It’s very early days,
that we use are complex and they all
and like most new technologies, there’s
have to interact and integrate with each
a lot of promise there. I don’t think it’s
other. So it’s very important that our
going to happen overnight, but it’s very
partners don’t just work well with Three,
exciting and it will be very interesting to
but also with each other.”
see the use cases and how supporting
involves new radio and new core technologies, and that integrates with all our
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Tech Mahindra is proud to support Three Ireland in their recent transformation. Accompanying Three Ireland as they RUN, CHANGE and GROW. Supporting current and heritage IT business
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Partnership through transformation
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Working together as the business evolves
Tech Mahindra is committed to both Ireland and Three Ireland and we look forward to a prosperous and successful future together.
technologies develop over the coming years to make widespread 5G a reality.” The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Three’s activities and required an agile response, as Reidy explains: “It’s brought forward certain activities and pushed others back.
“ We’ve recently concluded and delivered a completely new IT stack” — Stephen Reidy, CIO, Three Ireland
Clearly, in terms of how we work
forever, depending on how long social
as an organisation, it’s fundamentally
distancing is in place, and so on.”
changed how we work - as it has
Reidy is clear that the principal
for most companies worldwide.”
benefactor of Three’s transformation
He also sees the pandemic as pushing
has been the customer. “We’re always
companies into a broader digital journey.
looking to do more. It’s really about
“I think it will have a fast-track effect,
how we can continually evolve and
particularly in the retail space where
enhance the customer experience.
people have been forced online. In
We’ve delivered a digital transformation,
the long term, that’s going to change
which has brought a lot of new digital
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“ It’s really about how we can continually evolve and enhance the customer experience” — Stephen Reidy, CIO, Three Ireland
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interactions with customers, and that
its partners have achieved. “It’s been
journey will continue with the advent
a very rewarding experience, for me
of new technologies. With AI, with 5G,
personally, for my team, for the com-
there’ll be a lot more services that we’ll
pany at large, but also very much for
be delivering and servicing, joining the
our customers. Transformation is not
dots and making sure the customer
something that you start and finish at
experience is easy to use. Making sure
a particular time. It’s a continuum. And
that we provide reliable services to our
we’ve learned in the last few years how
customers so that they can rely on us to
to succeed and continue to be agile.”
provide them with connectivity - particularly now the ability to work from home.” Reidy’s proud of the effects the transformational work his team and www.t h r ee. ie
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