TELUS Digital Nov 2019 by Business Chief Canada

Integrating resources to drive customer value

NOVEMBER 2019

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TELUS Digital, the digital transformation arm of telco giant TELUS, is unifying teams across the organization through a powerful Digital Platform

n the digital age, an increasing number of companies are establishing dedicated digital transformation arms to acceler-

ate the journey for themselves, their partners and their customers. A pioneer of this approach was Canadian telecommunications giant TELUS, 04

establishing TELUS Digital as a means to cement its position as a digital leader. “The journey started around seven years ago, and the foundation of the team was built around building up our web presence with TELUS.com,” says Ryan Kardish, Manager of the Digital Platform Evolution with TELUS Digital and experienced in the AI and analytics spaces. “In the modern world of telecom, you’re seeing customer demands and preferences, shift towards self-serve digital experiences, especially in the research and learn phase of their journey. The question was: how can we improve the customer engagement with the breadth of products and services that TELUS can offer through the digital channel? I see that as ground zero to the digital transformation story.” Steve Choi, Manager of Data Products at TELUS Digital, adds that catering to NOVEMBER 2019

1990

Year founded

CA$14bn+ Approximate revenue

59,000+

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“ We now have the ability this shifting landscape necessitated the birth of the dedicated digital arm. to build intelligent “In the past, we didn’t have the right systems and organizational structure to support the applications that really transformation,” he says. “That’s why there was this idea to spin off the digital take advantage of data group as a way to incubate new ways that we’ve had all along of working with an agile approach to but never had the means delivering value, iterating quickly, and being able to experiment.” to use effectively” Over time and along with shifts in 06

— Steve Choi Manager, Data Products TELUS Digital

NOVEMBER 2019

consumer expectations, particularly around mobile, TELUS needed to consolidate silos, technology stacks and

CLICK TO WATCH : ‘THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION’ 07 simplify the path to production to cre-

because their needs are similar across

ate consistent digital experiences. The

the capabilities we’re building,”

solution, a recipient of the ‘Open Digital

explains Choi. “Every team is looking to

Ecosystem Platform of the Year’ award

expand and build their digital presence,

at the 2019 TM Forum Awards, is the

and use these technologies to better

Digital Platform - an ecosystem of tools

serve our customers.” Through the

and solutions that enable teams to

Digital Platform, TELUS has an

develop and deliver cutting edge cus-

exceedingly powerful tool that simpli-

tomer experiences in a seamless,

fies the developmental processes for

collaborative manner. “As all these

teams across the organization and rep-

teams spun up to develop new func-

resents an exciting new level of

tions, we recognized the opportunity to

collaboration. Through the compilation

start investing in shared capabilities,

of resources that can be used again

shared technologies and shared

and again, TELUS has a resilient outlet

resources across those teams

for scalability and reliability in its w w w.te l us.c o m /d ig it a l

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development processes. “I always struggled with how best to explain this,” admits Kardish. “However, I now think about it in the context of: what are the steps for building a modern digital application? It’s everything from sourcing the right data from your systems of record all the way to ensuring that you’re investing in the personalization and consistency of the content and design components a customer can see, and so on.” The Digital Platform’s integrated capabilities enable each of 10

these steps, as well as affording the opportunity for teams to contribute to the platform’s ongoing development. “Any individual who wants to build on top of the tools and technologies we have built can do so,” Kardish adds. Choi notes that the Digital Platform also solves a challenge experienced by

available on the Digital Platform, the

many large organizations: the segrega-

reuse of those resources drives con-

tion of data across different

siderable efficiency in the development

departments and teams. “A lot of

process of a new feature or application.

teams would go searching across the

Not only that, but the advancements

organization to figure out how to build

made to those resources through their

a particular experience, but there

reuse can then be used again in the

might be another group that’s already

future. It’s an incredibly organic pro-

tackled that challenge,” he says. With

cess, driving iterative, internal

the resources of that project being

collaboration that breaks down the

NOVEMBER 2019

“ We’re starting to truly recognize what it means to digitally transform, to collaborate and coordinate across the many teams and businesses TELUS operates” — Ryan Kardish Manager, Digital Platform Evolution TELUS Digital

E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE

Steve Choi Steve leads the Data Products team at TELUS Digital, which is focused on building machine learning applications and reporting automation solutions within the digital ecosystem at TELUS. He is passionate about connecting data systems to generate new insights and drive incremental value.

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Building our customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s business remains our primary focus.

Be it promoting their brands on stage, assisting their search for talent, providing them with essential digital marketing tools and service or celebrating their successes. Congratulations to our friends on the digital marketing team at TELUS for their continued success.

#buildingourcustomersbusiness

“A lot of teams would go searching across the organization to figure out how to build a particular experience, but there might be another group that’s already tackled that challenge” — Steve Choi Manager, Data Products TELUS Digital

barriers that have traditionally limited team-based development cycles. With the mantra ‘automate all the things’ being easy to spot on its website, it is no surprise that the expedition of the developmental groundwork for new applications at TELUS Digital is further accelerated by a robust automation strategy. Aside from the well-communicated benefits to businesses ranging from increased efficiency and accuracy to adding value to the daily tasks of staff, automation has also been deployed at TELUS Digital to gain a grip on ever-shifting customer trends. “As we look across the traditional channels at TELUS, specifically within our field tech and call

E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE

Ryan Kardish Ryan is a passionate leader and intrapreneur, leading the evolution of TELUS’ award winning Digital Platform. With a dedicated focus on delivering our customerfirst promise, he is driving forward our digital transformation mandate, and working hard so that anyone (customers and team members alike) can build a ‘Digital TELUS.’

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PART N ERS Adobe “Adobe has been a key partner in our journey towards turning the data we collect into insights and action. They have evolved their solutions in ways that integrate well with the technologies we use. As a result, we’re able to deliver experiences that enable our customers and drive business value for our organization”

teve Choi, Manager, S Data Products

center experiences, what we’re starting to see is that both our customer and team member demands and preferences are changing quicker than ever before,” says Kardish. He adds that the challenge is mitigated by the shift towards chatbots, conversational interfaces such as smart speakers, unified agent desktops, and interactive voice response (IVR) tech which offer opportunities for accruing insight-rich data whilst necessitating a scalable NOVEMBER 2019

Red Hat “Our digital platform is hosted using OpenShift a Kubernetes orchestration platform by RedHat. OpenShift allows us to focus on delivering value to our customers while the infrastructure that supports and enables hundreds of applications is managed by RedHat. This relationship means that we don’t need to focus on managing, patching or scaling our infrastructure and we can focus on building great products.” Aron Reid, Director, Technical Operations & Infrastructure

and reactive approach to their implementation in new offerings. That being said, TELUS’ approach to data is not solely focused on current data accrued through its various customer-facing solutions. Through the cloud-based unification of different systems within the organization, TELUS Digital is unlocking the value of data that Choi says can even be decades old. “Historically, there’s always been a separation of what I consider operational data systems and analytical data systems; traditionally, the latter were second-class citizens,” explains Choi. “That was a practicality issue because, in the past, your compute and storage would be relatively expensive. With cloud, that’s changed. We now have the ability to build intelligent systems and applications that really take advantage of data that we’ve had all along but never had the means to use effectively. The scale of data, the velocity of data, it’s always been there, but now we have the means to keep up with it.” The key takeaway from TELUS’s transformation efforts, and indeed of the development of its staggeringly w w w.te l us.c o m /d ig it a l

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“As we look across the traditional channels at TELUS, specifically within our field tech and call center experiences, what we’re starting to see is that both our customer and team member demands and preferences are changing quicker than ever before” — Ryan Kardish Manager, Digital Platform Evolution TELUS Digital

NOVEMBER 2019

effective Digital Platform, is that unifying technology reaps dividends. Across an organization as large and internally diversified as TELUS, the value of a platform that brings together the expertise and resources of each of them for the benefit of the company, its partners and customers cannot be overstated. “We’re starting to truly recognize what it means to digitally transform, to collaborate and coordinate across the many teams and businesses TELUS operates,” enthuses Kardish. “Recognizing that a lot of great work has been happening across the entire organization, taking the best of each world to create a set of solutions, best practices and standards that help define the guiding principles of how we can work and operate better as an organization, that’s when you get the big wins.”

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TELUS Digital 768 Seymour Street Vancouver, British Columbia V6 3K9 Canada www.telus.com/digital