(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Swedish ICT bellwether sees a lot of the growth coming in next five years.
If there’s one thing Helena Norrman would change it’s arguably not the way she has achieved so much success with Ericsson. Sometimes staying put and letting change come to you does wonders.
“That’s the reason I’ve stayed for 17 years. I haven’t had to change because the company has changed so much that the change has been there without changing companies” Norrman the senior vice-president chief marketing and communications officer and head of group function marketing and communications at Ericsson told Khaleej Times in an interview.
“It’s really been a fascinating journey. And now the pace of change is increasing it’s not like if we’re done in any kind of way; it’s more now is when the real change starts.”
And just how different is Ericsson then and now? “Zero similarity” she says.
“Before our big businesses were mobile phones fixed networks and mobile networks — the first two do not exist anymore within us while the third is where our real strength is. We have built a services business with 60000 people and more than 40 per cent of revenues for the company didn’t exist when I joined” Norrman said.
Norrman who was in Dubai recently touched on a wide variety of topics about the Swedish bellwether in the communications technology and services industry — even reminiscing the glory days of Ericsson’s mobile handsets one of the most popular communications devices back in the day that has been “missed a lot”.
Excerpts from the interview:
How do you define change?
Change can come from a lot of different things obviously. But change in our industry is very often defined by either changing challenges or changing opportunities. So it’s not always that you’re forced into it; change can come by both force and by conscious movement often a combination of the two but it’s typically driven by the dynamics around you and then you have to implement it in the organisation. Ericsson has obviously been meeting what the times are requiring.
What makes you stand out against the competition?
We build on four core assets and those have been the same for a long long time even though everything has changed.
First is technology leadership. We invest a lot in research and development; we have super-sharp engineers and the technology is still the starting point of a lot of what we do. And if you don’t have the best technology you cannot be a leader — both being a thought leader and a market leader.
Second is services leadership which is about having the right skills available for the customers.
Third is scale. We work in 180 countries which means that we can both make very large investments because we can sell it to a very broad group and also bring knowledge competence and understanding from one place to the next and in that way build a scale that our customers don’t have because they are not global but we can still give them this global competence.
Which leads to the fourth – competence. If we don’t have the best people we might as well go home.
What makes the Middle East so important to you?
The Middle East from an Ericsson perspective is very interesting for two reasons and a lot of other reasons. It’s that you have both a very big spread of market maturity; you have some of the most advanced markets in the world right now like Dubai and you some of the most emerging areas in the region so that means that you can see the full scope of how technology is driving transformation and changing society. You can see all of it here; it’s like a microcosmos. There are not so many regions that have the same sort of extreme spread that the Middle East has.
The second is what makes it different. We have a strong IT business here. It’s a bigger part of our business in the Middle East than it is on a global average. And the IT part is very important on the transformation journey we’re in right now and that of course means that that strength that we have here becomes very relevant.
From a global perspective where is Ericsson strongest?
We have two core areas where we start from where we are the market leaders: mobile infrastructure and related services like products software solutions people installation and optimisation – everything in running networks. Both of these we’re No.1 and we work with all the operators or at least the leading operators. If we were talking 15 years ago the core would have been handsets and fixed networks — none of which even exist today at Ericsson which is an interesting thing to think about.
And we don’t think that’s going to be enough so we’ve been investing into five new areas — IP networks; the cloud; TV and media; operational support systems and business support systems; and industry and society which customers that are not telecom operators. We’re doing all of these because we believe that by adding these capabilities to the core we will secure that both we and our customers are relevant in the next step to come in this very very changing industry.
How hard — or easy — is it to market your brand?
It’s both hard and easy. It’s easy in the sense that we have a very good story we have a strong story both in terms of our capabilities and offerings and all of that and also in terms of differentiating over the competition. It’s also so that working in communications and creating connectivity it’s a very relevant story to the world; it’s a story that resonates to whoever is genuinely interested in. I’m extremely happy to work for a company that does something that is important and relevant because in that way it’s easy to market it.
The difficulty lies more on the internal side more on the heritage side. I mean we are a technology and engineering company by history and a company that has worked on and thrived on having very few but very strong customers. We’ve worked with and are still working with a couple of hundred operators in the world and if you have a couple of hundred customers the best way to interact with them is to meet them and talk to them. But if you want to build on and broaden out the brand and reach new customers and attract talent then there is a big mindset shift needed in the organisation and that requires some work.
What are your plans in the short to medium term?
To reach out more. We look at how the customer base is changing so we’re going from today we have approximately 10 per cent of our sales that is not to operators; by 2020 that figure will be 20-25 per cent. We see a lot of the growth coming in the next five years… as a company we’re really good at understanding implications.
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