Collaboration paramount in KPN’s successful business transformation

Dutch telecoms supplier KPN took two years to hold out a posh transformation, redesigning inner operations for the long run and transferring from utilizing about 80 purposes from third-party suppliers to Oracle Fusion Cloud.  

KPN is the biggest telco organisation in the Netherlands, with greater than 12,000 staff, some 10 million clients and annual revenues of greater than $5bn. The firm goals to make the Netherlands the best-connected nation in the world, in addition to provide its clients probably the most environmentally pleasant network and providers.

“With the arrival of WhatsApp in 2009, KPN’s revenue from mobile services began to decline,” stated Hamza Tedik, govt vice-president for group business providers at KPN, throughout a buyer session at Oracle CloudWorld 2023 in Las Vegas in September. “Year over year, revenue was falling. As of last year, the company is growing again because of our clear strategy that is all about connectivity.”

KPN was working on a legacy enterprise business providers atmosphere and varied third-social gathering purposes – some 15 years outdated with greater than 370 integrations and greater than 1,000 customisations, in accordance with Michael Bell, vice-president for enterprise IT at KPN, in one other CloudWorld session. “Our ambition is to connect everyone in the Netherlands, and also provide a sustainable future,” he stated. “We want to grow as a company and offer customers a digitised experience.”

This, nonetheless, requires additional digitisation of the corporate itself. “As a technology company, we are looking to the future,” stated Tatiana Sumina, govt vice-president and program director for Oracle Cloud at KPN, throughout a keynote. “When you do that, it quickly becomes clear that complexity and legacy will hold you back. We had to change to stay ahead.”

The firm regarded for a platform on which it may home a number of processes, with standardisation and simplification main the best way.

“Previously, we were running numerous different applications that were upgraded only sporadically, leaving little room for innovation in between,” stated Sumina. “We wanted to move towards one integrated platform that dynamically evolves on a regular basis and offers more possibilities for innovation.”

To form the complicated cloud transformation, KPN enlisted the assistance of Deloitte. “That close collaboration kept us on our toes,” stated KPN IT head Bell. “In such a big project, it’s crucial to provide structure, and make sure all parts of the business are on board and linked to the strategy of the company.”

This can be endorsed by Tedik. “One of the things we learned is how important it is in such a journey to have a clear vision and to keep repeating it,” he stated. “People tend to forget the why; they get tired over time. It is paramount to keep reminding everyone why you are doing this and what it will deliver.”

The scope of the challenge was enormous, and revolved round 5 streams: finance, procurement, initiatives, provide chain administration and HR.  

The transformation began in November 2020, and had three deployments. “In January 2022, we migrated to Oracle HCM,” stated Tedik.

“Then, in May of that year, we migrated our fibre business to Oracle Cloud for finance, procurement, and projects,” he continued. “Our fibre business is our big subsidiary, driving roll-out of network, and this turned out to be a good decision; to basically try a new way of work in real operations and support this domain with advanced tools. In April of this year, we migrated all the Oracle modules and other applications in scope to Oracle Cloud.”  

One of the challenges KPN confronted in the method was that providers needed to proceed as regular, regardless that there was heavy rebuilding happening in the background.

“That’s why it was so important to work in a structured way through a proven project methodology, governance and principles,” stated Bell. “Every transformation is rocky and has its ups and downs. But sticking to a set of agreed rules gives you ground to cover to ensure you stay on the right path.”

For instance, we had two guiding rules, which have been important for the challenge: follow the usual as a lot as potential – “Oracle to the max” – and redesign useful processes by implementing greatest practices.

After the migration, KPN has three customisations and a wide range of greatest observe processes. “I’m really proud of that,” stated Bell. “If you had told me that at the start of the project, I would have thought that was far too ambitious.”

Moreover, the corporate has managed to cut back the variety of integrations by roughly 50%. “In the past, we had about 370 integrations, and in our current situation, we only have 170,” he stated. “That is a huge benefit from a cost perspective and an operational point of view, because it’s easier to maintain and reduces the complexity in the organisation.”

Change administration proved essential in the method, stated Sumina. “This transformation required a change of mindset of our people, for them to be open to new technology,” she stated. “We have been trying to leverage a maximum of standard functionality, as any customisation creates complexity. That required for some people to be open to change the way they worked.” 

The telecoms supplier has simplified its IT panorama, lowered the variety of integrations and retired virtually 80 purposes. “As a result, we have better insight not only into processes, but also into the Euros we spend,” added Sumina. “The transformation forced KPN to look critically not only at which applications were running, but also at what was running in those apps. We had to clean up datasets from 15 years, which was quite a challenge.”

That was one of many the reason why one out of three go-live moments was delayed by six months. “Initially, we were supposed to go live with the last piece of transition in October 2022, but we wanted to make sure everything was right,” she stated. “Data quality defines how fast you can stabilise processes and deliver proper support to the business. Because we delayed the migration, we were able to achieve a higher automated migration rate and went live with a massive volume of operations in a smooth manner.”

KPN shared key classes from the cloud transformation in a number of classes at Oracle CloudWorld 2023. Besides change administration and construction and methodology, Bell identified the significance of assist from the board members.

“You will run into situations where users want to stick to their own customisations,” stated Sumina. “Three of our six board members were truly owning the transformation programme, driving decisions and securing the direction we took. That support is needed to move forward in challenging moments.”

In a migration of this magnitude, every thing is interlinked, and making sturdy cross-string alignment can be essential. “We involved specific functional users, as well as technical experts, that sat together to figure out what was logical and what changes needed to be implemented,” she stated. “There were fierce discussions at that table, but you have to cater for that in your governance.”

But maybe an important lesson for KPN is that these sorts of transformations are virtually unattainable to do alone. “The success cannot be attributed to KPN, or to Oracle, or to Deloitte; it was the collaboration and synergy that made this a successful business transformation,” stated Bell. “At one point, you couldn’t even tell who was Oracle, who was KPN and who was Deloitte. Everyone shared the same view and goal. It was very hard work to get to that point, but it proved paramount for success.”

Now that KPN’s IT panorama has been modernised and the corporate has technologically prepped for the long run, there may be room to consider the following steps.

“We are exploring the next level of automation for specific processes and the development of advanced models of forecasting,” stated Sumina. “And even though AI is not new to us, we are aware that our transformation has greatly increased possibilities, which we will leverage further in time.”