How does digital transformation work? American communications giant AT&T teaches you a few tricks!
The resistance brought by the legacy system to telecom
operators is as great as the resistance brought to any other industry. This is
the case with AT&T Communications, which is undergoing a comprehensive
transformation of technical infrastructure and processes in order to better
support 5G networks and other emerging technologies.
The resistance brought by the legacy system to telecom
operators is as great as the resistance brought to any other industry. This is
the case with AT&T Communications, which is undergoing a comprehensive
transformation of technical infrastructure and processes in order to better
support 5G networks and other emerging technologies.
Since joining AT&T from WarnerMedia in 2020, CTO Jeremy
Legg has established a new department to operate IT, software, security and
data architecture. The technical team began to upgrade the infrastructure and
processes to improve the employee experience, including integrating data
centers, migrating internal applications and systems to cloud providers,
simplifying data functions to make the business more agile, and phasing out
legacy applications while integrating before and after integration End services
and databases.
For example, when Legg first joined, AT&T had more than
7,000 applications-this is the result of several mergers and acquisitions in
the past few decades, but as Legg moved more computing workloads to the public
cloud, this number began Keep decreasing.
Legg said: "The rise of the public cloud provides an
opportunity to eliminate some applications and switch to a new target
architecture."
Here are a few secrets of successful digital transformation
shared by Legg.
01 Reduce the difference between IT expectations and
business expectations
Legg worked with the business department to develop a
multi-year roadmap. He knew that the IT team and the business team looked at
the same issues from different perspectives. IT leaders focus on phased goals,
including which technologies the company will adopt or eliminate, and when they
will adopt or eliminate them, while business leaders want to know the ROI
(return on investment) target and "when the cost curve will move toward a
technology that is conducive to the acquired technology." The direction is
curved". Legg will ensure that IT departments and business departments are
aligned on the roadmap as its mission.
AT&T Communications CTO Jeremy Legg
Legg said: "A very clear guideline can be established
to break down the work into several parts that each leader can perform."
He added that it is important to measure and track progress in this process,
including KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). ).
02 Strive for simplicity
Business people seldom care about technology, as long as the
bottom technology can bring the expected effect, so don't let the business
people worry about the bottom technology.
Legg said: "The goal is to make technology extremely simple,
minimize expenditures, and increase revenue. You can't expect business people
to interpret the technical architecture. You have to make the technical
architecture extremely simple, so that business people can focus on important
tasks."
03 Scale changes everything
In an environment where 200,000 employees serve 100 million
customers, the implementation of changes that affect all employees requires
careful coordination and communication and world-class change management. Legg
said: "When the scale is increased, the way of communication, frequency,
and how to clearly convey the information level by level are completely
different. You can't gather 200,000 people together."
From a technical point of view, Legg's team integrated
hundreds of databases and migrated 100 PB of data to the cloud. It is important
to stress test these systems to ensure that they can support real-time usage
scenarios, rather than only processing static data. "You have to look at
this from an architectural perspective, from a completely different
perspective."
04 Don't be perfunctory in retraining
A comprehensive cloud migration means that AT&T must
retrain its workforce. The Legg team spent several months changing employees
who are accustomed to accessing Microsoft Outlook email from the desktop to use
Microsoft Office 365, including teaching them to access email from their
smartphones.
But Legg said that if he can start from scratch, he will
strengthen training for employees in the target technology and architecture
before the transformation. Legg said: "If employees have an understanding
of the vision and technical goals, it will be much easier to get them
involved."
05 Try to automate as much as possible
Retraining and recruiting talent alone cannot solve the
problems of the technical team, which is why Legg said he strongly supports
automation, including the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning
to complete tasks more efficiently.
Legg said: "Whether it's developing the right
applications, solving problems, or performing different types of analysis,
automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are all essential.
The skilled job market is in short supply and high salaries-you can't hire fast
enough. To enough people, hiring is not a cost-effective way. "Although
the adoption of automation may lead to a certain degree of reduction in the
work of employees, Legg said that good organizations will retrain those
employees to make them more valuable. High jobs, such as customer service.
06 Link your efforts to actual business results
For a long time, business leaders have struggled to
interpret data scattered across multiple systems. The Legg team streamlined the
database and aggregated the data stored in these silos to form a single
customer view, thereby supporting more accurate sales prospects. Business
employees can use tools such as Microsoft Power BI to create dashboards that
reflect these insights.
According to Gartner's new IT spending research, currently,
boards of directors and CEOs are very willing to invest in technology that is
clearly linked to business results.
Legg said: "Now business and technical departments need
closer cooperation than ever before. Without the support of one party, the
other party can't succeed."