Telstra in the year of COVID-19

Andy Penn (Telstra)

Telstra is claiming that digitisation projects could pump $90 billion into the economy and create 250,000 new jobs by 2025.  

Speaking at the telco's Vantage Remixed conference’s keynote, Telstra CEO Andy Penn said that the opportunity for businesses to embrace digitisation is ripe for the picking. 

“While many businesses are clearly doing it tough, many have also grasped the opportunity to accelerate that digital transformation, and this is going to be critical to their success in the future,” he said. 

“It's also going to be critical to the success of the Australian economy, which is in all of our interests.” 

Discussions during the first day of Vantage Remixed conference circled around the point of businesses increasing their digitisation efforts to reach those predictions, stemming from modelling by PwC that the telco commissioned.

However, that $90 billion figure is reliant on a number of factors — the most important one being businesses actually decide to go for these digitisation projects. 

Telstra Purple 

Telstra has played its own role in these efforts to increase digitisation through Telstra Purple, the consolidation of its professional and technical service businesses that launched at Vantage last year. 

The service arm has seen a notable rise in interest for various solutions to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Michael Ebeid, group executive of enterprise. 

“What we've seen is an acceleration of demand for particularly cloud services as more and more organisations are moving their workloads into the cloud, as well as a lot of projects transforming networks to SD-WAN networks,” he said.  

There’s also been demand for collaboration tools, with Telstra Purple helping call centres to support their employees working remotely, which Ebeid noted has included some of the major banks and government call centres. 

A few examples of Telstra Purple’s efforts to accelerate digitisation projects during the coronavirus pandemic include its work with state agency Ambulance Victoria, bakery group Wild Breads and superannuation fund UniSuper.  

In all three cases, the organisations accelerated digitisation projects that ended up mitigating the impact of the pandemic in some way. 

With Ambulance Victoria, Telstra Purple developed the Critical Health Resource Information System, or CHRIS, to provide locations of available resources, like hospital beds, at a glance. 

Meanwhile, UniSuper needed to implement an automated solution and augment its infrastructure to support increased volumes of early release of superannuation payments — a policy implemented by the Federal Government for individuals to soften any financial hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic. 

In Wild Breads’ case, predevelopment begun in November 2019 on a direct to customer platform for bread delivery. Development kicked off at the start of the pandemic, with work on the project accelerating shortly after. 

Government 

This effort isn’t just on the shoulders of businesses however, as Penn spent some time during the conference outlining some policy and regulatory framework changes to reach the hypothesised $90 billion. 

The first of those changes, the CEO said, would be a review of legislation and regulation rules “that stand in the way” of having a paperless, virtual and cashless economy. 

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Next was to ensure policy and regulatory settings support the telecommunications sector with a vision that “considers the success of the NBN, but not at the expense of the rest of the industry, as is currently the case”. 

“We should all care about this because the digital economy is dependent on the success of the country's telecommunications' networks,” Penn said. 

“With the completion of the NBN rollout and the rollout of 5G accelerating, there is now an excellent opportunity for the government to develop a vision for Australia's telecommunication industry for the next decade — A vision that is technology agnostic and that provides an environment that is pro-investment and pro-innovation.” 

The last area that he believe needed to change was cyber security, which he said the Federal Government has already taken steps towards with its 2020 cyber security strategy. 

With that being said, Penn also said that the Federal Government has the potential to make a positive difference, as seen with the implementation of policies aimed at mitigating the pandemic. 

“Just like many of us as businesses, the Federal Government also needed to pivot quickly when the pandemic hit to ensure that it could continue to provide all its services to Australians, while also dealing with a massive surge in demand and inquires as it rolled out new initiatives to support the communities, such as JobKeeper and JobSeeker,” he said. 

“Even before COVID, the government's aspiration was for Australia to be a leading digital economy by 2030. That aspiration is now more important than ever before.” 

He added that if the country can meet that aspiration, “then it can only augur well for the prosperous nature of our nation”. 

Success 

With the right government policies in place, Penn said that flexibility was important to business success, stating that “work is something that we do, not to somewhere where we come”. 

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“The companies that will be the most successful in the future, will be those that offer maximum flexibility to their people. Flexibility to work from where they want, flexibility to work how they want, and the flexibility to work when they want,” Penn said. 

He was hesitant however on predicting what exactly the future of that flexibility looks like. 

“Are we all going to stay working from home? Will we go back to the office in the city, or will regional Australia become a winner? Frankly, personally, I think it is too early to answer these questions,” Penn said. 

“For now, the opportunity sits clearly before us. Those organisations that embrace digitisation stand the best chance of success, because it is that is now the new normal. 

“Distance does not have to mean disconnection and I believe these past few months have proved that. The businesses that will be successful in the future, therefore, will be those that can embrace this newfound humanity and make it the foundation of their culture.” 

As for businesses who choose not to accelerate their digitisation efforts, Penn believes they will be left at a “serious competitive disadvantage, and I think it’s only been reinforced by COVID”. 

“One of the things that the internet has done is it's democratised competition. So, it doesn't matter how big or small your business is, you are competing on a global platform, you can be competing with a business from Wisconsin in the US or Bordeaux in France, it really doesn't matter in the wine industry," he said. 

“Organisations that can offer their people flexibility to work from where they want, when they want, how they want are going to be the ones that can attract absolutely the best talent.

“What the last few months has shown us is it's actually not been the technology that's inhibited the adoption of digital ways of working, it's actually been more our ability and our willingness to adopt it. 

"As we've all been forced into becoming digital natives very, very quickly over the last period of time, I really don't think there's any going back.”