The operator is wise to focus on its business customers – a bright spot in its performance
Vodafone has partnered Quantexa, a decision intelligence platform provider, deployed in the operator’s Google Cloud environment. The aim is to help Vodafone consolidate and leverage data from its systems to understand business customers better.
Quantexa works with clients in industries including banking, insurance, telco and the public sector, but Vodafone is the first in UK telecoms to use its Decision Intelligence Platform to improve customers’ experience.
The platform is designed to provide a single view of all the interactions customers have with Vodafone and the products and services they purchased to improve how Vodafone’s customer teams engage with those businesses.
According to Vodafone’s recent H1 earnings report, the operator’s enterprise business a bright spot in an otherwise lacklustre performance. Group CEO Nick Read commented, “Around 18 months ago, we made the conscious decision of investing beyond connectivity for business, and you’re seeing good service revenue growth in our business segments, and over 20% growth in the beyond connectivity areas.”
Margherita Della Valle (pictured), Group CFO at Vodafone, added, “ What’s driving the current acceleration is essentially two things. One is the beyond connectivity part of service revenue. It’s about a quarter of our service revenue. It’s now growing in excess of 25% year-on-year. And you have a full range of areas, which are growing very strongly from IoT, which is growing in the high single digit. Cloud, 30% year-on-year, there is a wide range of digital services accelerating.
“And also if you look at it, instead of from the product mix, from a segment mix, I would say we are still – we are seeing strong acceleration into the public sector where we are growing double digit at the moment. And some of it may be tender associated to the European recovery fund. Some of it is simply higher demand that we are seeing now.”
Vodafone’s had a relationship already with Quantexa which joined Tomorrow Street. This is a joint-venture between Vodafone and the Luxembourg Government that links start-ups, corporate partners and Vodafone teams to accelerate the use of new technology and develop new business opportunities.
Quantexa’s platform will initially focus on small to medium business customers before extending to small office/home office and larger business customers in the coming months.
Vodafone has also launched new broadband package for small businesses in the UK, Business Pro II, which is claims is up to £442 cheaper than BT Business Halo.