Vodafone CIO: Paul Wybrow

Vodafone's mobile communications empire spans the globe and the challenges facing its CIO are also far-reaching. From negotiating with telecoms equipment makers, where he also wears his CTO hat, to overseeing a global IT workforce of 4,000 his is one of the biggest CIO jobs in the UK. But how do you foster a culture of innovation against a background of IT consolidation and outsourcing? silicon.com editor Tony Hallett caught up with Vodafone's Paul Wybrow at the company's global HQ in Newbury.

Tony Hallett: Now mobile communications as an area is very closely associated with innovation. Can you give us an insight into how Vodafone approaches the subject?

Paul Wybrow: Innovation is key to what we do. Innovation for innovation's sake that's not interesting. Innovation to differentiate for our customers, that's what we do. Let me give you some examples. In June this year we launched 3G broadband, which is really about taking 3G and making it like home broadband, so it's three times the speed, it's 1MB per second, it's reduced latency, it's more capacity. And that's a case of industry innovating and actually Vodafone taking it to the market very early. But the way we did it I think was actually the true innovation. The way we did that was we actually worked with some partners. We worked with laptop partners - Dell, Acer, Lenovo, soon to be HP - and what we're doing is embedding 3G broadband into the laptop so you don't have to have a separate datacard. We actually worked with them on the internals of the device to make sure that the card works properly by having correct positionings of the ariel, making sure the performance is right so our customers get the right experience, and together we have actually, I believe, created something which sustainably differentiates us in the marketplace.

TH: Vodafone's business is very clearly aligned with technology actually in a way that a number of other companies in this series perhaps aren't. Is it a case with that you really have to sweat the assets, sweat the technology a bit and get the most out of it, or are you able to actually just look ahead at what's coming up next?

PW: So, I have to do really two things. One is I actually, like any other CIO, have to sweat the assets of the business, and that's really important when you're in a maturing market and actually to keep your cost base as low as it can be, because low cost actually is a competitive differentiator. But at the same time we have to up the rate of innovation because our customers are becoming more and more demanding and we're finding we're having to take products and services to market quicker and quicker and quicker. I mean this year within Vodafone technology it's known as our Everest year because we are taking more and more products to services more and more quickly.

TH: You're very close to the programme known as 'One Vodafone' - it seems that a lot of big companies at the moment have a similarly named programme of consolidation etc. Can you tell us a bit about how that allows you to grow and actually how it allows you to innovate?

PW: One Vodafone really is a badge to say how do we, the 18 operating companies across Europe, work together with our friends in the group to actually get group synergies so we can take the best ideas from one country to another, so we can do things once rather than many times, where it makes sense? The example I talked about before about the laptops. We have the ability to work with the manufacturers because of our size and scale and actually they will work with us in preference to other people so we can then deliver unique products and services to our marketplace. So that's an example where it really does make sense to work together collaboratively. But there are other instances where actually you say each local market is unique, so we have to do that balance and make sure the primary thing we need to do is really focus on our customers and make sure we meet their needs.

TH: The last time we met I remember you saying to me that when it comes to outsourcing one shouldn't be dogmatic or religious when it comes to making that decision one way or another. You have recently inked deals with both EDS and IBM. Can you tell us a little bit about the thinking behind that? Is it to take away pain and maybe allow you to innovate and do something different elsewhere?

PW: The thinking is very simple. If you think about the history of Vodafone as a company we've always brought products and services to the market together with partners and it's true to say ideas don't come from one place, they come from many places, so what we've done is we've looked and said, at our stage of evolution of our company of our business maturity, what's the right thing to do? And actually we've decided that now is the right time to bring in some partners to help us with the IT, to help us improve our time to market, to help us with our innovation, and to help us with our costs too.

TH: Innovation clearly isn't just about technology even if that's what we've mainly been talking about. I know from past conversations that you've said you've been inspired by Sir Christopher Gent who's obviously closely associated with Vodafone. Can you give us some examples of his approach to innovation?

PW: I think he was a very innovative businessman, you can tell by the deals he did. But he used to encourage innovation to take place at all levels within his company. And let me give you an example from earlier Vodafone life. Back in the early 1990s there was an engineer called Ian Harris who was looking through the specifications on GSM and saw a thing called SMS, which he thought would be a great thing to use internally to help him communicate while they were trialling the digital system, which was new at that time. And he went and talked to some of his marketing colleagues and they said 'yes, we think [that would work]' and that took the whole innovation train off.

TH: And would you say you have an over-arching approach to the whole CIO role, and if you do, what part does innovation really play in that?

PW: My first role is as a leader. As a leader of the business as well as the leader of technology, and that's really, really fundamental to what I do. It's a given that I can understand and handle the technology but the real tough technology decisions, then that's what I have experts for. My job really is to bring technology much, much closer to the business, really, really close to it's customers, really understand their needs, understand all the options that we have for delivering those and actually doing them really, really well. And that means delivering innovative products and services but in the way we do things internally get the innovation occurring down at all levels within the company and then you can really make things happen.