Overview

pThree UK is a communications company focused on connecting people to people, people to things, and things to things. Today, Three UK has more than 10 million customers who use over 3.5 times more mobile data than the industry average. Its network covers over 99% of the UK population. It employs more than 4,000 people across offices in Maidenhead, Glasgow and Reading, and 300 retail stores./p

Supernova Award Category

Data to Decisions

The Problem

pTelecommunication and media are ranked the third lowest out of all industries for customer satisfaction. However, it was this statistic that encouraged Three UK to set the audacious goal of becoming the UK’s best-loved brand to distinguish itself from the telecommunications stigma. Three UK’s goal was to become a champion amongst customers in order to achieve market disruption. /p pAdditional research provided by about one million customers identified the six themes that were the most important to Three UK customers: transparency, personalization, simplicity, digitization, effortlessness, and a human element./p pWith this in mind, Three UK identified three areas to drive: customer experience, employee experience, and value./p pIn a world of increasing customer expectations within an already impacted industry, Three UK knew addressing this would be a difficult feat that required a technology that could scale into a digital 5G world, without increasing customer costs./p

The Solution

pThree UK’s solution was three-fold: transform its operating model, introduce greenfield cloud-native infrastructure and build the UK’s fastest 5G network. Three UK turned to TIBCO’s partner Microsoft Azure for its primary cloud infrastructure and looked to software partners who could productize its omnichannel customer vision. /p pTIBCO’s technologies gave the company a standardized way of creating a system, process, and experience APIs to drive new ways of exposing services to customers. Its deep integration into Three’s cloud core network allows unique insight into personalized customer network experiences and opens the way to give customers their own personal network as Three’s 5G deployment evolves. /p pThe more flexible system not only provides a better, more responsive customer experience but delivers far more capability and capacity at a lower cost allowing Three to continue to offer market-leading value to its customers./p

The results

pSince Three UK’s transformation, the company has gone from 98% on-premise to 95% on the cloud. With TIBCO as its technology partner, the service provider is no longer held back by legacy thinking and is digital-first and future-proofed. By taking a product-based, non-customization approach, it has reduced its entire application suite from over 360 applications to under 100. /p pMapping back to the initial three pain points (customer service, network quality, and value/price), Three UK, in conjunction with TIBCO, was able to mitigate them all. /p pFor customer service, this meant going through a major IT transformation driven by the six themes from the survey to create an operating model focused on customers and services. To tackle network quality, Three UK deployed a 5G network and strengthened its 4G spectrum. Finally, to ensure that customers were getting the best value for a low price, Three UK modernized its entire ecosystem of operations to provide a seamless customer experience./p

Metrics

pPrior to the transition to the cloud, Three UK had the smallest amount of spectrum for 3G and 4G (9%) in the UK in comparison to EE (47%), Vodafone (32%), and O2 (12%)./p pIn parallel to the cloud-native IT estate, Three UK built the world’s first end-to-end cloud-native core network and coupled this with acquiring the UK’s largest 5G spectrum holding to launch the UK’s fastest 5G network in August 2019. /p pTo increase customer satisfaction and minimize complications, Three UK was also able to reduce their apps from over 360 to under 100 and is continuing to implement processes to lower the number even further./p pIt has also moved away from heavy customization of software and built strategic relationships with key partners such as TIBCO to drastically reduce time to market and in-life maintenance and upgrades; from 6 months to make a pricing change to under 1 hour across all channels and 2 years to perform a full billing system update to under 4 hours with zero service interruption. /p pThree UK was able to come out of an uphill battle on top, hitting higher performance results than ever before, and is on the way to reaching their original goal of becoming the UK’s most-loved brand./p

The Technology

pFor Three UK, building out its infrastructure to support the future meant shifting to a container-based architecture built on cloud-native, API-led, event-driven technology. /p pBy turning to TIBCO’s suite of integration and API management products (TIBCO Business Works, TIBCO Messaging and TIBCO Mashery) on Microsoft Azure, Three UK enables a fully cloud-native solution while leveraging integrations and APIs to continue enhancing customer experience and improving employee experience./p

Disruptive Factor

pThe digital transformation of Three UK has been an evolving and highly rewarding journey. The concept of a cloud-native IT estate delivering a true omnichannel customer journey seems simple enough. However, Three UK learned very early on that the journey to true cloud-native product-based solutions is not just a lengthy journey for the operator, but also for its product and partners as well. The journey requires a completely different mindset, a stubbornness to stick to the principles and a determination to disrupt and challenge not only the customer experience at all touchpoints but the operating model of how a telco and their partners should work as a whole. /p pBy working with our key product and integration partners like TIBCO and bringing their teams and businesses along for the journey, Three UK has built an amazing foundation, creating disruption in the marketplace and reshaping how it delivers products and services./p

Shining Moment

pThe shift has allowed Three UK to strengthen its customer relationships rather than focusing on developing software in overly complex, customized environments requiring layers of bureaucracy, resulting in outdated solutions. /p pSaving this time was critical during COVID-19, as we were able to pivot quickly and keep our channels and customers informed simply whilst having no impact on our ongoing build and delivery programs as all our tooling and products are already in the cloud./p