Overview

T-Mobile is well-known for being a telecom company, however, the organization is one of the largest and fastest-growing mobile-first banking platforms in the U.S and operates more than 7,500 physical retail outlets.

T-Mobile is listed on the NASDAQ (TMUS) and is well known for advanced 4G LTE offerings and transformative nationwide 5G network. In 2020, the company’s 75,000 employees generated almost $70 billion. Based in Bellevue, Wash., T-Mobile provides services through its subsidiaries and operates its flagship brands, T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile and Sprint.

Supernova Award Category

Tech Optimization and Modernization

The Problem

In the hugely competitive, highly commoditized mobile phone market sector, every company only has a very limited opportunity to optimize the buying experience of each customer, either online or in-store.

Like many companies, T-Mobile viewed its supply chain as just a passive set of processes that supported business operations. Industry experts, Erik LaValle and Keith Siegfried were challenged with pivoting the company’s strategy for its SAP-based supply chain and leverage the platform to deliver on the T-Mobile brand promise.

The challenge was how to take an existing, conventional SAP instance – the same application used by a large percentage of companies around the world, including many of T-Mobile’s competitors – and transform it into a powerful agent of competitive differentiation.

To further compound the challenge, massive changes in consumer expectations are impacting how buyers want to interact and be treated. Under the right leadership, many of the factors involved with honoring these expectations can be positively addressed with the creation of an agile, responsive supply chain. Getting it right can result in market dominance, but getting it wrong can release an equally powerful set of forces that rapidly pushes a company into an inescapable downward spiral.

The Solution

A critical component of T-Mobile’s supply chain portfolio is a heavily customized set of SAP instances used as the system of record for financial and operational functions. Erik/Keith brought together a combination of people, processes and technologies to completely transform the value proposition and business contributions of the company’s existing platform. The limited ability to enhance the in-store customer and mobile expert experience was the driver to focus on transforming its inventory management solution, transitioning to a fully digital, serialized solution. Focus was on operational robustness, as failure at any point in the chain causes immediate and irreparable damage to client satisfaction levels. A variety of mitigating factors for supply chain resiliency were put in place to ensure that should an interruption occur T-Mobile's customers can continue to receive their product in the way that they want to.

The results

Using its supply chain as the basis for a company-wide digital foundation is enabling T-Mobile to control its own destiny and doing so in a very fast and agile manner. The complexity of the company’s business model placed an emphasis on using digital developments to supplement core systems with approaches that enable T-Mobile to dynamically meet the market’s constantly changing business needs.

The supply chain touches nearly every aspect of the company – including procurement, inventory management, business intelligence and finance operations – and is incredibly expansive in terms of the business impact and the breadth of operations that it supports.

The highly tailored environment has proven to be invaluable for T-Mobile. When COVID-19 created a rapid shift in how best to enable consumers to safely interact with retailers, T-Mobile was able to rely on its optimized supply chain to power significant enhancements in service delivery. The importance of keeping people safe, helped inform the company’s priorities around the customer experience initiatives that were already on its technology roadmap. This resulted in the accelerated rollout of many new capabilities, such as the ‘buy online, pickup in store’ experience, as well as other contactless options like curbside delivery. Enhanced capabilities such as ship-from-store and same-day delivery remain on the roadmap.

Metrics

All metrics surrounding the impact of any aspects of the supply chain are considered to be confidential. However, given the criticality of the processes to the entire company, overall financial performance is a very accurate proxy for the impact that Erik and his team are making. 2020 represented T-Mobile’s best year ever and the company was the only national wireless provider to beat expectations on both customer growth and profitability.

In a spectacularly challenging year, even adjusting for the Sprint merger, 2020 saw significant improvements in the majority of key performance indicators – such as EBITDA, industry-leading growth in subscriber additions, and net cash. The outlook for the remainder of 2021 is equally strong.

The Technology

SAP ECC 6 platform supplemented with 200 SAP modules, all extensively customized. The SAP system coexists with a digital layer powered by a distributed, highly available and secure tech stack. The digital layer enables product dev teams to execute an iterative domain-driven sw development approach. The digital layer also serves as an Abstraction Layer to handle customizations outside of vendor package solutions.

Disruptive Factor

Many companies miss the opportunity to leverage their supply chains as a strategic advantage. T-Mobile has made its supply chain instrumental in fulfilling its brand promise and delivering on consumer expectations of getting product where they want it, when they want it.

Under the leadership of Erik and Keith, T-Mobile has brought significant new capabilities to market, enabling the company to reposition itself as a top-tier retailer (and a fashion retailer! The products are style / color / size), rather than a conventional telecom provider.

T-Mobile has undertaken a series of massive transformations over the last 18 months, including the $26 billion merger with rival Sprint. The combined entity’s consolidated supply chain operations have brought the companies together to work in a highly productive and impactful way. The renewed focus on digital delivery has brought about huge changes for each team, but the use of strong change management techniques has resulted in even higher levels of contributions to the business and ultimately to the customer experience.

Shining Moment

When asked this question, Erik replied “I'm particularly proud of our work in bringing the buy online pick up in store experience to life and very excited with the possibilities of extending the capabilities in the space even further. We've built a fantastic foundation that enables us to continuously realize new experiences for customers in a very fast and agile manner.”