2023 Integrated Annual Report

Three years ago, you initiated a daring program to transform Telia into a digital telecommunications company, with clear business and technology objectives. Will you tell us about this transformation? How far have you come and what role does Capgemini play?

Indeed, we have embarked on a customer-experience-led transformation, whereby we defined customer and business ambitions, derived the required enablers, and then focused 100% on execution. In my words, we simplify, standardize and scale (our 3Ss) our products, processes, platforms, people (our skills), and partners (our 5Ps). Our team has worked immensely hard and it paid off. We have returned to top- and bottom-line growth and improved customer satisfaction. We have simplified by retiring more than half of our legacy products and platforms and reduced the number of systems integrators we work with by more than 80%. We have standardized networks, processes and APIs, and we have scaled new products, platforms and partners across our markets for better efficiency, quality, and time to market. We have selected Capgemini as one of a very small number of strategic partners to support us on this journey with capabilities and capacity we did not have at the outset.

Can you describe your relationship with Capgemini in more detail? How are our teams helping you to achieve your goals?

Capgemini and Telia have a long-standing relationship of trust, which laid the groundwork for us to become strategic partners. We have jointly defined clear focus areas and goals in our transformation, such as simplifying, standardizing and scaling our business support systems for optimal efficiency, time to market and quality. I believe the key success factor is Capgemini’s outstanding people, including my executive counterpart, delivery leads and all of the experts on the ground. We have gone through stressful times together and emerged successful. Our partnership is based on respect, trust and transparency while relentlessly delivering with passion.

How important are the topics of generative AI and sustainability for Telia?

As we enter the next phase of our transformation, we will continue to simplify, standardize and scale, and we will derive exponential value from the analytics foundation we have built over the last three years. We have deployed generative AI use cases across all our domains - customer, product, technology, and enterprise. For example, chat bots to reduce customer care costs and improve customer satisfaction, generative-AI augmented products, AIOps, and developing Copilot using our Telia-wide GitHub repository to greatly increase productivity. Sustainability is embedded as an integral part of our strategy and we have emerged as a leader - demonstrated, for example, by our CDP score increasing from D in 2018 to A-. By the end of 2023, suppliers who accounted for 52% of Telia’s supply chain emissions from purchased goods, services, and capital goods had established science-based climate targets. Telia is committed to reducing its CO2 emissions by at least 90% across the whole value chain and neutralizing the rest by 2040. Another example is that we successfully leverage our Telia Finance business to support our handset and device refurbishment commitments. And our IoT technology makes significant contributions to sustainability, particularly in sectors such as transportation and smart energy management.