development > listening post

A NEW VODAFONE CEO HAs TAKEN THE REINs. EXPEcT A NEW STYLE OF lEADERsHIP.
BY SINDHU NAIR

RINGING IN CHANGE
anticipate a change in the way the telecom company is run. Whitehills inspiration is Sir Alex Ferguson, former Scottish football manager and player who led Manchester United from 1986 to 2013 the most successful manager ever, who guided the team to win 33 trophies, in 26 years. He is from my place in Scotland, says Whitehill. He had played for my home soccer team and since he took over the Manchester United captaincy, his achievement or rather the teams was phenomenal. A team that had not won any titles before 1967 with his guidance went on to win so many trophies. What Whitehill admires in Ferguson is his bullet-proof condence. His condence in what he wants to achieve, and in the people he guides to achieve it, is phenomenal, he says. The 1999 UEFA Champions League Final was played in Barcelona, Spain between Manchester United and Bayern Munich. The match is best remembered for Manchester United scoring two last-minute goals in injury time to win 2-1, after having trailed for most of the match. Whitehill remembers one inspiring story from

he new Vodafone CEO has arrived, the fourth one in the ve years since the telecommunication major hit Doha shores. Given the history that trails each new arrival, we can expect a wave of change soon to blow over the organisation. Whether the change will be in its office environment (Richard Daly, the last CEO, had changed the interiors to reect the seriousness of the business), a spurt of leadership talent (the enigmatic Grahame Maher, the rst Vodafone CEO, touched the lives of many with his principles) or more fundamental changes within the organisation, that is the big question. An hour with Kyle Whitehill, the new CEO, and I know that Vodafone IS in for change, in many levels: a new leadership style, in making renewed partnerships work for the telecom company, in making use of the global Vodafone image to leverage even more local interest and then, of course, there is an alteration in office interiors also in the making. The rst-quarter results have been optimistic and Whitehill is not anticipating a major change in the half-term results, but Vodafone employees can surely

WITH 1.14 MIllION cUsTOMERs, 64% OF THE POPUlATION Is MAKING A PHONE cAll ON VODAFONE QATAR.

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development > listening post

this phenomenal win. Three of his best players were not playing, and with just ten minutes to go and no goals scored, I was almost sure that they were in for a loss. With the game seemingly drifting away from the English side, Ferguson introduced another striker Ole Solskjaer and what happened was phenomenal, he says. Whitehill was watching the game with his customers and rejoiced at the turn the game took. As he was leaving, he chanced upon Ferguson and some of the team members. I said to Sir Ferguson, Wow, that was really lucky that you won. And he replied, 'What do you mean by lucky, I knew when I put my men there that they would score.' says Whitehill, And I thought that was very cheeky of him. But it was not. He knew that if he put the right people at the right place, they would win. It is this condence that Whitehill desires to imbibe, to position capable men/ women in the right places and to get the best out of them, and in effect the desired results for the telecom company. But this is not the rst thing on the priority list for Whitehill; he has a few others that require his immediate attention. Number one on the list is to build the network; number two to build the brand in Qatar. The challenge in Qatar is to continue to meet the global Vodafone equity while keeping the brand relevant to all the different segments in Qatar. I think we have done a very good job in making it relevant to the various segments of population now it is time to make our brand exciting to Qataris as well, he says. The third is to build on our products, services and market segments. We have a very high share of consumer mobile segments; we have a 35% share of the market but a smaller share in xed lines and an even smaller share of the enterprise market, so clearly the job is now to build on xed lines and also to work on businesses, which is historically Vodafone Globals strength," he says The fourth on the list is consumer experience. Whitehill likes to get a direct experience of the Vodafone market while nding out what the Company can do to make connectivity faster and exible. And nally, nd the perfect environment in which we can embrace people from different parts of the world to create an atmosphere of creativity and productivity is an interesting personal challenge for Whitehill and for the country as well. Competition is not always good The main challenge for Vodafone, claries Whitehill, as it is to other telecommunication companies in all GCC regions, is due to the fact that most of the telecommunications companies in the region are owned by governments and have been in monopolistic situation for decades. Each competiton that has come in has had upsides and downsides of the situation. The upside, which all Qatari consumers have experienced, is that of choice, and which inevitably brings competition and thus a better price. The downside, according to Whitehill is that the second operator has to work very hard as people here are slower to embrace change. People are loyal, and when it is the government that provides them their telecommunication needs, it becomes difficult to forge customers away towards a newer experience. So we would be optimistic on a longer-term basis to be a credible supplier of telecom needs, he says. But even then, with technology availability, there should be more choice, which Whitehill notes is not the case at present. It becomes extremely frustrating to know your customers needs but not be able to provide for it due to the industry structure at the moment. Thus it becomes difficult for Vodafone Qatar to answer consumer needs in certain areas as bre is being deployed by someone else in certain areas, says Whitehall, expressing his displeasure at certain existing rules within the telecom sector that effectively clips the organisations efficacy. To cloak his criticism he quips: The city is already dug up and there is not much space for more digging (for bre networks). Giving a more detailed explanation on the bre networking that is being rolled out, Whitehill says, There are three elements in the bre network. There is already a nice big backbone of bre network we have, so we can run the digital traffic, the voice traffic over the network, the next is the large corporates, and we do that with our partners QNBN, and we have already connected 30 of the 49 main towers and should nish it all by end of March next year. But the third and the most challenging and also the most expensive of the bre connectivity is to physically connect to all

QUARTERlY REsUlTs

VODAFONE HAS 1,146,000 MOBILE CUSTOMERS AS ON 30 JUNE.THIS IS AN INCREASE OF 31% COMPARED WITH JUNE 2012 AND A 5.7% GROWTH OVER THE PREVIOUS QUARTER.

5.7 31

GROWTH

GROWTH IN REVENUE

QUARTERLY REVENUE OF QR459 MILLION: 31% GROWTH OVER THE SAME QUARTER LAST YEAR

MOBILE AVERAGE REVENUE PER USER (ARPU)

AN INCREASE OF 92% YEAR-ON-YEAR ON QUARTERLY EARNINGS. IT REACHED QR99 MILLION (BEFORE INTEREST, TAX, DEPRECIATION AND AMORTISATION EBITDA)

QR123 92% qR16

MILLION

DISTRIBUTABLE PROFIT WAS QR16 MILLION FOR THE QUARTER AND NET LOSS WAS REDUCED TO QR85 MILLION, AN IMPROVEMENT OF 28% OVER THE SAME QUARTER LAST YEAR.
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individual homes. Vodafone has already given bre connectivity to Barwa City and The Pearl, but Whitehill would love to provide more homes with this high-tech solution, even though the economies are quite challenging. Network OK? Vodafone has always been on the receiving end of complaints on connectivity and network issues. How will Vodafone clear this reputation that precedes it? Why has Vodafone has still not been able to improve on its network issues is a nagging doubt that consumers may harbour. Whitehill throws light on this. Networks are judged by physical coverage and by the quality of service, he says, Physical coverage across the country has already been achieved, with Vodafone covering almost the same percentage of geographic areas that Ooredoo covers with just a small percentage left of the desert coverage and that will be done before the winter session begins. On the coverage issue, Whitehill feels that Vodafone has lled all gaps. The quality debate goes on, though. There are no call drops, time for set-up is the same as the competitor, and the signal strength is also very relative, feels Whitehall. Indoor coverage can be improved, he agrees but Whitehill feels that the quality debate is more perception-based, as the scenario has completely changed from the initial issues any consumer might have faced with Vodafone. With the huge technological advancements made, we are way above criticism, he stresses, adding: Now what we need is for people to try us out and understand this. It is difficult to break a habit. And changing perceptions is indeed a huge challenge. Most people have two SIM cards here but they just dont use Vodafone as much as they do Ooredoo, he says, And it is not a price issue for Qataris but an issue of trust which we have to work on. But Whitehill has some innovations up his sleeve that will be brought out only by the beginning of December and then he promises something very big in March. Innovations for Vodafone With most Qataris travelling to London, Vodafone UK is their preferred telecom there and it is frustrating for Whitehall

that they opt for the global brand while travelling but go back to the competition in their country. And then there is the Passport facility that was introduced by Ooredoo to the country, with Vodafone Qatar launching it in July 2012, which made connectivity much easier while travelling. But Whitehill claries that this Passport facility was introduced by Vodafone in the the UK to give its customers a roaming experience while they travelled around the EU. So he sees it as a clear case of regional competition walking away with a product that was introduced by Vodafone Global. Now Whitehill wants to use this global network that Vodafone has to bring something unique to customers in Qatar who travel to the UK regularly:It is an exciting opportunity to exploit the Vodafone global presence. Vodafone enjoys a 35% share of the market and to reach parity with its strong competitor seems like almost an impossible task. Realistically when you have a strong competitor, it takes a long time to reach there, but with positive economic conditions and with increasing population, the market will inevitably grow. We can take a bigger share of the corporate sector with the huge growth seen in businesses, the opening of the new port, Valley City etc, he says. Leadership rules Whitehill loves diversity in his workplace, just as Vodafone Qatar is known globally for its diverse culture. He has already hired his rst Qatari employee to join his strategic team, Dalia Al-Khalaf, Strategy Director, and says, There is a whole new dimension to the work place when you have a Qatari in your team. For someone who has travelled and worked across continents, Whitehill is not new to diversity nor to working in different environments. He has some qualities to take away from each of his sojourns in his career. From the UK, he has imbibed discipline, the right way to do things, a structured, predictable and professional way to doing business; from India he has gained condence, to be fast-paced with the need for customer-focused, dynamic, and get a strong sense of what is happening every day; and in Ghana, he learned, as in other emerging economies, to bring your sensibilities to work, to create boundaries for your organisation to work under

KYlE WHITEHIll
was the Chief Executive Officer for Vodafone Ghana from June 2010 to June 2013. Under his leadership, Vodafone Ghana became the second largest telecom operator in Ghana and grew the subscriber base from 2 million to over 5 million. In February 2008 he moved to Vodafone India as Chief Operating Officer. During his his time in this role, the subscriber base of Vodafone Indias business grew from 47 million to over 100 million.

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