Telstra hunts digitisation leader for Salesforce, Cloudsense, Amdocs overhaul of sales system

Telstra is preparing for a "once in a lifetime" digital transformation of its own internal sales systems in what it has dubbed "one of the biggest digital transformations in Australia."

The telco is searching for a digitisation lead to head up a new team inside Telstra's Global Enterprise and Services business. GES focuses on Telstra's top enterprise and government accounts. 

Telstra plans to revamp the sales experience for its 2000 global sellers by deploying software-as-a-service products from Salesforce, Cloudsense and Amdocs as part of the new system. The aim is to deliver a better customer experience, reduce operating costs and maintain market leadership through digitisation.

Cloudsense is an omnichannel commerce platform extension for Salesforce that gives customers configure, price and quote tools along with order and contract management for any channel.

Amdocs specialises in software for communications and media companies with products that include business support systems, operational support systems, open network solutions, internet of things and big data analytics.

Moving to a single digital system would allow Telstra to transition from cumbersome, manual or inefficient processes cobbled together over decades of expansion and automate some of the sales elements in the business. This would mean customers could order from a fully digitised environment, and could require fewer boots on the ground for Telstra's sales team.

The new digitisation lead will be responsible for building intelligent support and sales systems as the product owner for the configure, price, quote and order system.

"Not only will you be a strong strategic bridge between the business and IT but you will also get the opportunity to liaise with some of the most exciting digital brands in the market," Telstra wrote in a job listing.

Key responsibilities for the digital lead will be shaping the configure, price, quote and order roadmap across the B2B business, work with the development teams to represent business requirements and establish a new way of working to deliver new capabilities.

Telstra has been open about its ambitions to become a global tech player and invest in digitising the business as it moves towards that goal.

The company has been curating a mix of best-of-breed technology to develop its own product offerings. It has made a foray into the internet of things with the launch of its smart home-as-a-service product, which combines smart devices and energy kits from a range of vendors. Telstra has also pulled together partnerships with hyperscale cloud providers such as Microsoft, Amazon and IBM Softlayer as part of its multi-cloud strategy, which sits alongside its own CSX platform.

Last year, Telstra announced it would accelerate the digitisation process with a $1 billion investment. The company set a number of goals to be completed by 2020 to achieve this, such as:

• 50 percent of applications retired, contained or moved to the cloud by FY20 – currently 17 percent.
• Delivery of agile/DevOps capabilities increased from 20 percent to 70 percent by FY20.
• Straight processing of consumer NBN orders to 95 percent by FY20 – currently less than five percent.
• 70 percent of customer service transactions conducted from digital channels – currently 58 percent.

Telstra expects to cut $1 billion in costs from the process, and to make back $500 million in annual benefits from the investment.

Telstra's head of cloud Jim Fagan told IBM's cloud conference in Las Vegas last month that it was migrating approximately 4000 mission-critical applications to IBM's Bluemix cloud to form the foundation of a "very large digital transformation project".