M1 rebrands with focus on Keppel ties, personalised services

M1 has unveiled a brand new model technique that guarantees to ship extra personalised buyer expertise and providers that extra intently leverage its ties with guardian firm, Keppel. The transfer comes virtually two years after the Singapore telco delisted and, throughout which, moved to a brand new expertise that now runs 90% on the cloud.

This was a part of a varied digital transformation initiatives that have been essential to allow M1 to transition from a pure cellular operator to a extra wholistic expertise supplier, mentioned its CEO Manjot Singh Mann, who was chatting with native media by way of video Tuesday. He championed the “model refresh” as a method to “revolutionise” communications in Singapore with “made to measure” choices, and tackle speedy shifts in buyer behaviour in addition to demand for service personalisation.

It required vital transformation on M1’s half, together with a transfer to a brand new digital tech stack that now ran 90% on the cloud, in comparison with 12% beforehand, and streamlining its functions to 30, down from 150 earlier than. It additionally slashed greater than 200 databases to a single centralised knowledge lake.

In response to ZDNet’s query on the challenges it confronted prompting the transformation, Mann mentioned M1 had “an extended legacy” of disrupting the market, however the best way expertise developed through the years meant it didn’t have one of the best infrastructure to adapt to prospects’ altering wants quick sufficient.

The transformation was wanted to offer extra agility to create new providers rapidly and interact prospects digitally, he mentioned.

The brand new tech platform would supply real-time knowledge analytics and deeper insights that higher matched as much as prospects’ wants contextually and instantaneously. It additionally would facilitate a completely automated frontend providing extra self-service choices for purchasers in addition to higher integration with M1’s enterprise companions, Mann added.

“Now we’ve the power to hyper-personalise services and enterprise options extra quickly, precisely, and contextually, catering to prospects’ particular wants,” he mentioned, noting that the telco had delivered on its unique aim of “linking anybody and something, anytime and wherever”.

“At the moment, we wish to be measured by a special and better bar. We wish to ship merchandise which can be distinctive and as private as they will get, bespoke and tailor-made…we wish to be the model that’s made to measure,” the CEO mentioned.

Other than a redesigned web site and cellular app, M1 is trying to do that by three new cellular plans — Bespoke Contract, Bespoke SIM, and Bespoke Flexi — the final of which is touted to permit prospects to resolve, amongst others, how a lot upfront fee they wish to give, the system they wish to buy, and the way a lot knowledge or voice minutes they require.

In truth, some 6 million permutations could possibly be created from the Bespoke Flexi service plan, Mann famous. “The concept right here is that after we create this mannequin, we will create ecosystems of different providers that may be accessed by our app, which can be tailored and personalised for our prospects.”

All 9 M1 retail retailers additionally have been reworked to be according to the brand new branding.

Betting on Keppel ties, product synergies

The rebranding is a end result of a two-year journey that noticed the Singapore telco’s delisting in March 2019 and buyout deal with Keppel, which has been a shareholder since M1’s inception in 1994.

The second telco at the moment, in a market held by incumbent Singtel, M1 needed to be an “rebel”. And because the market modified, M1 has needed to reinvent itself and enterprise, in keeping with Keppel CEO Loh Chin Hua, who was additionally current on the media briefing,

This want to rework led to the choice to delist, giving M1 a personal setting to be remade, Loh mentioned.

Particularly, he famous that connectivity was going to be an essential progress engine for Keppel’s own Vision 2030 technique. Right here, M1 performed a “pivotal position” alongside Keppel’s data centres.

“An increasing number of world is linked. You want knowledge, and knowledge must be saved and units to be linked. You want to have the ability to present knowledge analytics and actionable insights. It is clear to us connectivity goes to be a key progress sector for the group,” he mentioned.

He mentioned the 2 corporations over the previous two years had labored to establish potential areas to collaborate that included tieups with Keppel Electric and Keppel Offshore & Marine, the latter of which concerned checks that used autonomous vessel technology on M1’s community.

Such partnerships would additional broaden with the approaching rollout of M1’s 5G standalone network, Loh mentioned, including that the group’s Imaginative and prescient 2030 technique aimed to the organisation as an built-in enterprise offering providers on city growth, asset administration, connectivity, and vitality and atmosphere.

Services that each corporations developed in Singapore may probably be rolled out globally, he famous. He pointed to Keppel’s development of Saigon Sports City as a possible growth testbed for good city merchandise.

Mann added that Keppel offered an “in-house” lab that M1 may faucet to develop use circumstances in addition to check and find out how 5G could be used to build applications for various industry segments.

Loh mentioned: “There are clearly alternatives for a few of our painpoints to be shared with M1 and the way M1 can present potential options. Keppel would be the place to begin and as soon as we discover applicable 5G options for Keppel, our ambition is that this could then be rolled out to different gamers within the trade.”