On Video: Virgin Media Talks Digital Transformation - Have a Good Cultural Fit and be Wary of ‘Scope Creep’

Virgin Media is deeply committed to digital transformation, and is working with multiple partners to make its own project a success. What lessons has the company learned so far? We talked to two senior execs.

In 2021, Virgin Media UK teamed up with the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) to assess the impact of digital transformation on the UK economy. The report concluded that digitization could add £232 billion of new revenue by 2040. 

For context, that’s a similar sum to the GDPs of countries such as South Africa or Finland.

Of course Virgin Media commissioned the research because it will play a key role in powering this new era. Virgin Media is the UK’s leading provider of fiber and wireless broadband with 47 million connections across broadband, mobile, TV and home phone. 

In 2015, it launched the £3 billion “Project Lightning” project – the single largest investment in broadband digital infrastructure in the country for a decade. Then, in 2021, it set out a vision to ‘upgrade the UK’ through investment in fiber and 5G infrastructure.

However, Virgin Media understands that in order to drive forward digital transformation for its customers, it has to start with its own operations.

In 2020, the company started this journey of using digital processes to improve omnichannel customer journeys. Central to that process was finding a partner to bring all revenue management functions onto a single platform. It chose Netcracker. 

So how is the collaboration progressing? And what lessons have been learned?

In two exclusive interviews, we talked to two senior Virgin Media executives about the project and the partnership.

José Luis Carrizo, CIO B2B IT at Virgin Media O2, talked about the importance of a good cultural fit. A digital transformation can be disruptive. It introduces new ways of working that impact all departments. Carrizo says: “We appointed Netcracker as key partner for revenue management and billing because the product is right – and also because the way we work together is right...we wanted to create a high performing team and get people into the program that have the right mentality…people that don't accept the status quo and look for solutions where it seems there are none.”

This sentiment was backed up by Carrizo's colleague Eva Slattery, Director of Accelerate Transformation Programme at Virgin Media O2. She has been overseeing a four-year program to transform the company’s mobile customer journeys – upgrading stores, launching a new e-commerce platform and moving customers from old systems to the new stack.

Now, Virgin Media O2 is ready for the next step – to digitally transform its fixed consumer and B2B journeys. It's been working closely with Netcracker on these projects, and Slattery says a key goal is to minimize ‘scope creep’. 

In other words, to reduce unnecessary work and duplication. She says: "We have worked with Netcracker to build out-of-box capability and to have design forms in place. This means that when there are new product innovations we always know what has been done already on the Netcracker stack.”

To watch the complete interview with Eva, click here.