Redefining Vodafone's customer experience with AWS

A radical reframing

Today, telco customers have high standards—they expect service that matches the speed and flexibility of modern life. Recognizing this, industry leader Vodafone sought to transform from a “telco" to a “techco" that could provide a best-in-class digital experience to their customers and employees alike. To achieve this, they partnered with Accenture and AWS to become a cloud-based, digital-first company.

This involved a radical reframe of Vodafone's offering, positioning telco as an ongoing service. Now, as a cloud-native business, Vodafone can offer personalized customer experience wherever their customers need them, not just from a call center or high street shop. Their world-class technology team can develop and launch products more quickly. Most importantly, digital now constitutes nearly half of all Vodafone sales—an exciting shift that marks a new chapter for their business.

Better experience for customers and engineers

Vodafone’s cloud transformation was a five-year process. Accenture helped Vodafone develop a comprehensive strategy for cloud migration, then implemented that strategy in close collaboration with AWS.

Vodafone moved foundational services to AWS's cloud, embracing an agile, flexible model built on microservices. This allowed teams to develop new products and solve problems in parallel, dramatically reducing time-to-market. Vodafone was also able to modernize their network and replace outdated functions with accelerated cloud-native services. And to support these changes, Accenture helped Vodafone break down personnel silos and upskill their teams.

What does this mean in practice? For customers, it meant a smoother and faster experience. Historically, Vodafone customers had to call in or visit a store to get new products, change their service, or find answers to questions. Now, they can do all these things at any time from the comfort of their home.

For engineers, cloud architecture provided better tools and a much-improved work experience. Consider a Vodafone product launch. Before Vodafone's cloud migration, a team of 20 people worked 24 hours a day to ensure the company's IT infrastructure would hold up. Today, that same work can be done by five people. Engineers can identify and address problems much faster, so the entire organization can focus more on business outcomes. This has enabled leadership to eliminate redundancies, identify efficiencies and reduce costs.

Setting a new industry standard

Vodafone’s work with Accenture and AWS has already yielded impressive results for the company. Four years ago, Vodafone released 21 products. Last year, this was 2,300 releases and they are rated #1 for customer experience in their industry. They've increased their throughput by 250% and won eight industry awards during their digital transformation. Most importantly, customer satisfaction and employee morale are both soaring.