GlobalData participated in the annual Orange Business Insights event held in Amsterdam on 10-11 July 2024.
Under the leadership of CEO Ariette Moussnier Longpré, the company has embarked on a thorough transformation journey, transforming from a vertical to a horizontal organization and implementing major cultural changes to streamline and optimize operations and reflect customer demand for a unified service model.
This includes an internal digital transformation program to invest 200 million euros ($218 million) over the next five years to develop cutting-edge IT systems.
Value-added services to increase profit margins
Orange Business is not only evolving from a telecom company to a technology company, but also from purely integrated services to network-related value-added solutions with larger margins, aiming to differentiate itself from ultra-aggressive players like Infosys, Tech Mahindra and Tata Consulting Services.
In a briefing with analysts, Moussnier-Lonpré outlined some of the strategies to achieve this goal: In the current context, customers are very cost-conscious and it is an extremely competitive environment where value-added services are a must. The Orange business is focusing on improving its customization capabilities and transferring its tradition and know-how from its home market in France to the rest of Europe, MENA and beyond.
An evolved platform for tighter integration
The idea is to build an evolved platform on top of these greater integration capabilities. Heineken was used as a classic customer case study example, explaining how Orange Business increased its penetration from traditional MPLS network services, moved it to SD-WAN, and then moved to a SASE implementation to integrate connectivity and cybersecurity services, helping with observability and monitoring across its digital platform in the process.
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The company is also leveraging core infrastructure services from Orange Business integration team in India to continue its customer journey in a DevOps environment, enabling tighter integration and full automation of chain management.
Orange Business Strategy
Beatriz Valle, analyst at GlobalData, commented: “Orange Business has adopted a long-term strategy focused on cultural and technological changes that are labor-intensive in the short term but will pay off in the long term.”
The challenge for them is to be agile in evolving their overarching platform. Moving away from being a pure integration play is a smart move as it will lead to bigger benefits.
Moreover, the company's customer base is diverse – some are cost-conscious, others less so. This means value-added services will be offered in areas where Orange Business is leading in the domestic market and abroad, namely in highly regulated vertical industries in Europe, global cybersecurity and managed security services, and sustainability.”
Rationalizing Orange Business' product portfolio
One of its agility initiatives was launched in February 2023 and has been a huge success: At the time, the company committed to halving the size of its product portfolio to maximize efficiency.
With over 300 product lines, duplication from past acquisitions had to be eliminated and a thorough analysis led to several changes aimed at improving profitability and simplicity. This process was realised in 12-month cycles, including, for example, “end of life” products that became obsolete and the subsequent “end of life” cycle that gradually reduced the number of customers.
This will also help us to fully integrate our domestic and international markets, a key step towards a more aggressive expansion abroad. In addition, it will provide additional incentives for completing this process, making our sales team more focused and efficient.
Conclusion
Orange Business is undergoing a thorough cultural transformation that will be completed over the next three to four years and is based on a few core principles: fast decisions are better than perfect decisions, individual success is secondary to organizational success, and every problem is an opportunity.
The company is focused on building teams in India, Morocco, Egypt, France and Mauritius to expand its footprint outside of Europe to co-build the roadmap for its evolutionary platform.
