Digital transformation plays a major role in allowing organizations to enhance and intensify their performance, customer experience, brand image, and employee engagement. It has become unavoidable for all enterprises and businesses to digitally transform their operations because it enables them to remain competitive and adapt to changing customer expectations, particularly in the pandemic era and beyond.

Joann O'Brien is a digital transformation leader with over 30+ years of experience in driving large-scale change initiatives. Today, Joann leads TM Forum's Beyond Connectivity Initiative which develops the industry strategies and blueprints for growing telecommunication businesses leveraging the core capability of connectivity and building new business opportunities with high growth potential.  Joann also leads the Business Architecture initiative which identifies the key capabilities of Telco to enable transformative growth. Joann is the Vice President of Digital Ecosystems at TM Forum, the organization which helps communications service providers (CSPs) and their suppliers to digitally transform and thrive in the digital era.

Driving Digital Transformation Globally

TM Forum is an association of over 850 member companies, which include 10 of the world's top 10 network and communications providers and stretch across 180 countries. Its members tap into each other's collective experiences and abilities to collaboratively solve complex industry-wide challenges, deploy new services, and create technology breakthroughs to accelerate change.

The organization helps communications service providers (CSPs) and its suppliers to digitally transform and thrive in the digital era. This is done by providing an open, collaborative environment and practical support which enables CSPs and suppliers to rapidly transform their business operations, IT systems, and ecosystems to capitalize on the opportunities presented in a rapidly evolving digital world.

An Effective Technology Leader

Joann's technical career started back in 1995 when she worked as a Systems Analyst for a US Health Insurance company, redesigning the claims processing capability to significantly improve the processing time of complex claims, and developing the training to be deployed across all US sites.

Later, she moved to Apple and worked on the first iMac product as a lead engineer, where she gained experience from both a technical and a business perspective and learned about the importance of market trade-offs and timing. This experience was invaluable for her as it took her beyond the technical aspects and helped them realize the importance of synchronicity between business and technology.  She has traversed this boundary since, through her career.

Then she became inspired by telecommunications.  The potential to play a role in connecting every person and thing on the planet was exciting. The difference this could make to the lives and businesses everywhere has been the cornerstone of her career over the past 20 years. Initially, she worked on network infrastructure, mobile exchanges, and subsequently, the management platforms in telecoms.

In 2007, she joined TM Forum, the opportunity to work and influence at an industry level is what attracted her to working at the Forum.  I have had the opportunity to lead some of the most exciting and most impactful initiatives, from Director of Frameworx, being one of the key founders and leaders of the Open API initiative which has transformed interoperability and scalability across the telecommunications industry and beyond, and today to the Beyond Connectivity Initiative with the potential to simplify the consumption of connectivity by every product, service, and application on the planet.  She says, "I feel this role is taking my career full circle to the application layer, leveraging technology such as 5G in the transformation of business and improving the lives of millions through the effective application to sectors such as health care, manufacturing, automotive and cities". The most interesting thing for Joann is the mix of business and technology. While there needs to be strong technology, it must be complemented with innovation on the business side, in particular business model innovation, evolving from supplier to partner relations, creating win-win-win across ecosystems, and finding the right business models for all partners in the ecosystems to grow. "Given changes that are occurring across many industries at present, this new area will be the cornerstone of success for our members to thrive in the era of digital business, focused on platforms, partnerships and ecosystems", said Joann.

Every Setback is an Opportunity

Joann believes that with every experience and setback, there is learning, and we should take what we can from it and move on.  It's good to have a clear vision to aim for and then to focus on the micro successes to achieving your goal.  If you are very focused on a single mission, do also take time to keep a broader eye on the market to make sure you are not missing new opportunities.

"For me a great part of the journey has been, meeting like-minded people, building great relationships, and knowing that the work we are doing is making a difference right across the industry and ultimately to lives of millions of people." She adds.

Joann further said, "We should seek out opportunities that have a broad impact, particularly early in our careers.  In this way, we will gain vast experience and a broader perspective. Opportunities that help us to open our eyes a little bit wider are incredibly useful".

Making a Significant Difference in Achieving Goals

Combining a vision for the future with a meticulous dedication to the millions of steps at any given moment along the journey is a key to the pursuit of success in a chosen field.

In technology, however, there are some additional attributes that will serve a leader well, one is collaboration, said Joann. Technology is very collaborative.  Rarely, one person has all the answers, therefore, people must work together to achieve significant goals. Successful teams will have a diverse set of skills and success is achieved through teams. Having a collaborative style and helping teams to achieve their success by helping each person to be successful in their own right, will breathe success.

Being able to communicate the vision and bring people along, is another important attribute. Aiming to do something fundamentally different requires a mindset and cultural shift in an organization, having the communication skills to bring key stakeholders and then being able to build a team to help realize success, is invaluable, said Joann.

Additionally, being a good listener, listening to team members, to the industry, understanding the landscape, and adapting can make a significant difference in achieving the goal, she mentioned.

The Fundamentals to Future Success

Joann was appreciative of the early training she received which had instilled in her the importance of divergent thinking and considering things from many different perspectives. This became part of her DNA and approach to her work. This has helped with product design but also understanding stakeholder perspectives.

These concepts, plus collaboration, iteration, and co-creation between development teams and the customer and product teams are fundamental to future success. Continuous validation that one is driving in the right direction, involving the customer at every stage of the journey will increase the likelihood of success and breath a sense of trust with the customer.

AI, ML and Automation, Creating New Levels of Efficiency

Joann believes, "We are on the cusp of a step-change in the digital revolution, one which will dwarf the dot com era". The radical transformation of business and life including the adoption of global platforms across the industry will transform many different vertical businesses. Global platforms, combined with localization capabilities and disruptive technologies such as 5G, AI, ML, DL, automation, cloud, and big data will transform every industry, creating new levels of efficiency and simplicity.  The one constant is the customer, ensuring that customer needs are met, breaking down silos across industries, and creating a ubiquitous experience across traditional boundaries will make common data models and open APIs even more fundamentally important.

Joann said, as one of the founders and lead for the TM Forum Open APIs, it was critical for the long-term vision to ensure the technology was completely service and technology-neutral, meaning that the APIs could be used on operationalizing any service. "As we continue to see a further blurring of industry boundaries and the growing expectations of customers for the ubiquitous experience across different sectors, these APIs and data models can play a critically important role in helping to create that experience". There will be a growing need for partnerships between industries and across industries. Hence a focus on the ability to partner effectively and seamlessly, building trust with customers ensuring the effectiveness of the service being delivered to them.

Road to the Future

The realization of ubiquitous connectivity will be a cornerstone of the future of the telecommunications industry which will, in turn, be an enabler to the digital transformation of many industries. Hence, a strategic focus for TM Forum is 'connectivity as a service,' the ability to manage and optimize the right connectivity for the right service everywhere, every time. Joann expresses, "I am delighted to be leading this initiative".  When I consider the fundamentals of the digital revolution, the connectedness of everything on the planet is one of the most important aspects.  From fridges and TVs in the home to MRI and CT machines in the hospital to streetlights and traffic lights in the city to connected machines on the factory floor, we are undoubtedly evolving to an era of ubiquitous connectivity as a fundamental to the next phase of the digital revolution", she added.

This is an immensely exciting phase, helping to design, develop and deliver consistent connectivity as a service, with all of our telecommunications service provider members across the globe to reduce the friction of embedding connectivity in every product, service, and application in the future will exponentially accelerate digital transformation in every sector.

Pointers For Emerging Women Leaders

Joann suggested certain pointers for the budding and emerging women leaders to become successful:

• Search for your passion

• Total ownership for your career

• Initially seek simply to get involved and add value to the team

• Learn from opportunities and challenges and believe in lifelong learning

• Enjoy the journey!