Innovation and companies’ ability to adapt are what change markets for the better. Testifying to this are the experiences of Vip mobile as a company and a service provider
Dejan Turk, CEO of Vip mobile Serbia and A1 Slovenia, speaks to CorD about his company’s operations during the time of the so-called “new normal” and the readiness of our society to transfer its everyday life to the digital world.
How ready was Serbia, in terms of infrastructure and institutions, for the mass transfer of business online?
– Under the newly emerged circumstances caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, telecommunications in Serbia, as one of the most dynamic branches of industry, proved their adaptability and readiness for change. From the perspective of a company that bases its operations on the quality of its offers and services, this characteristic has contributed to us adapting to new market challenges. From the outset, Vip mobile has nurtured the “start-up spirit”, and courageous steps, turnarounds and innovations represent a terrain that we handle well.
Our initial response to the increase in mobile traffic over the previous period has been free chat applications, innovative business solutions of the Exoscale cloud platform and Eyson video conferencing, as well as the DokTok platform for online consultations with doctors. The new services that emerged during this period were crowned with the launch of Vip’s virtual shop, which is the first of its kind on the telco operators market in our country.
How did the transfer of companies’ operations to work from home reflect on demand for your services?
– As a company that has, from day one, nurtured a conviction that the business game is first won on the labour market and that our employers are the most important players in it, we endeavoured to protect them, and even before the imposing of the state of emergency many already started working from home, and over the course of just a few weeks we managed to reorganise and function just as well as before, despite the fact that almost 100 per cent of employees were operating under the work from home structure. In a company that ranks its people first, there is no ad hoc recipe for loyal and responsible employees – corporate culture should be part of the company’s foundation.
Our experience has shown that our society was in essence ready for a large part of its activities to be transferred to online platforms. I believe that this period has laid a solid foundation for the further development of the digital society
This is particularly evident under challenging circumstances, when some sudden solutions, such as work from home, will not be perceived as a problem, but rather will encounter the support and understanding that we’ve been building together all these years.
Vip mobile is part of the Telekom Austria Group, which is a leading provider of digital and communication services in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. How much does the Group’s experiences of other markets mean to you when it comes to improving your operations in Serbia?
– The A1 Group is recognised in these countries as a serious guide through the digital age, so the expertise of other colleagues within the Group is invaluable to us, both when it comes to improving various services locally, and with the aim of implementing innovative solutions that are already available in some countries in which A1 operates. The conviction that operators need only to provide access to infrastructure and customer support has long been surpassed in the telecommunications industry, and that’s why the expertise and experience of the A1 Group, which offers integrated services to over 25 million users, are of great importance for our further development.
Vip is known on the Serbia market as the largest greenfield investor in the country, with almost a billion euros invested in the development of telecommunications, and we firmly believe that we will continue to grow, nurturing our position as one of the largest innovators in the telco industry.