Vodafone Head of IT Delivery Ajit Dhaliwal selects suppliers through the company’s marketplace procurement system in which the Vodafone CTO and central group functions constantly evaluate new technology.
“For us, it’s about evolution, particularly when you’re talking about multiple millions of customers being served on those core applications, but in terms of new investment, we look to organisations like Gartner and our strategic relationships… and we really look at what’s the best technology fit for that particular market based on the customer’s needs,” says Dhaliwal.
The focus on evolution has led Vodafone to prioritise the proven benefits offered by existing partners, which led the company to choose Oracle to support the development of VOXI, a SIM-only service for under-30s.
“The key point of why we didn’t go down that route is because of our strategic relationship with Oracle, the fact that we’ve built a solid foundation with Oracle, and we understand how to operate within that ecosystem,” says Dhaliwal.
“We’ve got a whole group of senior managers who are experienced in the implementation of Oracle systems. So for us, it would have been very alien to use a new capability that was newly introduced to our market.”
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