GlobalData attended the annual Orange Business Insights event held in Amsterdam on July 10-11, 2024.

Under the stewardship of CEO Aliette Mousnier-Lompré, the company has embarked on an in-depth transformation journey, with a profound cultural change, pivoting from being a vertical to a horizontal organisation to simplify and optimise operations and reflect the need for customers to get a unified service model.

Related Company Profiles

View all

This includes an internal digital transformation program with an investment of €200m ($218m) over the next five years to develop cutting-edge IT systems. 

Value-added services to grow margins

Orange Business aims at evolving not just from a telco to tech-co, but also from pure integration services to network-adjacent value-added solutions with bigger margins, and to differentiate itself from ultra-aggressive companies in the mode of Infosys, Tech Mahindra, or Tata Consulting Services.

During a briefing with analysts, Mousnier-Lompré described some of the strategies to achieve this aim. In the current climate, customers are very cost-conscious and it is an extremely competitive environment where value-added services are a must. Orange Business is focusing on greater customisation abilities, and transferring its heritage and know-how of the French domestic market into the rest of Europe, MENA and beyond. 

Evolved platform for tighter integration

The idea is to build an evolved platform on top of those greater integration capabilities. Heineken was used as an example of a typical customer case, and how Orange Business increases its penetration from legacy MPLS network services to then migrate them to SD-WAN and later on to a SASE implementation to merge connectivity and cyber security services, helping them with observability and monitoring across their digital platform along the way.

How well do you really know your competitors?

Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.

Company Profile – free sample

Thank you!

Your download email will arrive shortly

Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample

We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form

By GlobalData
Visit our Privacy Policy for more information about our services, how we may use, process and share your personal data, including information of your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. Our services are intended for corporate subscribers and you warrant that the email address submitted is your corporate email address.

The company is also utilising the core infrastructure services from the Orange Business integration teams in India to continue the customer journey in a DevOps environment for tighter integrations and to fully automate the chain management.

Orange Business strategy

GlobalData analyst Beatriz Valle commented: “Orange Business has adopted a long-term strategy focused on a cultural and technological change that is labour-intensive in the short term, but will bear fruit in the longer term.

The challenge for them is to evolve their all-encompassing platform evolution in an agile way. Steering away from a pure integration play is a wise move because it leads to bigger margins.

Moreover, the company has different sets of customers: some are very cost-conscious, but others don’t mind about the money so much. This means there will be value-added services in areas where Orange Business leads in its domestic market and abroad: heavily regulated vertical industries in Europe, cyber security and managed security services globally, sustainability, and so on.”

Orange Business product portfolio rationalisation

One of the moves towards greater agility started in February 2023 and has been very successful. Back then, the company committed to halving the size of its product portfolio to maximise efficiencies.

With more than 300 product lines, there was a need to eliminate duplications due to past acquisitions and a deep analysis led to several changes aimed to increase profitability and simplicity. The process was achieved through 12-month cycles, for example for “end of life” products that were out of date, and also a subsequent “end of sales” cycle to taper customers off.

This is also helping to fully integrate the domestic market of France with international markets, a crucial step to expand more aggressively abroad. In addition, sales teams are becoming more focused and efficient with added incentives to complete this process.

Conclusion

Orange Business is undertaking a thorough cultural transformation expected to complete in the next three to four years and resting on a few basic principles: fast decision making is better than perfect decision making, individual success is secondary to organisational success, and every problem presents an opportunity.

The company is focused on building its teams in India, Morocco, Egypt, France, and Mauritius to expand its footprint outside Europe for co-building its evolution platform roadmap.