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VOIS (Vodafone Intelligent Solutions) provides support to multiple Vodafone local markets and group entities.
Originally a division of Vodafone created in 2006, it became a joint venture (JV) with Accenture in October 2024 (as stated by Vodafone, although it was announced in November 2023), with Accenture investing €150m ($157.5m) for an undisclosed minority interest.
The unit claims to be the global leader in the telecoms shared services market, with a headcount that has grown more than ten-fold from 3,200 in 2011 to 33,000 across ten countries in 2024. Formed to provide call centre and finance operations, it now covers Customer Experience Management, B2B Customer Life Cycle Management, Business Process Management, Data & Analytics, and Technology Services.
Vodafone engine for digital transformation
Vodafone’s claim that VOIS ‘acts as a key engine for digital transformation and automation’ is a fair one to make. First of all, to little fanfare, it now accounts for nearly one third of Vodafone’s headcount – that is a ‘wow’ moment. The business model makes sense too: sharing development of technology with an expert partner in Accenture, across multiple wholly-owned national operating companies, such as Vodafone Germany, JVs like Vodafone Ziggo in the Netherlands, and divested operations such as Zegona in Spain, plus more than 40 Vodafone partner telecoms companies around the world, means that not only are services shared, but so are costs.
Robert Pritchard, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Technology and Services at GlobalData, comments: ‘These services and platforms are needed by telcos come what may, so Vodafone would have had to invest to develop them anyway. This model means that more resources can be committed to development and costs shared. Customers of the VOIS joint venture get access to technology they would either have had to develop or buy in, so the licensing model makes their life easier, and their finance departments happier. It is also a happy coincidence that this sort of ecosystem has a network effect which inevitably ties VOIS clients closer to Vodafone – even if this is not articulated as a specific goal.’
VOIS of the future
In future, it is possible that VOIS could even address an even broader market by selling/licensing technology to any non-competing telecoms service providers around the world at a time when their budgets are constrained by investing in fibre and 5G roll-out, and margins are under pressure from intense competition.
In the end, what might be described as a ‘necessary technology evil’ could even be turned into a profit centre for Vodafone. The telecoms market being what it is, it would be no surprise to see further such ventures emerge across the entire value chain. The numbers – an estimated €1.5bn in value for the Vodafone Group -and commercial logic speak for themselves.