Customer success story

NTT invests in the backbone of digital transformation: People

Industry

Telecommunications

Headquarters

Tokyo, Japan

Employees

330,000+

Key highlights

Leveraging SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio to achieve full visibility into their technology and processes
Standardizing processes across over 115 group companies in Japan
Implementing dynamic change management and cross-team communication for large-scale digital transformation

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. Headquartered in Tokyo, they employ over 330,000 people and encompass many subsidiary companies.

Over many years, NTT's IT architecture grew significantly. This created technology sprawl, with many different applications and processes being used across different teams and companies under the NTT umbrella in Japan.

"We had over 115 companies, using 85 systems and 1000 interfaces. Manually managing all that was impossible"

Risa Masuda,
Communications Manager at NTT

NTT decided to embark on an ambitious digital transformation of many processes. However, in order to properly plan and manage such a large-scale transformation, they needed a single view of their technology and processes, and they needed to understand all dependencies and how everything interconnected.

"It was very hard for us to get an overall end-to-end picture of our growing architecture using Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks," Masuda explained.

A bird's-eye view with SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio solutions

In order to achieve full visibility into their technology and processes, NTT leveraged the powerful combination of SAP LeanIX for enterprise architecture and SAP Signavio for business process transformation.

"SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio gave us the bird's eye view we needed to plan and execute on our digital transformation," said Masuda. "SAP LeanIX enabled us to visualize our massive IT landscape. We could map all of our business capabilities to applications and all underlying dependencies. And SAP Signavio enabled us to process-mine and understand all of our complicated business processes and standardize them across the organization."

The biggest challenge

Managing change and keeping people on board with the changes was even more of a challenge for NTT than digitization.

"As complex as standardizing our technology and processes was, the biggest challenge for us in our digital transformation was change management. More specifically, changing people's minds," said Masuda. "Getting people to feel comfortable with the new tools and processes was a key challenge we had to overcome."

SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio provide a single, centralized source of truth and enable continuous, cross-team communication. Everyone can stay informed about impending changes and provide their own input and expertise. This communication is also multi-directional; top-down communication from decision makers provides a clear, strategic vision, while all teams also communicate with each other up and down the line. Spelling out the reasons for the change, particularly the benefits it will bring, makes it easier for people to get on board and do their part.

"At the beginning of transformation, people weren't used to using new, standardized tools, because we had been relying on older systems for so long," Masuda said. "Now, after a year, I think people are much more accepting of the changes. After seeing how much more efficient operations are, they're embracing the new global standards we've implemented to keep us competitive."

Investing in people pays dividends

When asked what advice she would give to other organizations going through digital transformation, Risa Masuda said, "Invest in your people. People are the true backbone of digital transformation. SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio are unique in that they understand the people element of transformation, and how important it is to get everyone on board."

"People are the true backbone of digital transformation. SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio are unique in that they understand the people element of transformation, and how important it is to get everyone on board."

Risa Masuda, Communications Manager, NTT