TELUS streamlines big data ingestion with help from Google Cloud and Accenture

Key Takeaways

[Music] thank you [Music] welcome to the transformation debrief I'm Chris Hood a digital strategist at Google cloud and your host in each episode we aim to stir Visionary thinking and share unexpected insights on transformation initiatives and Lessons Learned along the way Telus is a dynamic World leading Communications and information technology company with 17 billion dollars in annual revenue and over 17 million customer connections spanning wireless data voice television entertainment security health care and more to discuss this powerful company and their journey through technology and the cloud I am joined by two powerful guests would you both share a little bit about yourselves and your roles at Google and tell us hello everybody very nice to be here thank you Chris for having us my name is amul farke I work with Google Cloud I am the managing director and GM responsible for our Telecom business across cloud we worked with pretty much all of our Global clients including of course tell us who's a very very strategic partner to us hello everyone uh thank you Chris for having me here today my name is ishampi and I'm the Chief Information officer at Telus um I'm ultimately responsible for delivering on telus's uh goal of being you know delivering humanized digital experiences and being a technology provider providing a better future for all Canadians and so I'm responsible for all that build and operation of all the technology behind the scenes that makes that happen when you think through the transformation Journey how do you view cloud in general as part of that because clearly in my mind cloud is one of the many enablers it's not the enabler although it's an important topic so I think your perspective would really help in terms of how you view Cloud as part of that overall transformation yeah I think that's a it's an excellent question of all um you know there's no doubt cloud has a a huge part to play in in our journey um and it's one of the the pillars if you will right our cornerstones of what we're trying to build on but at the end of the day cloud is just a tool it's it's a it's a means to an end right and so so when we look at it you know what I what I and actually I I work in my teams a lot we try to focus Less on it's about the technology or cloud and more about what are we doing and why are we doing it what are the outcomes we're trying to drive right and that's what we got to focus and optimize for and so when you realize okay what we're saying our digital transformation what we're really trying to optimize for is how do we deliver value faster right how do we how do we create um you know more experiences faster have a faster time to Market really shorten our lead times how do we um maintain the high level resilience the key thing is using it the right way there's a lot of people use cloud but they just kind of replicate the sins of the past or what they did in the data center but again when you ground in what you're trying to go outcomes then Cloud becomes a great enabler as as a lot of tooling whether it's your CI CD platforms and that you do there right whether it's in some of the design tools you do in your Design Systems and so so each of these are a tool that play in that part of the know three-legged stool if you will of the outcomes that we try to put together I I think it's really interesting to go down the path of your tools and enablements and then as you said making sure that your teams are actually happy in the process when we think about time to Market and maybe you think about this in the same way we may tend to rely heavily on our teams to make sure we get to Market faster not really think about it as the technology being the one that helps us get to Market faster so how are you balancing your team happiness and ensuring that you're able to meet some of those goals well well I think you know at the end of the day like it's not a zero-sum game like it's not an expensive if you focus on the happiness then you might delay your goals I think they actually lead together but you you have a bit of a dip in the beginning as you build that capacity but at some point things accelerate and you start realizing you're getting much more better and repeatable and predictable at doing that um but but what we've what we kind of focus on is again is is you know what do you measure right and when when you get there and so so we look at you know you know how do you measure your time to market right what is it that you're trying to measure is it your lead time from like an idea to how I get it production do I say when I have some code in there how long does it take to get it out of production can I experiment can I do things in in smaller back sizes that allows me to get that flexibility that nothing is too big to fail and I can have like small small degradations that no one really notices they really wanted your thoughts on uh how you approach things when things are not going well because even at Google we often have issues and we then have to sort of always ensure we put in practices like blameless retrospectives and really have safe zones and so on to try and understand quickly how we can actually learn from what has happened move on and then do something better right so I think your thoughts because generally that's a tricky area you know in terms of when things are not doing well and how you sort of rally the troops yeah 100 and you you hit the nail right on the head right like I mean we we are huge fans of the SRE you know principles and practices and everything and as you said one of the biggest tenets of that is the notion of blameless Retros and psychological safety and I think that's the most important thing right is is how do you create that if you really want a culture continuous Improvement then you have to have this culture saying hey things mistakes can be made but then how do we actually quickly you know uh look at these mistakes learn from them and the key thing is to learn from them right how do we actually learn from them so then in order to learn from them we have to be vulnerable and say okay well this was the mistake this is where it went wrong and it could be me and it was my fault in everything but here's what led to it right and so so that's probably the most important thing is creating that psychological safety to to do that that process is especially psychological safety I think is critical to the culture especially around Innovation and continuous Improvement like you've talked about but I'm curious from an onboarding or a hiring process is there a way that you look at that when you're bringing on new individuals to your teams I think one of the things we just looked through is you know a couple qualities we want to see and and first is that you know do do the candidates that join us have intense curiosity you know and that's because that's a big thing like if you're if you're not curious then you're not always going to question you're not open to question or anything so one thing we look for is is the Curiosity and do they have that curious nature um the other one we look for is you know are they humble because again to create the you know to be vulnerable you need to be humble right and you need to have you know leave the ego and check it out the door and say hey there's there's humility something a mistake was happened whether it's myself or my team so that's another quality you know that that we we look for obviously in your role as your Chief Information officer you also are constantly scanning the industry for what are the next set of things to come your way whether technology Trends customer Trends market trends Etc what would you see based on all of your experience are the top two three uh big trends that you think as an industry is hitting us and what we need to do about them you know if I if I kind of take the uh The Horizon one two three kind of view on things right you know what would I say is you know Horizon one that we have that's kind of hitting our industry is is the is the intense cloudification that's happening right and that real adoption of cloud I I think a Horizon 2 is where where everything is as code everything is as code right and so code becomes the the one commodity that everything is transferred in and so when you think of it that's all infrastructure as code that's all your testing is code everything is codified and then if I think of like a horizon 3 and Beyond I mean that's really a crystal ball and where it goes but but I what what piques my interest a lot is web3 and what's going to happen out there what's happening on in in the web 3 and the decentralized kind of uh world is is interesting and gonna have very big impacts and it's something we should be then looking at right both anybody who's a technology you know professionals should be looking at it but I think even more so as a technology provider and a commission communication provider service provider we should look because it's probably a big role that we'll have to play in that world as well it's one thing for us to kind of look forward and predict what we might see in the future what are your customers consumers asking you for today it's you know what it's funny it's like I think at the end of the day it's it's it's simple human needs I think customers are asking for us for Simplicity like make their lives easier simplify their lives right create better outcomes I think that's where it really boils down to how do we reduce the the friction in their lives how do we reduce the stress in their lives whether that's providing reliable you know mobile internet communications providing security coverage whether it's home security online security but do it again in a way that doesn't add cognitive load to them it actually takes it away from them make it make it something they don't have to think about these are all problems we tackle but I think they all come from those those core human needs right I think what customers are really just asking for us is is give us predictability and give us Simplicity right simplify our lives so Hashem you mentioned a lot of things that you've been thinking about through your organization and your own transformative experiences I'm curious if you've ever had more or less an aha moment in your career well I've had many of those right the AHA moments but but I would say probably in in my latest Journey when we're talking about you know transformation and digital transformation um and just modernization in general and clarification um you know I've seen it happen again and again I saw it happen internally too is you know we immediately start labeling you know the existing world as Legacy you know old um archaic monolithic and everything and the future is all what the bright shiny object is and and that's we have to modernize and everything and stuff and and my aha moment is is that's probably your biggest uh roadblock that you're building to your transformation Journey because you're starting things off on the wrong foot because you're you're you're first of all discrediting all the work that was done in the past and you're almost devaluing all that work that was done in the past and so so I think that's that's kind of my aha moment is like it's it's it's detrimental to start labeling it and doing that way right and instead what we should be doing is embracing it saying you know what we did in the past is what got us to where we are today and in fact we wouldn't be here today and trying to think about our transformation if we didn't have the successes of the past and our transformation journey is really about where do we go from here it's about how do we go forward right and how do we continue to grow and Excel thank you Hesham appreciate you being here with us today thank you so much Chris thank you all it's been a real pleasure and honor to be here and appreciate the opportunity thank you Chris thank you hasham real privilege to talk to you very nice to be here today thank you if you would like to learn more about Telus we have two channels for you to explore at cloud.google.com transform we dive deeper into this transformation journey and you can tune into that digital show to hear the extended podcast version of this conversation and don't forget to hit subscribe and join us again for more Visionary thinking and Lessons Learned on the next episode of the transformation debrief