Page 9 - SAMENA Trends - February-March 2021

FEATURED SAMENA TRENDS

GCEO - stc Speaks to SAMENA Council

Saudi Telecom Co. (stc) has named Mr. Olayan Mohammed Al Wetaid as the new group CEO,
starting March 28, 2021. Mr. Al Wetaid has more than 20 years’ experience in the ICT Industry
and worked at Saudi Aramco before joining stc. He is also the new Chairman of SAMENA
Telecommunications Council.

Q. What is the message that you would like to give to other
business leaders and CEOs to help them prepare for the new
digital-led post COVID era?
A. Covid-19 has been challenging on so many fronts. From
human suffering, losses and bankruptcy of businesses,
unemployment, pressure on public health services, to
impact on education, and so on an so forth, the challenges
have been immense. Our experience of the past year has
fundamentally changed our view on digital transformation.
stc’s timely efforts in enabling digital

capabilities facilitated our sales,
customer care, and operations without
any disruption during the past year,
even as all employees shifted overnight
to working from home.

stc’s timely efforts in enabling digital capabilities facilitated
our sales, customer care, and operations without any
disruption during the past year, even as all employees
shifted overnight to working from home.

From stc’s experience, my message to all business leaders
is to consider the following for a post COVID-19 era:
• Put digital transformation at the top of your agenda with
clearly defined and measurable short-term and long-
term objectives.
• Prepare early as our world is getting more and more
complex, which require us to be agile in preparing for
technology.
• Build the right technical and human capabilities along
with working on the right organizational culture that
facilitates digital transformation.
• Establish flexible work environments and workforce Eng. Olayan M. Alwetaid
policies. In stc, we have seen productivity gains through GCEO
flexible and digitally enabled work policies in the past few
months. These activities and lessons learnt have led us to stc
formalize our HR/People policies through a fundamental
shift towards flexible ways of working enabled by digital
channels.

9 FEB-MAR 2021