February 18, 2020:   Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) is titled the Operational Excellence Winner in the international category and the winner of Rawafed Award for Saudization at the 9th Partner Day ceremony held by stc group in the presence of stc executives in addition to more than 175 suppliers and partners of the group.  

Launched in early 2018, Ericsson established an operations innovation program to support stc’s digitization drive with the aim of improving the quality of the network. As part of this program, Ericsson developed 10 different innovation streams that included virtual drive testing, automated fault handling as well as improvements to value added services and intelligent network operations.  

Commenting on the win, Mathias Johansson; Head of Ericsson Saudi Arabia and Egypt explained how these innovations allowed Ericsson to set a new record for excellence, saying: “Our operation program with stc helped us to deal with customer queries and customer service impact incidents with improved speed,  allowing us to even act before serious customer impact occurred in some cases. Our aim was to cooperate in igniting further the stc efforts in achieving their DARE strategy – one of which was to facilitate to stc operations a more predictive data driven approach there by further improving the quality of not only the network but also the services to the end customer. This is a proud moment to see our efforts recognized by our esteemed partner as they celebrate excellence and success in partnership.” 

Winning also the Rawafed Award for Saudization, Ericsson’s efforts in identifying and retaining top local talent were recognized by its partner stc. Ericsson has been focusing on expanding its talent pool in KSA since 2017, aiming to allocate more leadership positions to local talent through various initiatives including a fresh graduate program with selected universities to recruit and retain the top young engineering talents, developing them through a flourishing career path. Ultimately this resulted in Ericsson being the Employer of Choice for Young Saudis due to its mix of people, programs and career development. Under the umbrella of Innovation, these fresh Saudi Employees undergo rapid development. The program itself is unique in the development of the talent and enabling them to explore different areas of offerings for Ericsson such as Managed Services, Networks and Digital Services to eventually become leaders in those functions.