Melissa Arnoldi of Vrio On How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level

Drive business agility. There is no doubt that COVID-19 accelerated our digital transformation, but it was our ability to be more agile and adapt to a new way of work that allowed us to better serve our customers. During the pandemic, mobile messaging transactions was the fastest growing digital channel. At SKY, we saw the number of transactions increase 23 times compared to January 2020 and had more than 40 self-care services available to customers through this channel, including recharging the prepaid service, technical assistance, questions about invoices, remote control functionality, and many more. At DIRECTV, we saw a 185% increase in transactions. It goes to show how clients are moving more to digital.

As part of our series about “How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Melissa Arnoldi.

Melissa Arnoldi is Chief Executive Officer of Vrio Corp., an AT&T digital entertainment services company in Latin America with US$5 billion in revenue and more than 9,000 employees across 10 countries. She is responsible for driving business growth, bringing innovations and delivering superior customer experiences to more than 10.5 million susbcibers. Before her current role, she served as president of Technology and Network Operations, AT&T

Communications and led AT&T’s transition to a software-defined and future 5G network while leading the team to the award-winning recognition of Best and Fastest Network.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I was raised in Memphis, Tennessee, with a sister and a brother. Growing up, I wanted to be a pilot, but ultimately completed my undergrad in accounting and my MBA. I put myself thru college and graduate school with academic and athletic scholarships. I had a deep, burning desire to achieve and make a difference and I realized I was not going to accomplish it by following a comfortable path. I decided to get an accounting degree followed by a MBA, and then, after graduate school, I started a technical boot camp at Accenture. That was the first time I chose to do something outside the norm. After graduating I joined Accenture, eventually becoming a senior executive of communications and high-tech consulting group. I joined AT&T in 2008 and have assumed roles of increasing responsibilities focused on IT merger integration, system consolidation, and new product launches, including iPhone. I served as CIO and president of technology development and today I am leading Vrio, an AT&T company and a leading digital entertainment company in Latin America. For the past ten years I have led digital transformation for different parts of the business.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you’ve made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?

Instead of a mistake, let me share a time one of my decisions was questioned. I was a partner at Accenture and had been there for 12 years. Then, I was offered the opportunity to join AT&T as a director. That for many, including me, seemed like a step down. As we have heard in the past, today’s career progression is more of a jungle gym than a ladder; so, I took the leap. The key takeaway for me from that experience is the importance of courage. Moving to AT&T required an incredible amount of courage that I didn’t even recognize in myself. Many of us may not be living our dreams because we are in a comfortable role, and fearful of making a mistake. The most challenging thing is making the difficult decision to act, and the rest is merely tenacity. I have learned that courage is core to inspire our teams to imagine beyond the task at hand. And that, to me, is transformational leadership: having the courage to see beyond the status quo and make hard choices to get us to where we need to be.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I’ll start with my parents. They encouraged me to work hard, keep my head up and to never sit in the back of the room. There have been several other mentors and leaders. One of my mentors from Accenture told me as I started my career, “I admire you; you are better than you see, you have to own this!” and those words have given me courage. John Donovan, former CEO of AT&T Communications, who taught me the importance of transparency and trust. Lori Lee, CEO of AT&T Latin America, who taught me the importance of looking at the non-conventional candidate. She did that with me, offering me this CEO role. Even though I had led large organizations at AT&T, I had not been a CEO. This was an important leadership lesson for me, and one I think is critical as we look to create opportunities for diverse candidates.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

There are several books that have had an impact on me from a leadership perspective. One that stands out is “The Happiness Advantage”, by Sean Achor. The premise of the book is that the way we think about our path to happiness -if we work hard, we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, we will be happy- is flawed. As executives we often put pressure on ourselves to achieve that next promotion believing that once we do that, happiness will follow. The author explains that the formula is backwards. Happiness drives your success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more motivated and focused and therefore more productive at work. The author talks about seven key principles that if followed can help predict success and achievement. I have read this book multiple times as a way to focus my thoughts and be more productive, particularly given the challenges that we’ve all been faced this past year with the pandemic.

Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?

I became CEO of Vrio, an AT&T Company which includes DIRECTV Latin America and SKY Brasil, more than two years ago, with a vision to become the leading digital entertainment provider in Latin America — connecting consumers in the region to entertainment, information and even educational resources on our platforms.

Are you working on any new, exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

In 2020 we became the first pan-regional OTT provider of its kind in Latin America, bringing live and On Demand content to consumers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay and this continues to be our focus. We offer consumers access to the best content when and how they want it.

Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion about Digital Transformation. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like to engage in a Digital Transformation?

Transformation is about embracing our existing technology constraints as opportunities or innovation and as a reason to grow and not hold back. Important knowledge and insight exist inside your business waiting to be discovered. For example, in 2020 we enlisted 28 digital squads to map the step-by-step digital customer experience for Vrio’s full range of video offerings. These squads have allowed us to discover key data and information to better serve our customers.

Which companies can most benefit from a Digital Transformation?

In my more than a decade of experience of driving transformations in different roles, I find that most companies will need to transform for three reasons, and COVID-19 in many cases has accelerated this: 1. Consumer behavior. 2. Technology. 3. Need to diversify. As leaders, we need to understand that every company either has been disrupted or will be disrupted in the future, which means every part of the organization will need to transform their operations to reach new speed of business.

We’d love to hear about your experiences helping others with Digital Transformation. In your experience, how has Digital Transformation helped improve operations, processes and customer experiences? We’d love to hear some stories if possible.

We embarked on our digital transformation in 2019, starting with SKY and then focusing on DIRECTV, some examples of how we improved operations, processes and customer experience:

• Video consumption: We have seen two-fold increase of our TV Everywhere product during COVID, driving growth, and providing us with more data on usage habits, which allows us to continue to focus on personalization and better serve our customers.
• E-commerce: E-commerce sales continue to grow. In DIRECTV Latin America we launched our e-commerce channel in April in Argentina and Chile, and between June and July, sales almost doubled. In 2020, more than 75 percent of our transactions happened digitally, compared to 50% in 2019, not only because of COVID, but because of our ability to quickly move and pivot to digital channels to serve our subscribers.
• Partnerships: The ecosystem is evolving, and in July 2020 SKY reached one of the highest rates in digital sales, leveraging digital partners who delivered 12 times more sales than in January.
• Employee engagement: Recognizing the importance of employee engagement, we have invested in collaboration tools that are transforming how we collaborate and drive results. These tools have allowed us to create a frictionless connection between our thousands of employees. When we deployed the tool for our DIRECTV Latin America team, we had more than 70% of our employees engaged on the platform in the first ten days.

Has integrating Digital Transformation been a challenging process for some companies? What are the challenges? How do you help resolve them?

There are three key challenges and elements to drive a successful transformation. The first one is the lack of urgency. You need to demonstrate to employees and key stakeholders the need to transform now. We did this at Vrio by being transparent about the macroeconomic headwinds impacting our bottom line, as well as many new disruptive entrants joining our industry. Data is powerful to bring a sense of reality to the situation.

Another challenge is when employees do not see progress. You need to generate short-term wins on the journey to your transformation. For us, this was a critical step. You need to build confidence in your team that their decision to support the transformation is worth the work. Sometimes it takes a long time to deliver exponential results, but step by step improvements happen on a continual basis.

A third one is not having a culture of innovation and learning. You need to create a sustainable culture of learning and innovation. If you think about it, there are many successful companies with engaged employees, and we are telling them they have to think differently and leave behind what they know and what they are comfortable with. There are six key elements to building a culture of innovation and learning: being agile, transparent and collaborative, take smart risks, have a growth mindset and support continual learning. In addition, you need to engage employees throughout the process.

For us at Vrio, we operate in 10 different countries, 3 different languages. We bring different cultures and backgrounds that enrich us, make us stronger. This is one of the reasons building on diversity and inclusion is so important for us –we question our own biases and win as one. And we win by implementing data-based actions.

Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are “Five Ways a Company Can Use Digital Transformation To Take It To The Next Level”? Please share a story or an example for each.

Companies can use digital transformation to:

1. Drive business agility. There is no doubt that COVID-19 accelerated our digital transformation, but it was our ability to be more agile and adapt to a new way of work that allowed us to better serve our customers. During the pandemic, mobile messaging transactions was the fastest growing digital channel. At SKY, we saw the number of transactions increase 23 times compared to January 2020 and had more than 40 self-care services available to customers through this channel, including recharging the prepaid service, technical assistance, questions about invoices, remote control functionality, and many more. At DIRECTV, we saw a 185% increase in transactions. It goes to show how clients are moving more to digital.
2. Promote accountability. An agile culture promotes transparency and action-oriented decision making. Recently, our team created a content offering that we turned around in less than 72 hours by a cross-functional team that felt empowered and owned every step of the process.
3. Drive efficiencies. In Brazil we created a new capability; an application called “Great Place to Sell”, allowing us to create cohorts of customers across cities. Then, using advanced analytics we could define where we could have better opportunities to sell.
4. Become more customer centric. By using advance analytics we can tailor our offering and drive engagement. For Vrio, as an example, we increased content consumption by more than 250%.
5. Create a culture of innovation. In certain countries, we were the first to integrate with major voice assistant platforms, providing everything from programming guides to getting customer support for technical issues, allowing us to take customer service to the next level.

In your opinion, how can companies best create a “culture of innovation” in order to create new competitive advantages?

All the elements we have been talking about are critical to establish a culture of innovation. It is not one thing or another. It is how we bring all these elements together, engage the employees and make sure it has continuity. For that, leaders need to be committed and should have the access and the support of technology and the power of data analytics to make the best decisions for the business.

In our case, it means to constantly achieve best practice synergies among different countries and business units while unifying the employees experience to generate a positive external customer experience, wherever they are.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Don’t let the fear of striking out prevent you from playing the game.” This has been my guiding light thru my career. You can’t let fear get in the way of taking risks. Yes, you will strike out some, but that is when some of the greatest lessons are learned.

How can our readers further follow your work?

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissaarnoldi

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!