In a fast-changing world, telecommunications operators increasingly need to deploy next generation technologies to meet growing end-user demand and deliver new services to customers. Tomorrow Street, Vodafone’s joint venture with Technoport, has recently launched a new programme called Scaleup X which aims to help Vodafone find exciting scaleups and trial their innovative technologies with the longer term goal of establishing some of these young companies in Luxembourg.
In early 2023, Tomorrow Street gathered innovation asks from around Vodafone related to the company’s key focus areas of Customers, Simplicity, and Growth. Based on this wishlist, Tomorrow Street engaged 200 scaleups around the globe, of which 20 were invited to Luxembourg over 17-19 October to meet decision makers at the Vodafone Procurement Company in Kirchberg. The Scaleup X cohort features scaleups working across a wide range of technologies and solutions, including generative AI, synthetic data, workflow automation, IoT, and customer experience analytics.
“Everybody’s curious about generative AI and how that can be used to make us work better inside Vodafone and also to drive customer experience.”
Neil Cocker, Director and Senior Partner at Tomorrow Street
Driving efficiencies & improving customer experience
“Everybody’s curious about generative AI and how that can be used to make us work better inside Vodafone and also to drive customer experience,” Tomorrow Street Director and Senior Partner Neil Cocker told Silicon Luxembourg.
Among the companies active in generative AI who were invited to Luxembourg was Viable, a California-based scaleup which organises unstructured qualitative data such as customer feedback by theme and urgency so that it can offer meaningful insights.
“I think we’re one of the smallest companies to be invited,” Viable’s VP for Sales and Customer Growth Danny Varty explained, adding: “I think they sought us out because of this specific focus on customer experience that Vodafone has prioritised and that’s interesting because it’s something we can help them with.”
The firm, half of whose customers are Europe-based, developed its technology as an early partner with Open AI, the American artificial intelligence company that developed ChatGPT. “It allowed us to build a lot of things in combination,” said Varty, adding: “And we’ve matured a little bit more than some of the new AI models that are now getting started.” He does not rule out opening a European headquarters in the future.
Emplay was another exciting AI player invited to the table. Founded in Dublin, California, in 2013, the scaleup offers a conversation automation training engine that helps to improve sales via analytics, advisory, and automation solutions by responding to questions. “If you ask a question, it will give you an answer and can recommend the next steps and then offer to complete those next steps through system interactions,” explained CEO and founder Sanchita Sur. Popular use cases include technical system support, by asking complex questions, summarising and converting conversations into tickets, which are prioritised and sent to the appropriate person to solve. Call centres offer another opportunity as does HR for tasks from recruitment to retirement.
A scaleup with the potential to dramatically boost efficiencies is data centre optimisation firm Vigilent. Founded in 2009, for the last decade the firm has focused on monitoring a range of metrics in data centres and providing solutions to improve energy efficiency. Today the firm works with close to 1,000 data centres globally. “The only continent we’re not on is Antarctica,” explained Mike Driscoll, VP sales at Vigilent, adding: “We’ve been doing business on a country-by-country level. We are now trying to elevate the conversation to understand how we can help Vodafone across its entire portfolio.”
Tomorrow Street CEO Kenneth Graham expressed his enthusiasm about the possibility of welcoming several companies to Luxembourg to join Tomorrow Street as scaleup partners by the conclusion of the Scaleup X programme. He added that Tomorrow Street will host a second edition of the programme in 2024 based on Vodafone’s evolving priorities.
