We asked our Asia-based sales managers, about the state of the industry on why Orange Wholesale is a trusted partner for top customers in the fast-growing Asia Pacific region. Two words keep coming up in their speech – “Team” and “Transformation”. In a challenging region, with fierce competition and demanding customers, we decided to bank on the creativity, dependability, and resourcefulness of the talented individuals who make up our Asian teams. The capacity of Orange Wholesale’s skilled professionals in Asia to transform the way we do business and bring value to our partners has durably put the Orange brand on the map.
Mary Yeung, Sales VP Asia Pacific – Hong Kong, China
“Our ability to transform (…) is key to winning, retaining, and growing business”
What do you think of the main opportunities and challenges in your region today ?
The key opportunities stem from the strong growth in APAC market relating to connectivity, mobility, security, and different forms of outsourcing. The challenge for Orange, especially for a remote region such as APAC, is to transform ourselves to meet ever-evolving market requirements with agile, adaptive, robust, and competitive solutions.
What are our assets to overcome these challenges ?
Our strength in Asia is really the team and their creativity. We are not concentrated in just one location, but in 7 different cities across Asia Pacific and Paris. We have the knowledge, expertise, and relationship with customers to not only create and propose solutions that meet their needs, but also to accompany them throughout the customer journey. Also, the Orange brand is a key asset representing value to our customers.
What influences our customers – and makes them stay ?
In addition to our experienced sales team, our ability to transform our sales focus from standard offers to customized solutions is key to winning, retaining, and growing business with our customers. This is demonstrated by a number of major breakthrough deals in the area of voice outsourcing, SMS Protect, Roaming Sponsor, and network expansion with strong focus in diversity and cost effectiveness.
Vipul Arora, Sales Director – Gurgaon, India:
“What the players expect from us is to be a thought leader on the telecom market”
What are the expectations of our customers in the region?
Our partners value their interactions with us as we share our extensive knowledge and experience in dealing with retail networks in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; they also demonstrate a keen interest in the evolution of our product portfolio. This form of regular exchanges allows them to better adjust their own strategy within their landscape and beat the market.
What are the specificities of this regional market?
Countries have varying dynamics, but across the region there is a great emphasis on how to optimize infrastructures spending by focusing on preexisting ones.
Carriers are keen to find complementary strengths to see if swapping capacities can give them greater coverage and leverage when they engage with their own customers. Cooperation and partnership, that is what is helping the industry to grow.
What are the challenges and opportunities?
The marketplace is rapidly changing: voice is struggling against fraud and spam, SMS is growing but is impacted by a surge of carriers focused on making quick margins, data needs to develop new partnerships and strategies in order to maintain the growth trajectory.
There’s a need for constant innovation in the way we sell our services, in our understanding of the market and in our interaction with our partners and customers.
Jayson Ho, Regional Sales Director – Singapore:
“Honesty, integrity, and skills – that’s what we have”
What is the perception of the Orange brand in Asia today?
We are a trusted brand, a brand with people who know what they are doing. We deliver what we promise. Honesty, integrity, and skills – that’s what we have.
What are the specificities of this regional market?
More operators and enterprise customers are looking for partners who know what they are doing. We’re bringing the same expertise that we bring to other global regions such as Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the US. Our customers expect us to be consultants, to handle a lot of outsourcing projects beyond basic connectivity. They want us to help them in their fight against cyber threats and to grow their business with them. This is where our value is.
