A leader in Turkey's digital transformation, Vodafone's solutions prepare the business world for tomorrow's digital life. Vodafone realizes significant digitalization projects around the world in order to introduce companies to the efficiency in digital world. We’ve discussed Vodafone’s digitalization vision and Turkey’s digital transformation performance with Vodafone Turkey Executive Vice President Engin Aksoy. What should we understand from the digital transformation of business world? Why do we need it? Digital technologies do not only satisfy our individual communication needs, but also provide innovative solutions in many business areas such as banking, health care, logistics, manufacture, retail and shipping. They speed up operations, facilitate processes, help reach out to new communities and geographies and create new income opportunities. Digital transformation in the business world means increasing growth, efficiency, profitability and competitiveness by making use of smart technologies. In tomorrow’s business world, companies who can develop digital strategies, transform them into innovative business models and effective business outcomes will be well ahead of the competition. As companies will be able to meet their customers’ rapidly digitalizing needs with smart products and services, they also will transform into more effective, simpler and quick institutions thanks to their new digital operations and talents. This transformation will significantly increase employee productivity and strengthen their market position. As Vodafone, we believe that its innovative and transformative effects will make digitalization, the determinative element in tomorrow’s business environment. We aim all individuals and organizations around the world to go under a digital transformation by making use of mobile and fixed telecommunication technologies. Our group invests substantial amounts for the digitalization works of 450 million people and 20 million companies around the world. We also carry on with activities to become to lead the digital transformation in Turkey. We initialized “Digital Transformation Movement” in November 2013 to transform individuals and organizations into players of this new digital world. In its first year, the project produced the fruitful results of the given efforts to digitalize Turkey end to end and introduced over 5 million individuals to the digital world. On the corporate category, we used our “Ready Business” platform to create Turkey’s the digital map. How developed do you think Turkish SMEs, corporations and public institutions are in regard of digitalization? Enterprises need to keep pace with today’s rapidly changing business world in order to become ready for tomorrow. It is of utmost importance for them to digitalize every aspect of their business operations, from customer relations to security. We carried out many activities to see corporates’ position in this digital transformation and the level of Turkish enterprises’ readiness for tomorrow. The results show that this change is inevitable and companies accept the fact that they have to adapt in order to keep up with the new business order. Our market surveys point to some basic problems Turkish companies face while making efforts to adapt digitalization under rapidly changing market conditions. For instance, 4 out of every 10 enterprises use vehicles in the field but 73 percent of those do not monitor their performance. Again, 6 out of every 10 state they are not currently using any software to analyze data to gain new customers. 6 in 10 enterprises say they need publicity activities, however 80 percent still ignores the technologies that would help them. Enterprises need to be immediately introduced to new digital solutions inorder to close the current gap and be ready for the future. Vodafone is undertaking a critical mission in this regard to inform companies and draw a road map for digitalization. How do you evaluate Turkish businesses’ approach? How much do you think they are open to it? We are witnessing an increased amount of interest for digitalization in Turkish business world, just as much as global equivalents. For instance, Turkish SMEs being the backbone of Turkish economy, are fully aware of this fast change and accept the fact that they must adapt to survive. As they have limited sources compared to larger corporations, digitalization is a vital step for them to grow their business. SMEs care about more on the ways it will benefit the company than the infrastructure behind its technology, while they invest in a digital solution for efficiency. In the past, following the competition around was sufficient for companies, today they need to follow examples around the world. Before, not returning back to a customer before three days wouldn’t be big issue but today even 3 hours of latency might end up with losing the customer for good. Again, they wouldn’t need to constantly monitor their customers in the past, now they are aware of continuous customer communication’s importance. What kind of added value digitalization offer to companies in terms of efficiency? Can you share any numbers? Researches show that digitalized companies increased their income over 9 percent more than industry average without expanding their company resources. Also their profitability increased by 25 percent and their market value growth by 12 percent more than the sector average. The increase of over 25 percent in profitability accompanies a market value growth over 12 percent than the average of their sector. Solutions that expand companies’ digital transformation are also helpful in terms financial profitability. Companies can save up to 15 percent on fuel costs by using vehicle tracking systems.