On the 6th of January, the entire CITO travelled to Taipei to meet with the global Swedish ICT company Ericsson. On site, we were received by Emily Wang who hosted us together with Håkan Cervell, President of Ericsson Taiwan Ltd. In addition, we had the fortune of hearing speaks from Dann Yao (CTO) and Kerem Celik (Head of operations in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau).
The visit started with Mr. Cervell explaining the businesses and actions of Ericsson, both globally and in the local East Asian region. Ericsson has nowadays moved away from being solely a telecom company and selling mobile phones to consisting of four core areas; Networks, IT, Media and Industries. Mr. Cervell explained Ericsson’s attempts to create “the Networked Society” in which everyone, both consumers and industries, are connected in real time and enabled to share and find information in new ways.
For the business area “Industries”, all speakers gave examples how Ericsson approach this segment. Mr. Yao mentioned a collaboration between Ericsson and a Swedish mining company where the specification of requirements including a better working environment finally ended up in a remote-controlled section in the mine. Another example of Ericsson’s B2B operations was a collaboration with a vessel company where Ericsson’s solutions helped the customer lowering the fuel consumption with 10 % by arriving to the port just in time. Business cases like the last one also carries a value from the environmental sustainability point of view which Mr. Cervell pointed out as very important at Ericsson.
At last, Mr. Yao spoke about the technology necessary for Ericsson where the following discussion turned into the next generation of mobile networks – 5G. The speakers shared their expectations of a launch for 5G during the Olympic games in Pyeongchang 2018 and Tokyo 2020. Such gigantic event was specifically pointed out as suitable for releasing this kind of new technology when it comes to exposure and PR.
The discussion also contained questions and answers regarding the challenges respectively opportunities with the diversity among colleagues that arises from being a global actor with worldwide presence. The conclusion to be drawn from this discussion is that managing a team with high diversity is very complicated. However, those who possess this skill will oversee an incredible powerful group of people capable of outstanding performance, making a high level of diversity something to strive towards within Ericsson.
Visiting Ericsson has more or less become a standing point on the agenda for each CITO generation and the satisfaction after this year’s visit is also a fact. Therefore, we would like to address a sincere gratitude for the efforts made by our hosts. Thank you for a joyful afternoon!
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