New Technologies Grow with People

Supporting Next-Generation Communications Technology with the Power of People

Kawasaki I understand it will become possible to reduce the power consumption of communications to one-hundredth of current levels.

Shimada We want to achieve that goal by 2032. As a step toward it, we plan to showcase transmission equipment and servers built on IOWN at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai. For example, we expect the power consumption of the server portion alone to fall to around one-eighth of conventional levels.

Kawasaki That really is a wonderful technology.

Shimada Creating a technology like this, driving it forward, and achieving its real-world deployment is all work carried by people. I think it’s fair to say that behind every new technology there is always the work of people. Technology and talent are truly two sides of the same coin.

Kawasaki Exactly right. The evolution of technology is supported by the power of people. At Akkodis too, we place great importance on developing talent and on bringing talent and technology together in promoting IOWN. We see the technological innovation ahead of us as an important element that will shape our future.

CX and EX: What is the Ideal Relationship?

Kawasaki When you took up the post of President of NTT, you said something that left a strong impression on me. You said that you wanted to “create CX (customer experience) through EX (employee experience).” Your new medium-term management strategy also puts forward the advancement of both CX and EX. There’s no question that a cutting-edge technology like IOWN will greatly change the experience of NTT’s client companies. But I think what you mean is that raising CX further also requires, at the same time, raising EX. It means creating an environment where every single employee can give full rein to their abilities, or in our own words, making our talent come alive. That raises EX, and as a result, CX rises too. That is how I understood what you said.

Shimada That’s right, not just with IOWN, but in general. It is people’s ideas that create products and services our customers are pleased with, and it is people’s work that gives those ideas form. Without an environment where employees can generate new ideas, we cannot create new value. So how should we go about creating such an environment? One important thing is diversifying working styles and increasing the freedom people have in how they work. For example, in 2022 we introduced a system called Remote Standard, which allows people to work remotely from anywhere in Japan. At present, this system applies to roughly 50,000 of our approximately 190,000 domestic group employees, about one in four.

Kawasaki As remote-work arrangements spread, the scope for people to work at their own discretion also expands. That lifts people’s motivation, and in turn raises their consciousness about improving CX. That’s the flow you’re aiming for. On the other hand, I think the reverse flow exists too. As CX improves, there are more occasions when customers say things like “thank you” or “that really helped.” Hearing words like that is the best possible experience for the people working on the front line. In other words, when CX improves, EX improves as well. EX creates CX, and CX in turn further raises EX. Ideally, that's the cycle we'd want to create.

Advancing the CX that Lies Beyond

Shimada There is no finish line to the work of raising CX. Customers today have an extremely wide range of products and services to choose from, so switching from what they currently use to something else is easy. To keep customers using our products and services, we must constantly create new added value. Beyond capturing customers’ needs and challenges, we need to anticipate what will be needed and generate added value ahead of time. Without that kind of effort, it would be difficult to keep improving CX on an ongoing basis.

Kawasaki The continuous advancement of CX looks set to become a challenge for many companies. For companies like ours and the NTT Group, whose businesses are mainly B2B, I think CX carries two meanings. One is the experience of the client company that is our direct customer; the other is the experience of the end users who sit beyond that client company. Akkodis now has more than 7,000 tech consultants. Our job is to support the businesses of our client companies with the strength of that talent. But a model that provides talent services in the form of simple “outsourcing” cannot raise CX in the true sense of the word. We don’t just “accompany” the customer as an outside vendor; nor, on the other hand, do we “assimilate” completely into the customer’s business. What we do is fuse our team’s work with the customer’s business operations on the ground, in a sense combining A and B to create a new C. We call this kind of service “Fusion Activators.” Through this “fusion model,” it’s not only that our client companies see their CX improve. Engineering skills and knowledge are reliably accumulated on the customer’s side as well. Those skills and that knowledge become the resource client companies draw on to create the products and services their own customers need. In other words, “fusion” also leads to advancing the CX of end users. When we advance the CX of our client companies, we advance the CX of the end users beyond them as well. We believe we need to work at creating CX with exactly that perspective in mind.

Toward the Future Together, Through the Power of Partnership

Shimada As I mentioned earlier, in our new medium-term management strategy we set the goal of becoming an NTT that creates new value and supports a globally sustainable society. Specifically, we plan to shift the power used by our data centers worldwide entirely to renewable energy by 2030, and to achieve carbon-zero across the whole group by 2040. That vision aligns with the “decarbonization” goal that Akkodis has likewise set out in its own medium-term plan. Going forward, toward achieving each of our goals, I’d very much like us to join forces.

Kawasaki And IOWN is one key to achieving that goal, isn’t it? IOWN is an innovative technology that will have a major impact on humanity. Supporting the real-world deployment of a technology like that with the power of our people is, without exaggeration, precisely what Akkodis exists to do. By contributing to the sustainability of the global environment through the IOWN concept, we’re doing something meaningful, and I believe that will surely lead to higher EX for our employees too.

Shimada The IOWN concept is an undertaking we are working to realize together with a wide range of partners around the world. In the domain of talent, our partnership with Akkodis is indispensable. New technology grows together with people. Let’s not forget that belief, and build a sustainable society together.

Notes

*1 IOWN® (hereinafter "IOWN") is an abbreviation of Innovative Optical and Wireless Network, and is a trademark or registered trademark of NTT, Inc. For more information about IOWN, please visit https://www.rd.ntt/iown/.

*2 IOWN Global Forum™ (hereinafter "IOWN Global Forum") is a trademark of the IOWN Global Forum, Inc. For more information about IOWN Global Forum™, please visit https://iowngf.org/. Akkodis Consulting Ltd. is a Sponsor Member of IOWN Global Forum™, which promotes IOWN®. 

Profiles

Kenichiro Kawasaki
President and CEO, Akkodis Consulting Ltd.

Born in Tokyo in 1976. Graduate of the Aoyama Gakuin University School of Science and Engineering. President and CEO of Akkodis Consulting. Also serves concurrently as Representative Director and Chairman of Adecco Co., Ltd., and as Chairman of the Japan Staffing Services Association.

Akira Shimada
President and CEO, NTT, Inc.

Born in Tokyo in 1957. Graduate of the Hitotsubashi University Faculty of Commerce and Management. Became Representative Director and Senior Executive Vice President of NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) in 2018, and Representative Director and President of the same company in 2022. Also serves as Chairman of the Telecommunications Carriers Association.