LAST week mobile telephone service provider Digicel celebrated its 10th anniversary in Jamaica. The company has not only redefined the telecoms landscape but has left an indelible mark on corporate Jamaica, more particularly with its philanthropic deeds.

The first CEO, Seamus Lynch, told of how Digicel right from the very start was determined to give back to the country and to make a valuable contribution to its development. It identified cricket as a sport it wanted to get behind, no doubt aware that it is the one endeavour that rallies the entire West Indies. The intention to sponsor the West Indies team was beyond Digicel in the early years: that was the sole preserve of Cable & Wireless who had done so for years, but the Digicel management team remained undaunted. Its perseverance paid off and its brand is now the standard bearer for the West Indies cricket team.

Jamaica matters to us

Digicel recognised that soccer was becoming the fastest-growing game in the world and sponsored local league teams. It now sponsors 17 national soccer leagues across the world.

Digicel’s very own first team was an eclectic bunch who managed to bring a potency to the brand. The success of Seamus Lynch is well documented and recounted. But he headed a team including David Hall who was then the chief financial officer and who later succeeded Lynch as CEO. Under Hall’s leadership, Digicel garnered even more subscribers and ensured that it was not only the country’s leading corporate citizen but also Jamaica’s number one brand.

Carl O’Brien, Jim Hogan and Donal O’Shaughnessy as infrastructure director played invaluable roles in making the company successful in Jamaica. Harry Smith was and still is acknowledged as the marketing king of Jamaica, putting the fledgling brand on the map and employing a number of marketing techniques that today are regarded as de rigueur. Digicel’s tag line is ‘The bigger, better network,’ and a lot of that is largely due to its affable Network Design Director Stephen Curran, who was part of the original team charged with the responsibility of establishing a robust network that could do a better job than the competitor’s. His wife Shelly-Ann Curran who now serves as senior sponsorship manager is a living example of the meritocracy practised at Digicel. She started out as a customer care representative and today she is recognised as one of Digicel’s most successful managers. So how important is it to build a team and get the right players together to effectively compete against an entrenched and much larger competitor?

“We started out by picking experts in each field. The brief for each of those ten or twelve experts was to find an equivalent person in Jamaica whom they could work alongside. They had to make themselves redundant in a 12-24-month period, making way for the local expert. The new expert would then hire four or five people so that we would have a multiplier effect.

“Back then there were two cultures, an Irish culture and a Jamaican one existing side by side. We decided that rather than go for more seasoned Jamaican executives, we would target younger people. We sought out people in their twenties and sprinkled that with a few older people like Harry Smith and Earl Manning. You have to have your rows before you have your good days. We had our disagreements but we worked and socialised very well together,” recalls Seamus Lynch.

Keeping an eye on the customer

Ten years later from those heady days of 2001, Mark Linehan is now the CEO of Digicel Jamaica, entrusted with the task of taking the company to a new dimension. Like Lynch he is both personable and professional and has become well known on the corporate scene. Digicel has had a couple of dud CEOs but seem to have returned to winning ways with Linehan. From his vantage point, what are his views on Digicel’s success?

“The key success of Digicel over the years has been our focus on the customer. Competition comes and goes, but the day you take your eye off the consumer is the day you lose market share. That has been the case from the days of Seamus right through to today. Mind you, the demands and requirements of the customer change. Ten years ago it was all about making phone calls, today there is a huge hunger for data. Digicel has addressed issues of access to handsets and affordability.

“In 2011, it’s all about connectivity, whether it be Facebook or Twitter, or broadband or on your laptop. We are always looking at ways to improve the customer experience. If we focus on the customer we will continue to succeed. Right now we see data growing month on month. The next stage in the evolution of telecoms will be LTE Advanced. People want instantaneous results. It’s all going to be about faster data,” said Linehan.”

Lynch is dismissive of accepting total credit for Digicel’s success in Jamaica but rather attributes it to the efforts of the team as a whole. He says when they came to Jamaica they were welcomed with open arms, with the team making many comparisons between Irish and Jamaican people and finding many similarities.

“The growth of the company has surpassed every expectation. I see that continuing over the next ten years. As Mark said, the next frontier is data. In this regard we have started with our 4G offering and are targeting the corporate market. Many people would consider Jamaica as an emerging market from a telecoms perspective; we do not. The quality of the telecoms infrastructure in Jamaica today is first world. Also the quality of the workforce here is way beyond what we have experienced in other markets. “We can’t go into any market as a foreign entity and assume we can do it all on our own. Any company that has tried to do that has failed. Merging and understanding cultures is very important. The Jamaican managers we have sent overseas have done very well, merging into other societies and have developed long-term relationships and friendships,” said Lynch.

Expanding on this theme, Linehan added: “As an Irishman coming into Jamaica, I am aware of the similarities of the respective cultures. I first came into contact with West Indian culture when I managed a bar in Kilburn which is in north London. Now a big part of the clientele were West Indians, who left their homes in the fifties and sixties. This bar also had many Irish people. Caribbean people are hard-working and like to party, but equally are very ambitious and like to achieve things. A lot of people do not give them credit in this regard. You just have to look at the footprint of Digicel and leading the charge always have been Jamaican managers who have taken our DNA with them and advanced it right through all our operations.”

What next for Lynch?

Lynch moved up onto the board of directors and now spends a lot of his time overseeing the Pacific operations. He is now a family man and his duties take him away very often from his home in Dublin, Ireland. So what next for the intrepid senior executive?

“I suppose the focus now is to be looking at the next wave of what is going to happen in all these markets we have gone into. I think it is a case of bringing new products and services to all our markets across the globe. I am fortunate to have made the move on to the Board while at the same time maintaining regular contact with all our managers across our 31 markets. I regularly visit all our markets and may well continue to do so for another ten years.” Today the brand is perhaps the strongest in the Caribbean and many people have speculated on how its stock would perform if it were to list on the Jamaica Stock Exchange. Lynch recalls that in the early days the team found it difficult to convince local business leaders that Digicel could be a force to be reckoned with.

“I suppose many thought we were twelve Paddies that jumped out of a plane and didn’t know one end of Jamaica from the other, talking about building out a mobile telephone network across the entire island and then going on to do the same in other Caribbean countries. I’m sure many of them thought we were barmy. That’s a difficult vision for anyone to get their heads around. It’s easier to attract support now than it was back then. Back in 2001 you saw the dot com bubble bursting and financial markets buckling under pressure. It was a struggle for us to raise money and there were some Jamaican banks who, while not prepared to go the equity route, put their money where their mouth was to support a start-up business. Without their help we wouldn’t have got to where we are today. On the question of listing? There is no requirement at this time to go down that route. All the companies are adequately funded and financed to continue their operations on a month-to-month, year-to-year basis. We have raised money on the bond market over the last few years and Digicel is in a very healthy financial position,” Lynch declared confidently.

Is there further growth in Jamaica?

Today Digicel is the undoubted market leader with 2.1 million subscribers. This raises the question, is Jamaica a mature market and how many more subscribers can be added?

Linehan answered: “I actually think there is further growth in this market. The penetration is above 110 per cent at the moment. As long as we continue to deliver on the needs of customers and consumers in Jamaica we will see further growth. There’s minimal growth in the subscriber base but there’s growth in revenues as the demand in data increases. We now have to deliver on that demand.”

From day one, Digicel invested heavily in its brand. The legal entity is still called Mossel and the idea was mooted that this could serve as the brand name. The name Digicel seems much better and to the point . It’s hard to imagine Mossel having the sane resonance. Digicel took the decision that for every dollar spent in the network an equivalent dollar had to be spent on the brand, hence all the sponsorship activities you see today. The company has placed a lot of stock in advertising campaigns and engages in constant market research to discover just where the brand is going.

“The two most important elements outside of our customers and people are the network and the brand and we guard that brand religiously. We try to get everyone in the company to eat, sleep and drink the brand’s values,” said Lynch.

Part III next week.