Most workers can only be as good as the tools their companies give them to complete their job. Increasing employee productivity in a digital world means increasing their connectivity. Connecting to the fastest mobile networks we’ve ever seen—5G—requires finding the right hardware to take advantage of that power and speed. Samsung, one of the leading mobile device manufacturers in the world, is on a mission to help its corporate clients do just that, by continuing to push innovation on the hardware side of an ever-connected world.
In this episode of The Restless Ones, we sit with John Curtis, VP and General Manager of Samsung Electronics America's B2B Mobile division. With only around 30% of corporate employees’ work being amplified by digital tools, John is on a quest to help businesses increase that number. Seamless flows of information across the workplace will allow employees to effectively (and even better) perform their jobs from anywhere. John knows that tapping into the network, along with the power of AI and Edge Computing, is the most important step to unlocking worker and enterprise potential amongst his clients.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
There. Our partners are embracing by G and so now
people are getting more and more used to seeing on
their phone that they're operating using by G network speeds.
I believe people are enjoying these super fast feed enjoying
the delays in what they're doing. But also specifically around
the enterprise, you have manufacturing use cases, smart warehouses, data
(00:25):
collected through sensors, etcetera. By G enabled augmented reality. All
of that is evolving, and what's really exciting to me
about it is that it's a steady evolution. Welcome to
the restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than
a decade really learning about technology one makes it tick,
(00:49):
and then describing and explaining that to my audience. But
it's the conversations with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the
leaders at the intersection of technology and busness, that fascinate
me the most. In partnership with T Mobile for Business,
I explore the unique set of challenges that c T
o s and c I o s and other tech
executives face from advancements in cloud and edge computing, software
(01:14):
as a service, Internet of things, and of course five G.
WE are often left wondering how the leading minds in
business continue to thrive. Let's find out. Our guest today
is John Curtis, VP and General Manager of Samsung Electronics
America's B two B mobile division. John already had an
(01:36):
impressive career in the telecommunications industry before joining Samsung, and
he's seen some major transformations in the sector over the years,
from the proliferation of smartphones, two systems migrating to the cloud,
to the mobile office. John seen it all, and like
a true restless one, he is eager to do his
(01:57):
part to usher in a future in which mobility inflex
ability play a crucial role in business. If you listen
to our two part series with Major League Baseball, you
heard us talk a lot about how mobile technology is
playing an increasingly important role in the ballpark experience for
fans and behind the scenes for the organization. And if
(02:17):
you haven't listened to that series, you should definitely do
that because those episodes are great, but they give just
the tiniest hint of how mobile technology will transform everything.
We've seen it in our personal lives and we're just
at the beginning of seeing it do the same thing
to business. We'll hear a lot more from John about that,
(02:39):
but let's get to our interview and learn about how
John got into the world of technology through an interesting pathway,
one that involves fruit. John, it is such a pleasure
to have you on The Restless Ones. Welcome to the show, Jonathan,
Thank you so much. Really excited to be here with you.
I'm excited too. And one thing I always like to
(03:01):
do before I started getting elbows deep into the tech
is to learn more about the guests I have. So
I really want to know how did you first get
interested in the world of technology? If you go back
to the early nineties. I grew up in Dublin and Ireland,
but my sister came over to the States to do
post graduate school and she went to m I T
(03:23):
in Boston actually, and she came home when Christmas and
got our computer and plugged a telephone cable into it
and typed in a whole lot of stuff into the
computer and gave us an email address at IOL Ireland
Online dot i E. So in n we had email
at home, and myself and my parents didn't have a
(03:44):
clue what to do with that. Who We used to
just type in on the computer at home and in
her office in Boston, she was able to see what
we were typing and to respond. But I also vividly
remember getting my first mobile phone when I was in
university myself in the mid nineties and being so excited
(04:04):
with that. So later on in life, when I had
the opportunity to work in technology, it felt like a
very natural step. When did you decide that this was
something you wanted to look into more seriously, like going
into technology as a as a career field. I decided
to go into customer management, customer engagement and sales, and
(04:27):
actually went over to the UK to work in a
fruit factory distributing fruit products to a company called Azda
that later got acquired by Walmart. So I would see
that my career in tech started in a career and
customer management. Interesting and how did you make that move
over into the telecommunication sector. My wife is actually from
(04:50):
New Zealand, and we moved all the way down to
New Zealand and I met a person who worked for
Telecom New Zealand and they offered me a job that
that I could start in telecommunications, and which was obviously
the foray into technology. That was a really exciting time
(05:11):
to join because mobile phones were just starting. Everyone was
considering to get their first mobile phone, and broadband was
launched when I was working there and right after I started,
so the whole concept of the Internet, mobility, faster and
faster speeds was something that was coming about. So again
(05:32):
I got bitten by the bug with joining that and
I learned both sales and learned technology at the same time.
At this point, I thought it would be a good
idea to drill down into John's more recent experiences in
the tech sector and to talk about Samsung Electronics America's
B two B strategy as well as how the pandemic
has played a part in ramping up organizational transformations across
(05:55):
multiple industries. How did you end up over at Sam's
It's a funny story. So I came back to Ireland.
The economy was was absolutely on fire with the Celtic Tiger,
so I joined the company called their Southern Ireland that
later got acquired by a global mobile phone company and
spent sixteen wonderful years with Voda Phone. And then about
(06:19):
five years ago Sampson got in touch with me about
whether I wanted to come over and joined the building
out and the evolution of our B two be mobile
organization to really really build out from the ground up.
So there's yes. So it was around the sixteen when
I joined the journey with Samson, Wow and out of curiosity.
(06:41):
So let's say that you're in a social situation and
casual acquaintance comes up and asks, so, what do you
do for a living? How do you describe your job
to someone who's not in the industry, and very simply,
what I would say that I, and more importantly the
rest of the team in in Samson and about B
to Be do is we help businesses digitize and engage
(07:04):
with their employees and change their customer experience. So that's
really our mission, and we do this across three primary
areas hardware, software, and support excellent. So you so you're
really focused on facilitating the ability of other organizations to
(07:25):
be more effective, to perhaps even go through true digital transformations,
and and you're really enabling that sort of process to happen. Yes, exactly,
that's absolutely our mission and I truly believe we're achieving
it with many companies. This is a good chance for
us to kind of segue over and talk a little
(07:47):
bit more about your experience directly in the field. And
one thing I wanted to ask you about is when
you got your start and telecommunications, it was really just
before the the dawn of the smartphone really took off.
How would you say smartphones have have transformed the industry, Jonathan,
your gentleman, and how you're describing this. But I was
(08:10):
well into my career when the smartphone came about. I'm
older than you're than you're insinuating, So I think they
are continuing to transform industries and society. I guess it's
it's a truism, you know. That's They're the last thing
many of us look at before we go to sleep
at night, the first thing we think about when we
wake up in the morning, and they're how we travel there,
(08:31):
how we communicate there, how we order food, or how
we order transport. And I don't see that that's going
to change anytime soon. We're in a constant state of
evolution with smartphones, and the next phase now that we're
in at the moment is the evolution of the user interfaces,
and that's what we're really focused on in Samson makes
(08:55):
perfect sense to me, as you point out the smartphone
has sort of become the onto it through which we
interface with nearly every aspect of modern life. I just
see that evolution continuing at an ever increasing pace. Absolutely,
and I could, for a moment just pause and talk
about enterprise mobility. I think we're only at the beginning,
(09:19):
but when it comes to enterprises, they're only about to
penetrate it. So only about of employees are given a
mobile phone or mobile device in order to conduct their work.
So we're only at the beginning of that evolution. And
the opportunity for enterprises to think about how they can
(09:43):
mobilize and digitize their workforce in order to better serve
their customers or better manage their own business is exponential,
and it's absolutely huge, and that's what's really exciting. A
great example is Walmart. We've just launched the program with
Walmart to distribute seven hundred and forty thousand mobile devices
(10:07):
to all of their store associates in order to digitize them.
But the absolute power of that is that their associates
are able to use the device with many apps inside
Walmart during the day when they're in the store, but
then they're able to take them home and use them
at home for their own personal use. And that's a
great example of what many companies are talking to us
(10:28):
at the moment about about how can I digitize every
single member of my workforce in order to increase scanning,
increased learning, increase development, and increased customer engagement. That figure
you you throughout really floored me to think that that's
how how far along and that journey enterprises are. Because
(10:51):
as we were talking about earlier, obviously the smartphone has
become a central point in our personal lives. I could
easily see it becoming a more centralized component of a
lot of enterprise activities to facilitate business and to uh
empower workforces and decision making. You think of just the
(11:13):
the capacity for being able to gather and analyze data
that would have a direct impact on on business practices alone.
It's pretty phenomenal stuff, absolutely, And you know we can
think about and you know, we all talk so often
about the pandemic, and you know what happened with COVID
(11:37):
nineteen and how that that brought about a change in
work practice. You know, curb side curbside delivery, at home delivery,
knowing where things are. All of this is driven by mobility,
by knowing where everything is by being able to continuously
assess the environment, continuously scan inventory. The more companies get
(11:58):
better at scanning, invent to worry and knowing what's happening,
the better. We were talking recently with one retailer when
you're talking about the management of information, and they were saying,
when they say on their website that they are out
of stock, potentially it's plus or minus tw to what
they're telling themselves is in their warehouse or is in
(12:21):
their stores because they don't know, and they obviously want
to get the power of that to the knowledge to
know everything that's on the shelves, etcetera, so they can
reduce that plus or minus because very simply, they don't
want to tell their customer who wants to buy something
that they're out of stock if they're in stock, because
(12:41):
obviously that's a lost sale. And then also when we
think about curbside delivery curbside pickup, you have the whole
concept of really their retailers wanting to transact with their
customers where the customer is, not where their product is,
to make it as easy as possible. And related to that,
(13:02):
I remember reading an article not too long ago about
sort of the behind the scenes operations of big retail
companies that were now beginning to benefit from UH more
accurate scans on the supply chain side, so that not
only would they already know ahead of time how much
inventory was coming in, they would even know how many
(13:24):
employees would need to be there to greet the truck
in order to unload it. You're totally right. It's the
ability to know that information, and we believe that that
starts with mobilizing and digitizing every one of your workforce.
(13:46):
At T Mobile. For business, unconventional thinking means we see
things differently, so you can focus on what matters most.
Where some see another small town, we see businesses in
need of connectivity. So we built the largest five G
network to cover cities, towns, and the most interstate miles
in between. Where some see a caller in a queue,
we see an opportunity for our experts to provide solutions
(14:07):
without transfers. Where some see another virtual meeting, we see
five G enabling wireless, real time translations almost anywhere you
do business. Our unique approach has made us the leader
in five G, number one in customer satisfaction, and a
partner who includes first class benefits. Like five G and
every plan so you get it all without trade offs.
(14:28):
Unconventional thinking is better for business t Mobile for Business
Open Signal Awards to Mobile as America's passes five G
Network USA five G User Experience reportul Capable device required
coverage not available in some areas. Some uses may require
certain planner feature. See mobile dot com. For JD Power
Award information, visit JD power dot com slash Awards. John
(14:51):
You mentioned, of course the pandemic made massive changes required
throughout multiple sectors all around the world. What were some
of the changes in practices and what were some of
the technologies that really enabled you to meet the challenge
of still, you know, doing business as usual in a
very unusual set of circumstances. Within Sampson, we decided to
(15:14):
really focus on management information, and I would suggest that
not only did technology increase ten years in one month
for many companies, but our grasp on our business and
knowledge and insight into our business increased ten years in
one month. So we were able to increase our amount
(15:36):
of customer engagement and increase our amount of people engagement.
That I'm really proud of what the team did by
really being resilient and thinking for every individual, how can
I personally change with what's happened, and how can I
change what I'm doing? And then that the last part, Jonathan,
to your question there was how did technology help? Again?
(15:59):
It comes back ability, mobility, mobility, so all about enabling
the seam with communication. I think it's fascinating how video
communication has really taken a step forward. We could all
say the video communication was key before, but nowadays video
(16:20):
communication is the default and anything else is secondary. So
so that's quite quite incredible, I believe. Yeah, I think
you're right on the money, John. It really did show
that not only could we manage during a great time
of transition, we could flourish. We just had to make
(16:40):
sure we were using the right tools in order to
do it. Absolutely, you mustn't forget that that us extroverts
do need to have the in person contact in order
to feel energized in what we do. And that's why,
you know, we've been doing a lot of thinking about
how we describe Samsung strategy and as we go forward,
(17:02):
and when we're advising and consulting with our customer base,
we've been discussing how we're in the and era, not
the or era, and it's vitally important for businesses to
consider their employee base and their customer base and figure
out how to do both and how to enable the
workforce to work at home and enable the workforce to
(17:25):
be in the office as well, and neither of those
two to feel disenfranchised by by where they choose to locate.
We recently did a study and sixty seven percent of
companies are considering permanent work from home policies. That's an
incredible number, and scent of remote workers are happy with
(17:46):
their current arrangement. So those two factors, coupled with the
obvious that the war on talent, that there is a
course of the US at the moment, mean that it's
really important for businesses to enable collaboration between home and
the office. I completely agree. It's so interesting to be
(18:07):
to be present during a transitional era like that. It's
incredibly unfortunate that a pandemic was the inciting incident, but
to actually see a major transition culturally throughout the entire
world is pretty phenomenal. And to know that we have
(18:28):
different approaches to meet that is also really amazing. Out
of curiosity, what are some of the verticals or markets
that the B two B Mobile division is really focused
on right now. So we focus across all the main ones,
but some of the top ones. At the moment, we're
super focused in something of the education vertical. Obviously, you know,
(18:51):
we talked about how enterprises has changed. You know, we
mustn't forget all of the educators out there that have
to change so dramatically last year, and many of them
didn't have the existing technology strategies to accommodate this. And
they're still within an evolution considering now what's happening with
all of the return to school. So we're really focused.
(19:14):
They're helping the schools consider both the hardware, the software,
you know, the platform and the security that's needed in
order to enable for for the school children and thinking
about that and era as well about the school kids
that need to be at home and the ones that
need to be in the school. So educations a big focus.
(19:35):
Healthcare continues to be a really big focus. Again. Healthcare
changed quite dramatically as a result of the pandemic. The
whole concept of telehealth was there before the pandemic, but
it became a very fast, real and furious solution for
the client base within within healthcare, and we have a
(19:56):
number of different solutions with many healthcare partners. And then finally,
we're also very focused on the finance vertical, not to
exclude any of the ones that I'm not mentioning, but
obviously that's a very conservative industry historically relied on in
person interactions, and we're talking to them. We're excited at
(20:17):
the moment we have the launch of some of our
our new phones that we've recently launched, both the Flip
Phone and the Fold Phone, but the Fold Phone specifically
around the finance vertical is creating a lot of buzz
because that goes from being a phone to a tablet
to a computer with the use of a Bluetooth keyboard
in in a seamless transition, and then just simply folds
(20:40):
back to being the phone again. So as our finance
vertical partners are talking to us, they're they're talking to
us about how they can change their user interface and
their engagement with their customer and client base in order
to differentiate amongst themselves. I was eager to get John's
in site into a topic. I think that is really
(21:03):
interesting that of five G and I suspected that John's
experience in the field of mobile technology would mean he'd
have some interesting perspectives on it, and I was not disappointed. John.
I think this is a great moment for us to
start talking about some emerging technologies. And there's what I've
been dying to ask you because I feel that you
(21:24):
would really have a lot to say about it, and
that is five G deployment. We've seen that being rolled
out over the last year and it's really I think
poised to make some big changes in the world of
business UH and it obviously goes beyond smartphones. We typically
(21:47):
think of it in the terms of smartphones, but obviously
this this UH communications technology has more applications beyond that.
So where does Samsung see this going Within some some
we see it as absolutely core and it's all about
driving a ubiquitous pickup vi G technology. We were the
(22:10):
first to bring five G into our smartphones, and now
all of our main phones and flagship phones that we
deploy all have five G technology in them, and our
partners are embracing five G and so now people are
getting more and more used to seeing on their phone
that they're operating using five G network speeds. I believe
(22:34):
people are enjoying these super fast speeds, enjoying no delays
in what they're doing. But also specifically around the enterprise,
we see private networks as a as a big opportunity
within this, and private networks allows you to provide secure environments,
super fast environments, allows you to transition from the private
(22:56):
to the public network um and also give you information
and allows you to to manage information. But there's many
use cases to talk about. Two of them you have
manufacturing use cases, smart warehouses, data collected through centers, etcetera,
by G enabled augmented reality. All of that is evolving.
(23:20):
And what's really exciting to me about it is that
it's a steady evolution. It's not jerks where it's taking jumps.
It's just it's a really steady evolution where if you
just stop and you cast your mind back a year,
clastomer mind back a couple of years, you don't even
realize how you've evolved into it. Just like the whole
concept of the self driving car, etcetera. Cars are getting
(23:43):
more and more intelligent and doing more and more for you.
So it's not a question of going from nothing to something.
It's about that steady evolution and then the second one,
which is really ubiquitous is the corporate and office use cases.
And we're just talking about the and how the pandemic
changed the whole concept of a video becoming the norm
(24:07):
and not the unusual approach to meetings. And obviously five
G is really important for that low latency, faster data transfer,
greater capacity. All of those concepts are what what enabled
that video conferencing and moving to fixed wireless alternatives. You know,
the whole concept of work is where you are and
(24:28):
not where you go is totally real now. Now a
customer that decides that they do not need to have
a laptop or computer is really and truly now in
front of them with the computing power of of the
Fold device, coupled with the interface, the screen technology, the
(24:49):
Bluetooth keyboard, all of all of those elements, and the
integration with Microsoft for what it does with all of
the Microsoft Suite of products. When I was saying that
the evolution on how it's going smoothly, we will look
back on this time and go, wow, we didn't even
realize we that we morphed into that phase as we
(25:09):
were just taken through it. It's it's phenomenal and I
could not imagine this sort of situation a decade ago,
where work was a specific desk in a specific building
that was hardwired to a building's network, and that if
you weren't done at the end of the day, you
(25:30):
were either staying late or you're just gonna have to
get to it in the morning, whereas now like it's
so flexible and adaptable, which when you start to leverage
that with your your enterprise strategy, you begin to notice
ways that you can do business far more effectively than
you ever could before. You're no longer constrained by the
(25:54):
realities of what the tech limitations were just ten years ago.
I think you're totally right, and it's our job as
Samson and as our peers in the industry to provide
that technology and that innovation to our customers. But I
think what's changed is people aren't limited by their own minds.
People have expanded in how they think they can use
(26:17):
their technology, and cultures and norms have changed as a
result of the pandemic. The cultures and the norms have
allowed us in the industry and companies like Samson to
fill that innovation and to absolutely give people the art
of the possible, But what's exciting is that people's definition
(26:37):
of where that possible begins and ends has totally changed.
And uh, you were talking about this idea of being
able to go beyond. One of the technologies that I'm
seeing push people beyond what would normally be their own
limitations is artificial intelligence, which is such a a broad
term I understand. I mean it's an enormous discipline. Then
(27:00):
what ways does your department leverage AI? If it does well,
AI is an evolution. You know, we have that within
our devices, and we have that enabled for our partners
to develop applications to run on that. And I think
that AI edge computing are two of the next frontiers
who are for five G. Five G enables that as
(27:22):
well through the speed and the enablement of the computing.
But you have end to end visibility control from production
to consumption, and you can have people, devices and systems
interacting efficiently and safely in this environment. So there's many
aspects to it. But I think both AI A are
(27:44):
edge computing all of that. Just like we were talking
at the beginning of this discussion, we're at the beginning
of all of that evolution. But what's going to make
it exciting is us providing the technology and the hardware
and the software, and then the APT developers coming in
and developing the applications in order to use it for
(28:06):
the customer base. And we're in a really remarkable time
as far as that goes. The fact that we're seeing
all of these things maturing rapidly at the same time,
it almost makes it difficult to even talk about the
present because things are changing so quickly, which is gonna
make my next question for you even more difficult because
we're going to talk about the future, which is that, Um,
(28:30):
what are some of the technologies do you feel are
going to play a critical role in business moving forward?
First of all, what do they need to be thinking about?
It's that's very simple. Mobile devices by G and edge
computing what I was talking about. Their absolutely, they're they're
the drivers that needs to be coupled with the the
hardware and the software and the platform that they're using.
(28:53):
But what's really important and what came home to me
this summer is as you think about those elements, listen
to the interns in your organization because they're the ones
that will challenge you about how to use them, and
they will challenge you about whether you're going fast enough,
thinking about your mobility, thinking about and thinking about edge computer.
(29:16):
I couldn't let John go without asking him one more thing.
What is one technology that you initially didn't get that
just didn't click with you right away, but now you
couldn't live or work without it? The cloud? Everyone talked
about the cloud, drew pictures of the cloud, didn't understand
(29:36):
what it meant. Where does the day to go? What
does it really do for you? But now can we
live without it? Can you use your cable TV at home?
What happens when you when you get a power cut?
You don't lose what you've recorded. You change phones, you
have your Spotify, you log in your music. Comes down
to that. So the cloud appeared. I don't think any
(30:00):
was fully got what it was, and now we certainly
couldn't live without it. I think if I was going
to just add I know it's quick questions, but I
always like to say that the mobile phone was the
original cloud because of mobility. John, this was an absolute
pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Really enjoyable,
(30:28):
Like a lot of folks who are more on the
consumer side than the enterprise side. I had a fairly
narrow view on the role of smartphones in our world,
and speaking with John made me appreciate how the devices
that have already impacted our personal lives stand to make
equally stunning transformations for enterprises. Whether it's a small business
(30:52):
or a multinational conglomerate. Mobile computing is bound to become
a core asset in business. You pair that with advanced
in edge computing, Internet of things, artificial intelligence, augmented reality,
and five G to connect it all together, and you're
talking about capabilities that will fundamentally change how we think
of business, which is pretty exciting. Thanks once again to
(31:15):
John Curtis for joining the show and sharing his expertise.
Make certain to tune into future episodes of The Restless Ones,
where all have more conversations with thought leaders, decision makers,
and the folks who are building the path to our future.
I'm Jonathan Strickland at T Mobile. For business, unconventional thinking
(31:36):
means we see things differently, so you can focus on
what matters most. That's why we've become the leader in
five G, number one in customer satisfaction and a partner
who includes five G in every plan, so you get
it all. Unconventional thinking is better for business. Open Signal
War's teample as America's Past five Network You I say
five G User experience of Court to Like twenty twenty
one People Divice Acquired coveris not available in some areas
(31:57):
and used require certain playing features. Ce mombile do cot
com for JT twenty twenty award information visit d power
dot Com Splash Awards
There. Our partners are embracing by G and so now
people are getting more and more used to seeing on
their phone that they're operating using by G network speeds.
I believe people are enjoying these super fast feed enjoying
the delays in what they're doing. But also specifically around
the enterprise, you have manufacturing use cases, smart warehouses, data
(00:25):
collected through sensors, etcetera. By G enabled augmented reality. All
of that is evolving, and what's really exciting to me
about it is that it's a steady evolution. Welcome to
the restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than
a decade really learning about technology one makes it tick,
(00:49):
and then describing and explaining that to my audience. But
it's the conversations with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the
leaders at the intersection of technology and busness, that fascinate
me the most. In partnership with T Mobile for Business,
I explore the unique set of challenges that c T
o s and c I o s and other tech
executives face from advancements in cloud and edge computing, software
(01:14):
as a service, Internet of things, and of course five G.
WE are often left wondering how the leading minds in
business continue to thrive. Let's find out. Our guest today
is John Curtis, VP and General Manager of Samsung Electronics
America's B two B mobile division. John already had an
(01:36):
impressive career in the telecommunications industry before joining Samsung, and
he's seen some major transformations in the sector over the years,
from the proliferation of smartphones, two systems migrating to the cloud,
to the mobile office. John seen it all, and like
a true restless one, he is eager to do his
(01:57):
part to usher in a future in which mobility inflex
ability play a crucial role in business. If you listen
to our two part series with Major League Baseball, you
heard us talk a lot about how mobile technology is
playing an increasingly important role in the ballpark experience for
fans and behind the scenes for the organization. And if
(02:17):
you haven't listened to that series, you should definitely do
that because those episodes are great, but they give just
the tiniest hint of how mobile technology will transform everything.
We've seen it in our personal lives and we're just
at the beginning of seeing it do the same thing
to business. We'll hear a lot more from John about that,
(02:39):
but let's get to our interview and learn about how
John got into the world of technology through an interesting pathway,
one that involves fruit. John, it is such a pleasure
to have you on The Restless Ones. Welcome to the show, Jonathan,
Thank you so much. Really excited to be here with you.
I'm excited too. And one thing I always like to
(03:01):
do before I started getting elbows deep into the tech
is to learn more about the guests I have. So
I really want to know how did you first get
interested in the world of technology? If you go back
to the early nineties. I grew up in Dublin and Ireland,
but my sister came over to the States to do
post graduate school and she went to m I T
(03:23):
in Boston actually, and she came home when Christmas and
got our computer and plugged a telephone cable into it
and typed in a whole lot of stuff into the
computer and gave us an email address at IOL Ireland
Online dot i E. So in n we had email
at home, and myself and my parents didn't have a
(03:44):
clue what to do with that. Who We used to
just type in on the computer at home and in
her office in Boston, she was able to see what
we were typing and to respond. But I also vividly
remember getting my first mobile phone when I was in
university myself in the mid nineties and being so excited
(04:04):
with that. So later on in life, when I had
the opportunity to work in technology, it felt like a
very natural step. When did you decide that this was
something you wanted to look into more seriously, like going
into technology as a as a career field. I decided
to go into customer management, customer engagement and sales, and
(04:27):
actually went over to the UK to work in a
fruit factory distributing fruit products to a company called Azda
that later got acquired by Walmart. So I would see
that my career in tech started in a career and
customer management. Interesting and how did you make that move
over into the telecommunication sector. My wife is actually from
(04:50):
New Zealand, and we moved all the way down to
New Zealand and I met a person who worked for
Telecom New Zealand and they offered me a job that
that I could start in telecommunications, and which was obviously
the foray into technology. That was a really exciting time
(05:11):
to join because mobile phones were just starting. Everyone was
considering to get their first mobile phone, and broadband was
launched when I was working there and right after I started,
so the whole concept of the Internet, mobility, faster and
faster speeds was something that was coming about. So again
(05:32):
I got bitten by the bug with joining that and
I learned both sales and learned technology at the same time.
At this point, I thought it would be a good
idea to drill down into John's more recent experiences in
the tech sector and to talk about Samsung Electronics America's
B two B strategy as well as how the pandemic
has played a part in ramping up organizational transformations across
(05:55):
multiple industries. How did you end up over at Sam's
It's a funny story. So I came back to Ireland.
The economy was was absolutely on fire with the Celtic Tiger,
so I joined the company called their Southern Ireland that
later got acquired by a global mobile phone company and
spent sixteen wonderful years with Voda Phone. And then about
(06:19):
five years ago Sampson got in touch with me about
whether I wanted to come over and joined the building
out and the evolution of our B two be mobile
organization to really really build out from the ground up.
So there's yes. So it was around the sixteen when
I joined the journey with Samson, Wow and out of curiosity.
(06:41):
So let's say that you're in a social situation and
casual acquaintance comes up and asks, so, what do you
do for a living? How do you describe your job
to someone who's not in the industry, and very simply,
what I would say that I, and more importantly the
rest of the team in in Samson and about B
to Be do is we help businesses digitize and engage
(07:04):
with their employees and change their customer experience. So that's
really our mission, and we do this across three primary
areas hardware, software, and support excellent. So you so you're
really focused on facilitating the ability of other organizations to
(07:25):
be more effective, to perhaps even go through true digital transformations,
and and you're really enabling that sort of process to happen. Yes, exactly,
that's absolutely our mission and I truly believe we're achieving
it with many companies. This is a good chance for
us to kind of segue over and talk a little
(07:47):
bit more about your experience directly in the field. And
one thing I wanted to ask you about is when
you got your start and telecommunications, it was really just
before the the dawn of the smartphone really took off.
How would you say smartphones have have transformed the industry, Jonathan,
your gentleman, and how you're describing this. But I was
(08:10):
well into my career when the smartphone came about. I'm
older than you're than you're insinuating, So I think they
are continuing to transform industries and society. I guess it's
it's a truism, you know. That's They're the last thing
many of us look at before we go to sleep
at night, the first thing we think about when we
wake up in the morning, and they're how we travel there,
(08:31):
how we communicate there, how we order food, or how
we order transport. And I don't see that that's going
to change anytime soon. We're in a constant state of
evolution with smartphones, and the next phase now that we're
in at the moment is the evolution of the user interfaces,
and that's what we're really focused on in Samson makes
(08:55):
perfect sense to me, as you point out the smartphone
has sort of become the onto it through which we
interface with nearly every aspect of modern life. I just
see that evolution continuing at an ever increasing pace. Absolutely,
and I could, for a moment just pause and talk
about enterprise mobility. I think we're only at the beginning,
(09:19):
but when it comes to enterprises, they're only about to
penetrate it. So only about of employees are given a
mobile phone or mobile device in order to conduct their work.
So we're only at the beginning of that evolution. And
the opportunity for enterprises to think about how they can
(09:43):
mobilize and digitize their workforce in order to better serve
their customers or better manage their own business is exponential,
and it's absolutely huge, and that's what's really exciting. A
great example is Walmart. We've just launched the program with
Walmart to distribute seven hundred and forty thousand mobile devices
(10:07):
to all of their store associates in order to digitize them.
But the absolute power of that is that their associates
are able to use the device with many apps inside
Walmart during the day when they're in the store, but
then they're able to take them home and use them
at home for their own personal use. And that's a
great example of what many companies are talking to us
(10:28):
at the moment about about how can I digitize every
single member of my workforce in order to increase scanning,
increased learning, increase development, and increased customer engagement. That figure
you you throughout really floored me to think that that's
how how far along and that journey enterprises are. Because
(10:51):
as we were talking about earlier, obviously the smartphone has
become a central point in our personal lives. I could
easily see it becoming a more centralized component of a
lot of enterprise activities to facilitate business and to uh
empower workforces and decision making. You think of just the
(11:13):
the capacity for being able to gather and analyze data
that would have a direct impact on on business practices alone.
It's pretty phenomenal stuff, absolutely, And you know we can
think about and you know, we all talk so often
about the pandemic, and you know what happened with COVID
(11:37):
nineteen and how that that brought about a change in
work practice. You know, curb side curbside delivery, at home delivery,
knowing where things are. All of this is driven by mobility,
by knowing where everything is by being able to continuously
assess the environment, continuously scan inventory. The more companies get
(11:58):
better at scanning, invent to worry and knowing what's happening,
the better. We were talking recently with one retailer when
you're talking about the management of information, and they were saying,
when they say on their website that they are out
of stock, potentially it's plus or minus tw to what
they're telling themselves is in their warehouse or is in
(12:21):
their stores because they don't know, and they obviously want
to get the power of that to the knowledge to
know everything that's on the shelves, etcetera, so they can
reduce that plus or minus because very simply, they don't
want to tell their customer who wants to buy something
that they're out of stock if they're in stock, because
(12:41):
obviously that's a lost sale. And then also when we
think about curbside delivery curbside pickup, you have the whole
concept of really their retailers wanting to transact with their
customers where the customer is, not where their product is,
to make it as easy as possible. And related to that,
(13:02):
I remember reading an article not too long ago about
sort of the behind the scenes operations of big retail
companies that were now beginning to benefit from UH more
accurate scans on the supply chain side, so that not
only would they already know ahead of time how much
inventory was coming in, they would even know how many
(13:24):
employees would need to be there to greet the truck
in order to unload it. You're totally right. It's the
ability to know that information, and we believe that that
starts with mobilizing and digitizing every one of your workforce.
(13:46):
At T Mobile. For business, unconventional thinking means we see
things differently, so you can focus on what matters most.
Where some see another small town, we see businesses in
need of connectivity. So we built the largest five G
network to cover cities, towns, and the most interstate miles
in between. Where some see a caller in a queue,
we see an opportunity for our experts to provide solutions
(14:07):
without transfers. Where some see another virtual meeting, we see
five G enabling wireless, real time translations almost anywhere you
do business. Our unique approach has made us the leader
in five G, number one in customer satisfaction, and a
partner who includes first class benefits. Like five G and
every plan so you get it all without trade offs.
(14:28):
Unconventional thinking is better for business t Mobile for Business
Open Signal Awards to Mobile as America's passes five G
Network USA five G User Experience reportul Capable device required
coverage not available in some areas. Some uses may require
certain planner feature. See mobile dot com. For JD Power
Award information, visit JD power dot com slash Awards. John
(14:51):
You mentioned, of course the pandemic made massive changes required
throughout multiple sectors all around the world. What were some
of the changes in practices and what were some of
the technologies that really enabled you to meet the challenge
of still, you know, doing business as usual in a
very unusual set of circumstances. Within Sampson, we decided to
(15:14):
really focus on management information, and I would suggest that
not only did technology increase ten years in one month
for many companies, but our grasp on our business and
knowledge and insight into our business increased ten years in
one month. So we were able to increase our amount
(15:36):
of customer engagement and increase our amount of people engagement.
That I'm really proud of what the team did by
really being resilient and thinking for every individual, how can
I personally change with what's happened, and how can I
change what I'm doing? And then that the last part, Jonathan,
to your question there was how did technology help? Again?
(15:59):
It comes back ability, mobility, mobility, so all about enabling
the seam with communication. I think it's fascinating how video
communication has really taken a step forward. We could all
say the video communication was key before, but nowadays video
(16:20):
communication is the default and anything else is secondary. So
so that's quite quite incredible, I believe. Yeah, I think
you're right on the money, John. It really did show
that not only could we manage during a great time
of transition, we could flourish. We just had to make
(16:40):
sure we were using the right tools in order to
do it. Absolutely, you mustn't forget that that us extroverts
do need to have the in person contact in order
to feel energized in what we do. And that's why,
you know, we've been doing a lot of thinking about
how we describe Samsung strategy and as we go forward,
(17:02):
and when we're advising and consulting with our customer base,
we've been discussing how we're in the and era, not
the or era, and it's vitally important for businesses to
consider their employee base and their customer base and figure
out how to do both and how to enable the
workforce to work at home and enable the workforce to
(17:25):
be in the office as well, and neither of those
two to feel disenfranchised by by where they choose to locate.
We recently did a study and sixty seven percent of
companies are considering permanent work from home policies. That's an
incredible number, and scent of remote workers are happy with
(17:46):
their current arrangement. So those two factors, coupled with the
obvious that the war on talent, that there is a
course of the US at the moment, mean that it's
really important for businesses to enable collaboration between home and
the office. I completely agree. It's so interesting to be
(18:07):
to be present during a transitional era like that. It's
incredibly unfortunate that a pandemic was the inciting incident, but
to actually see a major transition culturally throughout the entire
world is pretty phenomenal. And to know that we have
(18:28):
different approaches to meet that is also really amazing. Out
of curiosity, what are some of the verticals or markets
that the B two B Mobile division is really focused
on right now. So we focus across all the main ones,
but some of the top ones. At the moment, we're
super focused in something of the education vertical. Obviously, you know,
(18:51):
we talked about how enterprises has changed. You know, we
mustn't forget all of the educators out there that have
to change so dramatically last year, and many of them
didn't have the existing technology strategies to accommodate this. And
they're still within an evolution considering now what's happening with
all of the return to school. So we're really focused.
(19:14):
They're helping the schools consider both the hardware, the software,
you know, the platform and the security that's needed in
order to enable for for the school children and thinking
about that and era as well about the school kids
that need to be at home and the ones that
need to be in the school. So educations a big focus.
(19:35):
Healthcare continues to be a really big focus. Again. Healthcare
changed quite dramatically as a result of the pandemic. The
whole concept of telehealth was there before the pandemic, but
it became a very fast, real and furious solution for
the client base within within healthcare, and we have a
(19:56):
number of different solutions with many healthcare partners. And then finally,
we're also very focused on the finance vertical, not to
exclude any of the ones that I'm not mentioning, but
obviously that's a very conservative industry historically relied on in
person interactions, and we're talking to them. We're excited at
(20:17):
the moment we have the launch of some of our
our new phones that we've recently launched, both the Flip
Phone and the Fold Phone, but the Fold Phone specifically
around the finance vertical is creating a lot of buzz
because that goes from being a phone to a tablet
to a computer with the use of a Bluetooth keyboard
in in a seamless transition, and then just simply folds
(20:40):
back to being the phone again. So as our finance
vertical partners are talking to us, they're they're talking to
us about how they can change their user interface and
their engagement with their customer and client base in order
to differentiate amongst themselves. I was eager to get John's
in site into a topic. I think that is really
(21:03):
interesting that of five G and I suspected that John's
experience in the field of mobile technology would mean he'd
have some interesting perspectives on it, and I was not disappointed. John.
I think this is a great moment for us to
start talking about some emerging technologies. And there's what I've
been dying to ask you because I feel that you
(21:24):
would really have a lot to say about it, and
that is five G deployment. We've seen that being rolled
out over the last year and it's really I think
poised to make some big changes in the world of
business UH and it obviously goes beyond smartphones. We typically
(21:47):
think of it in the terms of smartphones, but obviously
this this UH communications technology has more applications beyond that.
So where does Samsung see this going Within some some
we see it as absolutely core and it's all about
driving a ubiquitous pickup vi G technology. We were the
(22:10):
first to bring five G into our smartphones, and now
all of our main phones and flagship phones that we
deploy all have five G technology in them, and our
partners are embracing five G and so now people are
getting more and more used to seeing on their phone
that they're operating using five G network speeds. I believe
(22:34):
people are enjoying these super fast speeds, enjoying no delays
in what they're doing. But also specifically around the enterprise,
we see private networks as a as a big opportunity
within this, and private networks allows you to provide secure environments,
super fast environments, allows you to transition from the private
(22:56):
to the public network um and also give you information
and allows you to to manage information. But there's many
use cases to talk about. Two of them you have
manufacturing use cases, smart warehouses, data collected through centers, etcetera,
by G enabled augmented reality. All of that is evolving.
(23:20):
And what's really exciting to me about it is that
it's a steady evolution. It's not jerks where it's taking jumps.
It's just it's a really steady evolution where if you
just stop and you cast your mind back a year,
clastomer mind back a couple of years, you don't even
realize how you've evolved into it. Just like the whole
concept of the self driving car, etcetera. Cars are getting
(23:43):
more and more intelligent and doing more and more for you.
So it's not a question of going from nothing to something.
It's about that steady evolution and then the second one,
which is really ubiquitous is the corporate and office use cases.
And we're just talking about the and how the pandemic
changed the whole concept of a video becoming the norm
(24:07):
and not the unusual approach to meetings. And obviously five
G is really important for that low latency, faster data transfer,
greater capacity. All of those concepts are what what enabled
that video conferencing and moving to fixed wireless alternatives. You know,
the whole concept of work is where you are and
(24:28):
not where you go is totally real now. Now a
customer that decides that they do not need to have
a laptop or computer is really and truly now in
front of them with the computing power of of the
Fold device, coupled with the interface, the screen technology, the
(24:49):
Bluetooth keyboard, all of all of those elements, and the
integration with Microsoft for what it does with all of
the Microsoft Suite of products. When I was saying that
the evolution on how it's going smoothly, we will look
back on this time and go, wow, we didn't even
realize we that we morphed into that phase as we
(25:09):
were just taken through it. It's it's phenomenal and I
could not imagine this sort of situation a decade ago,
where work was a specific desk in a specific building
that was hardwired to a building's network, and that if
you weren't done at the end of the day, you
(25:30):
were either staying late or you're just gonna have to
get to it in the morning, whereas now like it's
so flexible and adaptable, which when you start to leverage
that with your your enterprise strategy, you begin to notice
ways that you can do business far more effectively than
you ever could before. You're no longer constrained by the
(25:54):
realities of what the tech limitations were just ten years ago.
I think you're totally right, and it's our job as
Samson and as our peers in the industry to provide
that technology and that innovation to our customers. But I
think what's changed is people aren't limited by their own minds.
People have expanded in how they think they can use
(26:17):
their technology, and cultures and norms have changed as a
result of the pandemic. The cultures and the norms have
allowed us in the industry and companies like Samson to
fill that innovation and to absolutely give people the art
of the possible, But what's exciting is that people's definition
(26:37):
of where that possible begins and ends has totally changed.
And uh, you were talking about this idea of being
able to go beyond. One of the technologies that I'm
seeing push people beyond what would normally be their own
limitations is artificial intelligence, which is such a a broad
term I understand. I mean it's an enormous discipline. Then
(27:00):
what ways does your department leverage AI? If it does well,
AI is an evolution. You know, we have that within
our devices, and we have that enabled for our partners
to develop applications to run on that. And I think
that AI edge computing are two of the next frontiers
who are for five G. Five G enables that as
(27:22):
well through the speed and the enablement of the computing.
But you have end to end visibility control from production
to consumption, and you can have people, devices and systems
interacting efficiently and safely in this environment. So there's many
aspects to it. But I think both AI A are
(27:44):
edge computing all of that. Just like we were talking
at the beginning of this discussion, we're at the beginning
of all of that evolution. But what's going to make
it exciting is us providing the technology and the hardware
and the software, and then the APT developers coming in
and developing the applications in order to use it for
(28:06):
the customer base. And we're in a really remarkable time
as far as that goes. The fact that we're seeing
all of these things maturing rapidly at the same time,
it almost makes it difficult to even talk about the
present because things are changing so quickly, which is gonna
make my next question for you even more difficult because
we're going to talk about the future, which is that, Um,
(28:30):
what are some of the technologies do you feel are
going to play a critical role in business moving forward?
First of all, what do they need to be thinking about?
It's that's very simple. Mobile devices by G and edge
computing what I was talking about. Their absolutely, they're they're
the drivers that needs to be coupled with the the
hardware and the software and the platform that they're using.
(28:53):
But what's really important and what came home to me
this summer is as you think about those elements, listen
to the interns in your organization because they're the ones
that will challenge you about how to use them, and
they will challenge you about whether you're going fast enough,
thinking about your mobility, thinking about and thinking about edge computer.
(29:16):
I couldn't let John go without asking him one more thing.
What is one technology that you initially didn't get that
just didn't click with you right away, but now you
couldn't live or work without it? The cloud? Everyone talked
about the cloud, drew pictures of the cloud, didn't understand
(29:36):
what it meant. Where does the day to go? What
does it really do for you? But now can we
live without it? Can you use your cable TV at home?
What happens when you when you get a power cut?
You don't lose what you've recorded. You change phones, you
have your Spotify, you log in your music. Comes down
to that. So the cloud appeared. I don't think any
(30:00):
was fully got what it was, and now we certainly
couldn't live without it. I think if I was going
to just add I know it's quick questions, but I
always like to say that the mobile phone was the
original cloud because of mobility. John, this was an absolute
pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Really enjoyable,
(30:28):
Like a lot of folks who are more on the
consumer side than the enterprise side. I had a fairly
narrow view on the role of smartphones in our world,
and speaking with John made me appreciate how the devices
that have already impacted our personal lives stand to make
equally stunning transformations for enterprises. Whether it's a small business
(30:52):
or a multinational conglomerate. Mobile computing is bound to become
a core asset in business. You pair that with advanced
in edge computing, Internet of things, artificial intelligence, augmented reality,
and five G to connect it all together, and you're
talking about capabilities that will fundamentally change how we think
of business, which is pretty exciting. Thanks once again to
(31:15):
John Curtis for joining the show and sharing his expertise.
Make certain to tune into future episodes of The Restless Ones,
where all have more conversations with thought leaders, decision makers,
and the folks who are building the path to our future.
I'm Jonathan Strickland at T Mobile. For business, unconventional thinking
(31:36):
means we see things differently, so you can focus on
what matters most. That's why we've become the leader in
five G, number one in customer satisfaction and a partner
who includes five G in every plan, so you get
it all. Unconventional thinking is better for business. Open Signal
War's teample as America's Past five Network You I say
five G User experience of Court to Like twenty twenty
one People Divice Acquired coveris not available in some areas
(31:57):
and used require certain playing features. Ce mombile do cot
com for JT twenty twenty award information visit d power
dot Com Splash Awards
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