Partnership Nova SBE Executive Education & NOS: "FAAST is much more than a training process about technology and its potential"

In an interview, Pedro Brandão, Market & Customer Intelligence Director and Head of the Center of Excellence for Advanced Analytics at NOS SGPS, told us about the expectations for the FAAST and what factors led NOS to join Nova SBE.

Why is it important to make this effort to transform NOS into a data driven organisation?

NOS is already a data-driven organisation and this will certainly be its classification in any diagnosis that we make, following the methodology that we deem appropriate. The prevalence of data analysis to support decision-making is very high at NOS.

I believe that the effort we are making fits a different goal. The last few years have provided a very significant evolution to the way Mathematical Modelling and Computer Engineering are applied to large amounts of data. This technological evolution has become democratic in many ways and therefore accessible to organisations.

With this framework, data is no longer used only as a rear-view mirror that describes the past and promotes human decisions, but is now used primarily as a predictor of what will happen in the future and a prescriber of what we should do. This is the great change promoted by cognitive technologies.

NOS has been using these cognitive technologies, such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, for several years and believes that this is the right time to scale this technological use to all its operational and business dimensions, to all its decisions and to all its people.

How does training in data and digitalisation contribute to meeting the current challenges of your company?

It is fundamental that cognitive technologies do not remain confined to specialists, i.e. Mathematical Modelling and Computer Engineering. It is fundamental that these technologies are universally known and applied throughout the organisation. In this framework, it is very important to create a disruptive mechanism to bring people closer to Prescriptive Analytics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, regardless of their function and role at NOS. In essence, we are talking about a point of positive discontinuity that is perceived by all and that was signalled by the FAAST programme kick-off on 24 January.

We believe that this disruptive mechanics will take place in two fundamental and complementary ways.

Firstly, through FAAST, a universal and mass training programme for management profiles linked to business operations, to marketing and sales and to finance, covering every role and every level of responsibility of the organisation. We are talking about preparing NOS employees to make it happen.

Secondly, this disruption will also be effected through structural investment in projects of these characteristics applied to every area of NOS and to all its challenges, and this is also the major commitment of NOS. In this aspect, we are talking about actually making it happen with Advanced Analytics and Cognitive Technologies. 

How does Advanced Analytics add value in the decision-making process?

For NOS, this creation of value is very much linked to its fundamental characteristics as a company, and is also linked to its vocation.

On the one hand, we must take into account that NOS is a natural producer of data in extraordinary quantities and of various natures. On the other hand, NOS is a company with an extremely broad operational structure, which includes network development, operations over this network, information systems, logistics operations, field forces, customer service, technical service, as well as large Marketing and Sales structures, financial structures and people development.

In all these operational structures, there are many decision-makers involved, with detailed knowledge of each operation in highly complex environments.

In these contexts, data, Advanced Analytics and Cognitive Technologies enable augmented decisions, condensing knowledge and solving complexity in a much more agile way than the human on an individual basis. These technologies have predictive functions about what will happen and above all prescriptive about what we should do in every granular decision we make.

NOS' vocation is to enable the best possible experience for its customers, this is the territory of greatest applicability of Advanced Analytics, Cognitive Technologies and Augmented Decisions in our company. These technologies are an extraordinary disruptor of customer experience and this corresponds to NOS' greatest commitment.

‍

Why did you choose to join Nova SBE?

Nova SBE brings together unique characteristics in Portugal: its reputation from a education point of view, but also its entrepreneurial and innovative nature, which was an important marker in this decision.

In addition, FAAST is much more than a training process about technology and its potential. Its fundamental focus is on people, on the ability to form joint lexicons, to establish new ways of working and to make better and more agile decisions. This need led us to the relevance of developing this programme in partnership with a Business and Economics school.

In the end, and despite these previous points that are crucial, I believe that the most significant factor was the willingness and malleability to build the FAAST programme totally tailored to the goals of NOS, of our people and of our needs, capable not only of empowering but also of involving, motivating and mobilising. Nova SBE stands out in the way it is able to create an engaging and transformative training experience.

For NOS, why is it important to invest in the training of its employees?

We will only be better as an organisation if we make our people grow, make them more capable, more informed, more ready to explore new paths and to challenge, and training plays a major role in this mission of joint growth. Investment in education has always been central to NOS, but it increasingly appears as a pivotal pillar of our culture.