Building an AI Strategy at Scale with Miryem Salah, Director Digital Data & Transformation at VodafoneThree

0:00Miryem Salah:I believe personally that it has to do with competitive advantages and getting there first if you can. And sometimes you can't because you will have too much tech debt. So don't even try and focus on continuing to fix the basics. And I think that's where there's a lot of challenges in a lot of organizations. Everybody is running because they have a fear of missing out. Everybody wants a new shiny tool. They get there first, but the value is not quite there because they haven't done it appropriately.

0:27Raoul Gabriel-Urma:Welcome to Data and AI Mastery, the podcast where we bring you cutting-edge insights, practical advice, and inspiring stories from the leaders shaping the future of data and AI across the globe. I'm your host, Raoul Gabriel-Urmer, founder of Cambridge Spark, the leader in transformational data and AI upskilling, career development, and progression. In each episode, I will be diving into real-world case studies of companies harnessing the power of AI to drive innovation, reduce costs, and create new business opportunities. So whether you are an aspiring data scientist, AI engineer, or seasoned executive, this show is designed to give you the tools and knowledge to stay ahead in a world where data is transforming every aspect of business.

1:12Raoul Gabriel-Urma:Stay ahead, stay inspired, stay masterful. Welcome to Data and AI Mastery. Hey, Miriam, good to see you.

1:22Miryem Salah:Hey, Raoul, really, really good to see you. Thanks for having me.

1:25Raoul Gabriel-Urma:I'm so excited to have you on the show. You have an incredible story to share.

1:34Raoul Gabriel-Urma:So you're the director of digital data and transformation at Vodafone 3, which is a really exciting role. I'd love to kick us off with a bit about your background and your career. So maybe to get us started, can you tell us, you know, what were the sort of key moments through your career to get to where you are today?

1:54Miryem Salah:As you said, Director of Digital Data and Transformation for Vodafone 3. Vodafone 3 is a new merge code between Vodafone UK and 3UK. We've got the approval to go ahead last year in July. And what the role entitles is basically digital, which is all of our web and apps. So making sure that our customers can have the unassisted tools to be able to interact with us, as well as all of the employee tooling. So anything to do with CRM and ITSM and our unified communication so that we can really offer the best experience to our colleagues. In the data space, it's actually all of our data tooling, right?

2:32Miryem Salah:So we want to run our business optimally, but we also want to become and we want to be a data-driven organization. And we're set up in a way where we have all of our reports and visualization in the space. We have decision intelligence helping us with our customer 360 and prospect 360, and as well as obviously the original AI, which is all of the data science and machine learning engineering that's powering our business. In the transformation space, what we do is mainly like the more kind of backbone, big transformation programs that are impacting different areas of the business require proper rationalization, business change, change management, training, communication.

3:11Miryem Salah:And the team manages that across the board. I also look after our Vodafone business IT hubs, which is a sales channel. It's a sales channel that is an MSP, and it's a very, very new sales channel that we've launched in July 2025. And this is a long in the making program. And it came about because we figured out that there is a real opportunity for small medium enterprises to have IT managed services. But they can't really afford a proper CIO, CDO, chief AI officer. And therefore, we came up with the offering as a managed service. So we're helping them not only to manage all of their cyber and all of their IT, but also we can offer them professional services for all transformation.

3:58Miryem Salah:And it made sense for it to sit within my team because it's what we do internally as well. So that's the role. Yeah. And more importantly, I am a huge advocate of diversity and inclusion. when I joined Vodafone UK four and a half years ago, then to become Vodafone 3, I created this network called Women in Data. It's a network basically that spans across all of the Vodafone companies, so 100 ,000 employees or so. And the rationale is because I was getting a lot of requests for mentorship. And whilst I love spending as much time as possible supporting, There are so many hours in the day. So I thought about this network because it would give the opportunity for ladies and allies that are interested in the tech world, be it IT, digital data analytics, to come to the meetings, get to know people, get some mentors, learn about transferable skills.

4:55Miryem Salah:Like most people or ladies that I met that wanted to move in the space would worry, oh, do I need a PhD in data science to come to the data world? I'm like, no, I don't have one. And that's how that kind of came about. And it's up and running now. We have lots of followers. We have meetings on webinars on monthly, if not weekly basis. And once a year, we get together and we bring in some of the external ladies that work in the space to talk about their experiences. And this is important for me because obviously I am a woman in tech. I am a woman in data and digital. And whilst my experience in the workforce has been good overall, it's been sometimes a little bit harder.

5:35Miryem Salah:So I want to leave the workplace a better place for all of our daughters, sons and everyone, basically. If we keep going with this thread, then, you know, as part of the transformation journey that you've been on,

5:47Raoul Gabriel-Urma:what are some of the misconceptions that you think that people have that, you know, you might be able to debunk as a result of your experience?

5:56Miryem Salah:Specifically in the data and analytics space, I think one of the biggest misconceptions, and I hear it all the time, is like, the data is wrong. It's called a data officer, basically. I think that education of people that not everything that is called data is going to sit within the data office and that we're able to provide them an example. We do a lot of external research, obviously, so that we can plan all sorts of programs. and that research comes from some of our partners that scrape the data, etc. And it doesn't sit with us specifically. And yet people seem to think about that as, you know, because you have in your title data.

6:34Miryem Salah:I always thought that was quite interesting, definitely. And then people will target a team. And I think that's one of the important parts when we talk about data literacy. It's kind of explaining where the data and analytics team sit, what their accountability is, and what the definition of data is and how it fits in within an organization. In fact, definitions are really important for me. I try to always start with definitions when I'm talking about anything because whatever one thing means to you is not going to be the same for me, basically.

7:06Raoul Gabriel-Urma:I guess we jump to the AI space because, you know, it's all the rage and you've been on a really interesting journey recently, right? So can you tell us a bit about the recent work with the, you know, AI strategy for them three? How did the conversation even start if we start with that?

7:24Miryem Salah:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what we've done is something completely different from anything that we've done before. We sat down as a team and we challenged ourselves to say what we know is artificial intelligence is really going to transform our business. But we can't see it, obviously. We don't have a crystal ball, unfortunately. And we know that it's going to impact the core business model as well as our operating model. So let's start. But what we feel comfortable, we know. We know that we're going to have a business and we want it to be thriving. We're going to sell. We're going to build. We're going to run.

7:58Miryem Salah:It's one of the key pillars of what we do as a business and any business. In fact, you can sell either the selling part is going to be to a consumer or to B2B or wholesale, etc. It's not as important. But these three key pillars we thought were a good foundation to start. And then from that, we thought about where do we see kind of that homeostasis between artificial intelligence and human intelligence? Because we do believe, and we're seeing it now as we're deploying AI capabilities organically, we know that there's going to be a working space between the two. And then from that, we wanted to come up with percentages in the self space.

8:42Miryem Salah:What do we expect the percentage human versus AI in the built place and in the run place? And then we expect that there's still going to be some supporting and central functions. This is everything to run your business, your HR, your finance, your legal, etc. Again, in that space, we wanted to come up with that percentages and how they work together. That was our starting point. Then the second part was, and now we need to figure out what our customer experience is going to look like. I spoke earlier about that digital transformation. The anchor of a digital transformation is personas and customers and what they expect from us as a business.

9:21Miryem Salah:Now our customer can become an AI, an agent, as well as a human. We never had any thought, any thinking around this. So that's something that we need to take into account. But now also some of our employees are going to be agents. So agent to agent, how does that fit in within, you know, the customer experience, which normally drives the outcome of any transformation? And then we had an idea of what we wanted to achieve in the next few years. That was the first part of our AI strategy. So we decided that the right thing to do is let's go on a roadshow. We have amazing partners, big tech, consultancies, advisory.

10:00Miryem Salah:Let's go share a view of where we are with our AI strategy and let's gather some feedback. Let's make sure that we get to a point where it's never going to stop and we need to continue being agile and evolve it. But at least let's get to a point where we feel like it's best in class because we have 20 of our partners support us through that and give us feedback. So we've done that. And now what we're doing is making sure that we focus on the actual execution plan. Now, the execution plan is, as you would imagine, firstly, the operating model, right? So how are we going to be set up as a business to support the human and AI working together, right?

10:45Miryem Salah:And I believe here that the change is going to be the biggest, right? Because not only do you need to bring people on the journey, you also need to actually rethink which roles will be augmented through AI, which roles will disappear. There will be roles that are going to disappear. Which roles are going to appear? And then from that, you plan that journey with the people, right? Because any successful program or transformation program can only happen if people are behind you, if they feel like they're part of the journey, if they support you, but also if you support them through it. That was the first part.

11:18Miryem Salah:And then the technology side of things, foundations, foundations, foundations, right? Everybody talks about it. It's obviously super key. And how we thought about it is firstly our backbone, what is the IT estate that we have, the digital estate, our data and the data progress that we have. And obviously all of the card rails and data governance, all of our data management, responsible and ethical AI, all of these things, obviously, to make sure that we are delivering appropriately.

11:52Raoul Gabriel-Urma:I hope you're enjoying today's conversation. If you're finding the insights useful, please do take a moment to subscribe to the Data & AI Mastery podcast and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Every new follow helps us reach more people and shed incredible work being done by today's Data & AI leader. All right, let's go back to the episode. Super. Well, I'd love to unpack because there's quite a lot of really interesting components here that you described, right? And it seems like a theme is to because things are moving so fast, you need to kind of stay somewhat adaptable to changes, you know, as they come.

12:28Raoul Gabriel-Urma:So if I take you back to the big journey, it sounds like the first question is something like, you know, how are we thinking about AI? What's the future state with AI? And what came out of that is clearly the organizational structure is likely to look different because of AI. the way business interact is likely to change because we've got agents now through in the mix so that's maybe the diagnosis part of the strategy right we have to deal with this kind of like moving part and possible change now how did you go from from that and i appreciate you know lots of research internal and external conversation to hone down towards answering the question of how we're going to win with AI as opposed to how we're thinking about AI for us as a future state.

13:14Raoul Gabriel-Urma:Like, what was the journey like to identify, you know, the winning use cases, the winning value proposition that's going to make Vodafone 3 different?

13:24Miryem Salah:It's all about, obviously, depends on which part of the AI capabilities we're deploying. But I think I believe personally that it has to do with competitive advantage and getting there first, if you can. And sometimes you can't because you will have too much tech debt. So don't even try, right? And focus on continuing to fix the basics. And I think that's where there's a lot of challenges in a lot of organizations. Everybody is running because they have a fear of missing out. Everybody wants a new shiny tool. They get there first, but the value is not quite there because they haven't done it appropriately.

13:57Miryem Salah:So the low-hanging fruits that we focused on are ones that we knew will give us either customer experience. Customer is first. We need to focus on that and we need to deliver the best. And we know that if our customers are happy, they will stay with us and they'll continue buying more products and they continue talking about us positively, which is what every organization is looking for. Then the employee experience as well, right? If your employees are happy, they're going to offer much better experience to their customers and therefore your customer is happy, but also you're going to be able to retain talent, which as we know right now, it's a very difficult thing, specifically in niche areas.

14:35Miryem Salah:And then obviously in terms of the numbers, then thinking how you're going to be able to differentiate with products and services and get there faster, definitely.

14:44Raoul Gabriel-Urma:And I guess, how do you measure success, right? Like in this environment where you've got customer delight, employee satisfaction, product differentiations. How do you think about success, you know, with the strategy in that scenario?

15:00Miryem Salah:We are in the journey of defining that. And I think, again, it's going to be a very iterative process because it's early stages, right? We can think about it as if we talk about any 10 AI capabilities, we have, for example, bid management proposal assistance that we've built and deployed. It's integrated into Copilot and it's helping our colleagues be able to write things much faster. So that gives them opportunity to be able to support customers much faster. Customers happy, employees happy. That's success for me. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But then maybe for someone else, it's not because they want more proposals that are signed off faster, etc.

15:40Miryem Salah:So I think it's really important to give it a little bit more time and do it and measure progress. And eventually we can define what are the key criteria that we believe are going to be our success criteria for the overall transformation. That's how I would recommend any organization to do it. Definitely.

15:57Raoul Gabriel-Urma:interesting and how important you think is the uh you know talk the talk and walk the walk right you can have like a top-down approach where you're kind of like hey this is great we all need to be data literate and so on but what about leaders themselves you know showing the data literate or even air literate how important do you think that is to to model like behaviors like or what you

16:18Miryem Salah:draw the line you know as well yeah it's really important absolutely i mean you can't ask people to do something, it's like, I have a seven-year-old, right? And she's crazy about chocolate. Thank God, I don't like chocolate. I can't be, have an apple, and then I'm going to have chocolate. You're not going to have it, right? It's never going to work. So you have to absolutely leave by example. And if you're going to go and ask people to start using AI, you're going to measure the adoption and make sure that you drive it through that way, then you have to show them that you can do it yourself. That is a no-brainer and an absolute.

16:50Raoul Gabriel-Urma:That's fascinating. So parenting makes you a better leader. That's like a good takeaway.

16:55Miryem Salah:Yeah, I'm not quite sure. I think she's more the leader in the house than me. Or the boss. She's the boss in the house.

17:02Raoul Gabriel-Urma:So speaking of AI strategy, we kind of look forward. How do you think about, you know, executing on that strategy in a landscape where capabilities keep improving super fast, right? So how do you manage, you know, executing on your vision, the business kind of priorities, but also kind of keeping an eye on the evolution of the technology itself?

17:25Miryem Salah:Yeah, I think it's an interesting one, right? And I've been reflecting on this in the last few months. I've worked on programs where they were very waterfall. And I've worked on programs where I pushed a lot on agility because I think it is really, really important. But I do believe, interestingly enough, that in the era of AI, we need to create a new way of managing change and governance that is a bit of a mix between both. I think the waterfall space, and I'm not talking about like really rigid waterfall, but kind of a little bit more gateways when it comes to anything that matters more, like the foundations, security, privacy, ethical, responsible AI needs to be a little bit more waterfall and very thought of and managed appropriately.

18:11Miryem Salah:And then on the rest in the implementation, in the actual POC and before kind of production, it's good to be agile because you can test, learn and change things as you go. So I think a little bit of a hybrid of way of thinking and doing things is going to be required because we can't deliver either or for sure is what I see.

18:30Raoul Gabriel-Urma:That's pretty cool, like a governed agile approach.