Annual Report 2008 - Axiata Group Berhad - Investor Relations

President and Group Chief Executive Officer’s Business Review(cont’d.)THE TRANSFORMATION OF AXIATAMany focused initiatives were planned and implementedin 2008, driven by the new transformation agenda ofthe company.In 2008, significant organisational changes were madeto reflect our new strategies. The Board of Axiata wasrefreshed with a good mix of highly experienced localand international board members. Subsequently, manychanges were also made at the OpCo Boards. TheGroup strengthened its top management line up, hiringthe best from local and international talents. Reflectingour regional aspirations, almost all of the Boardmembers and senior management team have workedfor established MNCs, with extensive internationalresponsibilities, in and out of Malaysia.With this, we at Axiata are set for change.We have reengineered the role of the corporate centre,with the primary mandate to deliver value to theOpCos and help them to achieve their targets. We doso by facilitation, consultation, giving direction andsupport and by sharing best practices and benchmarking,with strong governance in place. This was key toredefining the engagement model with our OpCos.Initial work on a talent development process and afirst-class Leadership Development Programme werecompleted, and subsequently launched in February2009. We have also introduced a unique and highlyperformance-based Long Term Incentive (LTI) plan toalign the long term interests of the employees withthat of the shareholders.A few but impactful list of synergies were identifiedthrough OpCo feedback and prioritisation. In marketingand products and services, we launched key InternationalDirect Dialing (IDD) and roaming initiatives. Inprocurement, we identified initial ‘low hanging fruits’bringing more than RM100 million savings over thenext two years. Procurement processes were introducedto ensure a more coordinated approach and bettergroup-wide leverage without sacrificing speed or localpriorities. Other synergy initiatives, which include anew pricing process, were developed and will becompleted in early 2009.In 2008, we also improved the business planningprocess towards building robust strategy and budgetingprocesses.A strong focus on performance saw a new performancemanagement and reporting system put in place toraise the bar for results.Beyond organisational changes, Phase one of humancapital management was also completed. A revisedcompensation and benefits scheme, especially for keypositions, was made to retain and attract the besttalent. A new set of Balanced Scorecards (BSC) forcorporate centre management and staff was introducedwith improvements in the measurement process towardsadding value to our OpCos.We also reviewed thestrategies of our OpCos.Some were significantlychanged, some refocused andsome refined. The existing M&Alist was also narrowed downc o n s i d e r a b l y . S o m e t a r g e toperators, areas or countries wereeliminated, either because they wereoutside our focus region, non-core,sub-optimal or highly risky.34Axiata Group Berhad Annual Report 2008(formerly known as TM International Berhad)