Powering growth through shared intelligence

Unlocking Exponential Growth: Vodafone VOIS Pioneers Shared Intelligence and AI at Web Summit Lisbon 2025

At Web Summit Lisbon 2025, Ms. Amira Zahra Imouloudene, Producer at Al Jazeera Media Network, welcomed attendees to a discussion on powering growth through shared intelligence. She introduced Mr. Gary Adey, CEO of VOIS (Vodafone Intelligent Solutions), to elaborate on Vodafone’s vision for reimagining shared operations to achieve higher productivity and create real value in a world demanding more with less.

Mr. Adey explained that Vodafone Intelligent Solutions delivers services globally for all Vodafone Group companies, spanning IT operations, customer care, sales, marketing, and finance. These services unlock value, quality, and growth. Historically, VOIS served only Vodafone entities, but recently pivoted its strategy to offer these services to external customers, including other telcos and B2B organizations.

This strategic shift involved commercializing their services for credibility and partnering with Accenture, a major system integrator, to take products to market via an open consortium model. Over 18 months, VOIS transformed from Vodafone’s operational backbone to an external service provider. With approximately 34,000 employees, VOIS now serves customers across 28 countries, demonstrating significant scale and reach.

Discussing “shared intelligence,” Mr. Adey described it as a powerful human USP, akin to the collaborative spirit of Web Summit. For VOIS, with its diverse global workforce, sharing is essential. He noted the irony that shared services historically didn’t share much, prompting a journey to change this. Internally, shared intelligence fuses human IQ and EQ with artificial intelligence, termed “SQ.”

From an industry perspective, this intelligence aims to elevate standards and societal contributions. AI plays a critical role, especially given its rapid evolution since ChatGPT’s launch. VOIS approaches AI adoption through three “builds.” “Citizen builds” democratize AI tools for all 34,000 employees, empowering them to innovate daily tasks. For instance, customer care agents use AI to design numerous customer scenarios for practice, improving experience and NPS.

“Central builds” focus on applying generative AI to end-to-end journeys for efficiency, productivity, and speed. Language translation is a key example, with technology advancements enabling VOIS to make its service language and location agnostic, facilitating scalable customer care. The third category, “reinvention builds,” represents a future bet, using generative and agentic AI to fundamentally redesign processes from the ground up.

Addressing concerns about AI replacing humans, Mr. Adey emphasized a “100% human” principle, prioritizing people first, then systems. He stressed that this human-centric approach must be authentic and deeply embedded, not an afterthought. VOIS’s long-standing commitment to this principle has helped them bring people along on the AI adoption journey effectively.

To foster a collaborative environment, VOIS launched the “Pioneers Program,” identifying employees passionate about AI and technology. These “pioneers” become champions, coaching peers and articulating the vision, subtly evolving the company culture from within. Additionally, the “Next Program” attracts new talent by collaborating with universities to create relevant curricula and recruit top graduates.

The Next Program, originating in Romania, is now scaling globally, aiming to connect with over 110,000 students by 2030 and recruit hundreds of graduates with a 50/50 gender split. Mr. Adey cited Bianca Oprea, a product owner and team leader who came through the program, as an example of shared intelligence, combining high IQ, AI passion, and exceptional EQ to deliver 10x customer outcomes.

For other organizations, Mr. Adey offered three leadership lessons: maintain an authentic “people first, systems second” approach; embrace a bold vision for 10x growth, not just incremental 10% improvements, reflecting technology’s potential; and have the humility to acknowledge capability gaps and partner for success, as VOIS did with Accenture. This vision of shared intelligence, powered by people, passion, and technology, promises inspiring opportunities.