STC announced its corporate DARE strategy in early 2018. The acronym stands for "digitize STC, accelerate performance, reinvent experience, and expand scale and scope".
The new group structure – which STC said will support the goals outlined in DARE – sees the organisation divided into: wholesale, business, customers, a new markets unit and a "functional" unit.
Group CEO, Eng. Olayan bin Mohammed Al Wetaid, said: “Looking towards the future, our DARE strategy is a promising and ambitious strategy that motivates us to achieve accelerated growth in terms of size and scope of work, thus consolidating STC's position as a leading national group and a regional digital enabler.
"Also, we will achieve, with God willing, this promise to support the Board of Directors and the efforts of all STC's associates and its subsidiaries.” He added.
The wholesale unit will continue to scale in line with Saudi Arabia's ambitions to create a connectivity hub and STC said it wants to be "the ideal partner" for local and international telcos and techcos.
The business unit will provide "direct innovative digital services" to both public and private sector organisations in communications and IT, as well as government. It will also form "strategic partnerships" at the regional and global levels. The fixed mobile and digital services market will fall under the remit of the customer unit for both domestic consumers and SMEs.
The new markets unit will lead and direct the international subsidiaries, sister companies and related subsidiaries to drive growth to serve the group's ambition. These include STC Bahrain, STC Kuwait, STC Asia and STC Gulf Investment.
The fifth unit is the functional unit, which will "direct the group’s strategy and performance". Its work will include implementing new standards for doing business, fostering integration between the group's companies and support investment in various sectors.
The news follows that of STC's $1 billion newco, announced in February, which now houses data centre hosting activities as well as international and regional connectivity. STC has transferred its infrastructure assets – inclusive of data centres, international submarine cables and international points of presence – to the new company.
Solutions was separated from the main business last year in a $966 million IPO, after 20% of its shares were listed on the main market of the Saudi Exchange. Further, STC has signed a JV with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) to create a new IoT company.
DARE is the third strategy from STC over the last decade. Its firs, Lead, focused on domestic growth and was followed by Next Horizon, which looked at culture and business.
Al Wetaid added: “These ambitions call for updating our operating model, including developing our organisational structure, governance, processes and corporate culture to drive this growth forward and continue to meet the expectations of our customers and our shareholders."
