The Australian Way: a success based on customer centricity

The Australian way: a success based on customer centricity

Frederick Persson, CEO of Prysmian ANZ, tells how the company had been able to adapt to local customers’ needs.   

JUNE 2017

“The main challenge related to changes in the customer forecast. Our customer’s cable demand changed very quickly and we had to react and adapt in real time to those changes. I am happy to say that we have been able to support them successfully.” Frederick Persson, CEO of Prysmian Australia and New Zealand, does not hesitate when asked what has been the key to success in carrying on the National Broadband Network (NBN) project in Australia, a monumental milestone in the Telecom industry that aims at bringing the broadband to premises in every corner of the continent-wide nation.

“We had to adapt to the client’s developing needs
in many different aspects”

Frederick Persson

CEO of Prysmian Group Australia and New Zealand

“We are very focused on local quality and simplicity: we want to be a very simple company to deal with”

Here Prysmian had to adapt to the client’s developing needs in many different aspects. Particularly challenging was the fact that some of the production was carried out in China, 11 hours flight away, and also in Europe, which is even further. “We needed to be constantly available, keeping in touch with our facilities abroad, while being attentive to our customers at home.”

But maintaining the customer fast pace has not been the only challenge encountered and overcome in the NBN project. “A major technical issue was the duct space, which is very limited” he tells us. In simple terms, Prysmian’s Technical team encountered ducts that were crowded due to the number of cables inside them, but we managed to make room by reducing the diameter of the cables by around 35%. “We developed the solution while creating a completely new cable, adapted to their particular problem. This has been a strong point of differentiation for us” in Frederick words. And then he summarizes the Australian approach as follows: “We are very focused on local quality and simplicity: we want to be a very simple company to deal with. So customers see we react quickly, we are flexible and we are predictable, which makes us reliable”.


“What is very special for us down here”, Frederick goes on, “is that we are very focused on sales, and the commercial team is in a way driving the company strategy”. On the telecom side of the business, Prysmian Australia & New Zealand have done several developments, drawing on the local needs of specific types of cables, and has been very good at adapting, quick in developing new cables, quick in manufacturing them, quick in creating even smaller cables. “I think one peculiarity of our presence here is our local development capability on the telecom side, and the ability to be easy to deal with. We keep it as simple as we can” he states.

Australia is not just Telecom. Here Prysmian plays a role in the mining industry as well. “Since the Australian regulations about mining are probably the most restrictive in the world, and much more complicated, our mining cables are made for very special applications”. And being strong in mining is also a plus in other fields. Also thanks to the mining expertise, that yielded a reputation of being a top-quality reliable supplier, the company reached out to the infrastructure market as well.

Being close to customers means also improving awareness and stand out from the crowd: “We developed a local website for commercial purposes and have worked a lot also on the branding side, connecting our Prysmian commercial brand and the products we sell down here. We tried to be attractive using the typical Prysmian magenta color to create a connection with the cables we make and have been using that in a very consistent way. This has helped us create a strong identity here in Australia”.