STC: The Change Management Process and the Saudi 2030 vision.

This paper will talk about one of the biggest companies in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, specializing mainly in providing telecommunication and digital services. Also, it has a non-digital services arm. The company is called Saudi Telecommunication Company "STC." The focus in this paper will be on the following points. First, we will give details about its mission, vision, values, and industries that it works in. Second, we will show how the pillars of the Saudi vision 2030 make STC respond to the change. Third, we will describe the further changes that STC needs to make to better line with Saudi Vision 2030's target and objectives. Fourth, we will describe the techniques and tools for action planning that STC could use to successfully keep up with the change that happened based on the changes observed concerning Saudi Vision 2030 and the changes in the environment. Fifth, we will give an explanation about why communication plays an important role throughout the time of change and how to communicate the change to STC's stakeholders.

STC's mission, vision, values, and industry

Vision and mission statements are founded on an organization's underlying ethical ideals and are critical to its accomplishment since they provide direction. Long-term goals that establish where the company would like to go in the competitive environment are driven by vision statements. Mission statements are used to rank tasks from the least to the most important since companies are more definitive and particular to a companies' competitive advantage (Cady, Wheeler, DeWolf, & Brodke , 2021). Values reflect the company's ethics and principles, like how it does business and how its employees and customers are treated (Cady, Wheeler, DeWolf, & Brodke , 2021).

STC's vision is "Digital and telco leader, enabling the society and economy to thrive, in KSA and beyond" (Our Vision & Values, n.d.). We can see here the long-term goal of STC, which is not only to be a leader in telecommunication, which is its main industry but also to be a leader in anything digital. Moreover, it does not specify its market to be in Saudi. It wants to be beyond that and work wherever possible. Also, its vision does not focus on the company only; it forces in the Saudi economy and society. We will see in this paper that STC is working hard to accomplish its vision.

STC's mission is "We are a world-class digital leader providing innovative services and platforms to our customers and enabling the digital transformation of the MENA region." (Annual Report 2020, 2020). We can see that STC shows how it will serve its customer by offering different, smart, easy, and innovative digital platforms. Furthermore, STC shows that its target market is the MENA region, not only Saudi.

STC has three values that govern its ways of doing business, dealing with employees and customers. The values are Dynamism, Devotion, and Drive (Our Vision & Values, n.d.). The dynamism focuses on constantly striving to develop better ways of doing business. The devotion focuses on being customer and employee centric. The drive focuses on finding better ways and solutions to fix any issues STC employees and customers may face. We can see the three values made for employees and come in parallel with the customer. We believe the reason for that is that STC knows that having a good working environment and making its employees happy will reflect how its employees serve the customers.

Industries that STC works in

STC has 18+ companies that operate from all over the world. These companies work in different industries, but the main focus is on telecommunications and digital industries (Annual Report 2020, 2020). For example, STC Gulf Investment Holding SPC works in investment, not communication, and Saudi Digital Payments Company ("STC Pay") works in the banking industry. Actually, STC pay has become a fully separate commercial bank -not only a payment solution- and it is the first digital bank in Saudi Arabia (arabnews.com, 2021).

Since STC works worldwide, this paper will focus more on STC. Saudi Arabia only. STC controlled more than 50% of the telecommunication industry in Saudi; however other rivals like Zain and Mobily, and ITC combined only managed to get the other 50% (The Saudi Telecom Sector, 2018). The telecommunication industry is anticipated to increase by 10% from 2021 to 2026 (Saudi Arabia telecom market, n.d.).

How the pillars of the Saudi vision 2030 make STC respond to the change

The Saudi vision 2030, revealed in 2016 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is founded on three pillars: a vital society, a thriving economy, and an ambitious nation (Alzahrani, 2017). Like any other company in Saudi, STC wants to take advantage of the opportunities that the vision opens. STC has a clear strategy for taking advantage of the 2030 vision because STC believes it will strengthen the Saudi economy, which will reflect on STC performance (Annual Report 2020, 2020). Because of the vision, STC's way of doing business has changed, and it did a project that not only focuses on STC's core business or industry only. Now, it contributed to project that is not close to its core business, like the "Air Quality" project. It is a project that helps to clean the air of Saudi Arabia. It contributed to such a project because it helped achieve the vital society pillar (Annual Report 2020, 2020). We believe STC has a long-term goal of contributing to such a project because supporting the vital society pillar will increase its product sales. How? A strong society means richer people, and richer people mean more spending.

Also, with four landing points, STC launched the Saudi Vision Cable project as one of its attempts to help the vision 2030; the landing points are in Jeddah, Yanbu, Duba, and Haql. STC is doing that because the government plans to spend 13.3 billion USD in the telecommunication industry to achieve the objective of the Saudi 2030 vision (Saudi Arabia telecom market, n.d.). Doing such a cable will put STC in an ideal position to get more of the government projects since it is the most company with an initiative to support the vision and will rank number one option as the preferred company to get any telecom or digital projects that the government will announce in the future to support the thriving economy. The main goal of the ambitious nation pillar is to empower the Saudis and the private companies to take better steps and continue improving (Mitchell & Alfuraih, 2018). That is what STC did. It takes better steps in said the company like introducing the revised CARE strategy and came up with CARE 2.0. With the implementation of the new revised strategy, the Saudization rate increased to be 90.7% and haring 455 new Saudis in the year 2020. CARE 2.0 continues to improve STC employees' skills and enriches client experiences (Annual Report 2020, 2020).

STC change its way of doing business. Before the vision, most projects and company programs were made to support STC as an entity only. After the vision, STC projects were made to support the vision, employees, clients, and society which at the end, the money that is spent will be return to it in another form such as more sales or winning government projects.

Changes that STC needs to make to better line with Vision 2030's target and objectives

???????????As mentioned before, the STC's main competitors are Zain, Mobily, and ITC. Due to the huge opportunities that the vision will open and the strong financial position of the Saudi citizen and the government, Saudi Arabia will be attractive to other national and international digital and telecommunication services providers to enter the market. That represents a huge threat to STC. So, STC must alter its expansion strategy and use these open opportunities to ally with any potential company entering the Saudi market and forming a joint venture. That will minimize the risk and may add more profit. According to arabnews.com, STC is ranked number 44 of the strongest telecommunication companies globally and number one in the MENA region (2021). Therefore, altering such a strategy will put STC in a better position, which will help the vision be achieved.

The modifications that must be made for the external environment:

Becoming mindful of the tremendous effect of the external environment on an organization's internal workings will assist the company in overcoming any threat (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2016). Therefore, taking action to prevent the risk or getting benefit along with analyzing the external environment via any technique such as PESTE is a must for a company to survive and live with such an environment. The biggest external environmental change in Saudi Arabia is the 2030 vision.

STC must make some changes in order to keep up with that external change. It was explained in the previous section that the vision pillars are vital society, a thriving economy, and an ambitious nation. These pillars were made to change the whole face of Saudi Arabia. Therefore, STC needs to make the following two changes to make sure it is aligned with the vision. First, it needs to adapt more to the Open System Approach. With this approach, any director can discover misalignment and threats between the external environment and the firm's strategy and structure. Open systems analyses assist the director in creating a strong understanding of an organization's existing stage, as well as viable options and activities that may enhance the company (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2016). It is a helpful approach to take since it emphasizes gradual change, which makes it easier to have the change accepted (Sundarasaradula & Hasan, 2004). Second, it needs to make more acquisitions. No company on the face of the earth knows and can do everything. So, to get new ideas that help deal with any external environment changes, the best solution is to acquire companies that help with that. STC's last significant acquisition was in 2013 for the acquisition of a push-to-talk (PTT) mobile operator (STC group investor presentation, 2021). It needs to add more to its profile to ensure that it is prepared for changes. However, before doing so, it needs to use the Risk Exposure Calculator to evaluate the level of risk related to a company's actions (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2016).

Techniques and tools for action planning STC could use:

???????????Action planning is a vital tool?that companies must have (Lorig & Laurent, 2013), and making an action plan would improve the company's results?(Lena-Alyeska & Zach, 2021). Also, let us clarify one thing here: there are no universal tools that could be used and utilized to come up with an action plan that will solve any issues. Therefore, STC should use three tools for action planning. The reason for choosing these three tools is because they complement and complete each other. The tools are Responsibility charting, Contingency Planning, and Design Thinking.

Responsibility charting points to who would do what, when, and how. That is very important because it can help put the right person in the right role for the right time, especially during a time of change. At that critical time, STC did not want to make any mistake because it could cause the failure of an entire project. That tools could be utilized to maintain projects on schedule as well as to create a foundation for record-keeping and responsibility (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2016).

Contingency planning is a tool that is critical and can be used just in case of any unpredicted incident that happened to the original plan; in this tool, two techniques could be used to have effective contingency planning, which is tree analysis and scenario planning (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2016). Contingency planning tools can be used to minimize losses, reduce risk, avoid panic, promote action and give an opportunity to assess all potential ramifications, making sure that the work will not stop (Phillips, 2018).

Design Thinking aims to include everyone in the process of evaluating a situation, brainstorming, identifying the problems, and including them in prototyping and the initial examination process; after that, translate them into an action plan (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2016). Since design thinking is a cycle process, it could be redone, and the designs could be tweaked until they reach a point that participants in the cycle are pleased with the suggested result (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2016).

If STC uses these three tools together, it will come up with such a solid plan that it is hard to fail because they put the right person in the right place and because new ideas are coming all the time from all over the place. However, if it fails, other options will be available. Moreover, having a combination of tools will guarantee that the satisfaction among the employees will be high since everyone is involved and has an equal opportunity in the process of change from the start to the end.

The role of communication and communicating the change to the stakeholders.

Communication is an essential and challenging element at the same time for effectively conducting a change program since it entails an interchange of thoughts and sentiments with individuals in a company via numerous means. It is one of the most challenging factors that a company faces during the change process (Juneja, n.d.). Some factors of communication, such as data being delivered, sentiments of loyalty to the firm, and feelings of ambiguity, will have an impact on increasing or decreasing the resistance to change and, if these factors are not conveyed appropriately, will reduce the efficacy of the change effort (Elving, 2005). In general, according to Heathfield, the following elements are required for effective communication: the person delivering the message must deliver the message clearly and fully, the recipient of the message ought to have confidence in the sender. The method of communication must be suited for the situations and needs of both the sender and the receiver. Also, the message's information must be genuine, accurate, and satisfy the employee's queries (2012).

There are many ways to communicate the change to stakeholders effectively. For example, the message shall explain how the change would affect stakeholders individually and why they ought to be interested in it. If necessary, hold one-on-one meetings with stakeholders to encourage them to get actively engaged with the change, link the stakeholders with strong supporters of the change, redistribute resources or assign incentives that promote the acceptance of change among them (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2016). Moreover, showing the stakeholder the risk associated with the resistance of the change would help to make them effectively involved.

Conclusion

we discussed in this paper The Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC), one of the largest corporations in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. The company specializes in the telecommunications industry. This paper focused on the following points. First, we discussed STC's mission, vision, values. Also, we showed the industries it operates in. Second, demonstrate how the Saudi Vision 2030 pillars (a vital society, a thriving economy, and an ambitious nation) cause STC to adapt to change. Third, we showed the added changes that need to occur; it starts better align with the targets and objectives of Saudi Vision 2030. Fourth, we outlined the three-action planning tools or approaches that STC might employ to effectively keep up with the changes that occurred as a result of the changes noticed in connection to Saudi Vision 2030 and the changes in the environment. Fifth, we clarified the communication role and why it plays a vital role in the time of change, and how to communicate the changes made or to be made to STC's stakeholders.

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