INTERVIEW

After joining CTC, Eiji Ito has accumulated over 20 years of experience as a network engineer.
Leveraging his experience in service and business planning both internally and externally, he has been working on formulating medium-term management plans in xGN’s Next-Generation Technology Strategy Department since October 2024.

After Service and Business Planning, Taking on the Challenged of Medium-Term Management Planning

Since joining CTC as a new graduate in 1998, he has experienced a variety of roles, including a career as a network engineer, seconded to a major automobile manufacturer, and service and business planning at a telecommunications carrier.

I was approached about transferring to xGN around 2023.
Just as the mission I was in charge of was over, I was approached to be involved in the formulation of the medium-term management plan.

I have been involved in service planning at various companies, but this is my first challenge to be directly involved in management policy.

I felt that I could make use of my knowledge of mobile communications and equipment, as well as my experience in shaping customers’ businesses with a co-creative mindset.

While we were able to make use of our previous experience, there were also points where we needed a new approach.

Normally, large-scale system development such as telecommunications infrastructure proceeds in a waterfall manner, with the process progressing step by step.

However, what is required of xGN is to deliver new value beyond communication with a sense of speed while maintaining conventional communication quality.

For this reason, in the formulation of xGN’s medium-term management plan, we are actively incorporating methods such as agile and scrum methods to achieve more flexible and faster decision-making and value delivery.

Driving Business Reform and Value Creation with a small, Elite Organization

xGN, which supports KDDI’s mobile communications with a small number of elites, is a compact organization, but has a wide business scale and scope of business, and has a very high required results.

In addition to high-quality operation of telecommunications, it is also necessary to contribute to the expansion of new services and businesses using telecommunications.

To do this, it is essential to have a flexible mindset and review the way business processes are improved and how they work.

Currently, I am in charge of managing the secretariat of the Business Improvement and Reform Working Group, as well as gathering information at external exhibitions and conferences and developing it internally, and I am considering the most suitable business improvement measures for each of them.

There are also difficulties in incorporating new frameworks without being bound by conventional wisdom, and requiring transformation using AI and automation.

However, xGN is an organization that actively utilizes the fusion of KDDI and CTC’s corporate cultures, and its main feature is that it makes decisions quickly.

While repeatedly engaging in dialogue with the field and management, I feel that we are moving forward step by step in order to create new value unique to xGN.

Bridging the Field and Management to Drive Organization Progress

Over the course of his more than 20-year career, he has expanded his business areas to various fields, including service and business planning, medium-term management plan formulation, and business improvement reform.

The content and fields of work were different from time to time, such as creating the content of technology and creating corporate value, but I personally have always been interested in creating value and have worked on various ways of thinking, such as design thinking, in everything I do.

And now, through the challenge at xGN, I feel that I can further expand and deepen my potential.

Of course, there are many things that bother me every day with the pressures and various constraints of being involved in the work that contributes to the management of a company.

However, the process of organizing the direction of the organization, drawing a path to take, and taking shape as an actual initiative while coordinating with employees and management in the field is a great joy for me.

Beyond the framework of providing infrastructure for telecommunications services, it presents new ways of using and possibilities for KDDI and end users.
In order to create that future, I would like to continue to move forward together with my colleagues at xGN.