The leaders at ASX-listed Superloop have developed what amounts to a digital playbook to manage the company’s ongoing acquisition spree.
The telco infrastructure outfit, which provides internet services to about 370,000 retail, business and wholesale customers, has made three major acquisitions since 2020.
They include the $34 million purchase of high-speed fibre-to-the-premises supplier VostroNet, and an active offer to buy cloud communications provider Symbio for $243 million.
Daisey Stampfer, the group executive of strategy and transformation at Superloop, and Reid Elliot, the head of transformation. Dan Peled
Each acquisition has brought with it a range of computer systems, databases and processes that have to be meshed into Superloop’s existing operations. Aside from standard financial and strategic considerations, the playbook is designed to ensure a clear path to integrating systems of acquired outfits into Superloop’s central computer stack.
The company has devised an internally built system that automatically provides new National Broadband Network services as quickly as 10 minutes and the “My Speed Boost” product which allows customers to temporarily increase internet speeds.
The systematic approach to integrating acquisitions was a reason Superloop was crowned one of five industry sector winners in the inaugural AFR Digital Transformation Leaders Awards.
Superloop has a playbook for assimilating new acquisitions. 
The awards, compiled in association with Boston Consulting Group, are designed to identify Australian companies that have successfully overhauled their technology stack and continue to improve their digital operations.
A panel of BCG experts assessed more than 100 entries using the firm’s Digital Transformation Key Success Factors approach. The areas judged include assessing the commitment of leaders to the change, looking at how integrated the company’s strategy is with its digital goals, and evaluating how effectively technology changes are monitored.
The judging process resulted in five winners and five leaders across five industry categories. Four companies were also identified as “ones to watch” for their digital efforts.
The winners are: Superloop (in the technology, media and telecommunications category), engineering consulting company Aurecon (professional services, engineering and advisory), NSW electricity distributor Endeavour Energy (resources, energy and utilities), fintech Airwallex (banking, superannuation and financial services), and retailer RM Williams (retail, hospitality, tourism and entertainment).
The runners-up in each sector are: pay compliance company PaidRight, freight forwarder Explorate, petroleum exploration and production company Woodside Energy, life insurance company Resolution Life, and bowling alleys and mini golf company Funlab.
The judging panel also named four companies as “ones to watch”: bid management software firm Bidhive, telco Swoop Telecommunications, recruiter Hudson Global Resources, and pathology company Healius.
Major factors linking the five category winners were top management support and funding for digital initiatives; a strong focus on hiring, retaining and developing personnel with technology skills; and the ongoing digitisation and automation of processes previously carried out manually.
That digitisation of processes is best illustrated by Endeavour Energy’s two-year long project to build its Advanced Distribution Management System. It is a digitised version of the company’s outage management system that provides real-time remote control and visibility of thousands of assets spread over hundreds of kilometres.
“We literally went from paper drawings of our network and people putting pins in where there were problems, and having two control rooms that didn’t even know what each other’s status were most times, to a fully digital system where the guys in the field now have iPads where they can actually interact with the grid in real time,” says Rudi Reynierse, Endeavour’s head of technology.
Reid Elliott, Superloop’s head of transformation, says that senior leadership at the company has empowered staff to “take sensible risks, rather than avoiding risk” when it comes to resolving customer issues.
“[That] has allowed people to feel safe and trusted to do the right thing by customers, and that’s created a really positive culture where people are customer focused,” Elliott says.
“Everyone wants the internet to just work, but if something goes wrong, as things inevitably will with technology, people realise that and rally together. [There] is no culture of blame and shame, it’s ‘how can we fix this together for the customer’.”
This culture of managed risk-taking, which has to come from the top, can also be seen in its acquisition playbook and the company’s $5 million system consolidation project, says Daisey Stampfer, the group executive of strategy and transformation of at Superloop.
“We use the playbook when we’re in DD [due dilligence],” she says. “We actually look at how we’re going to integrate through DD. We plan it there and then once we’ve completed the transaction and we’re integrating, we’ve got a clear plan for how we’re going to do that.”
The playbook is a new development at the acquisitive company, while the system consolidation, now in year two of a three-year program, was designed to resolve what she calls the previous “spaghetti tree” of overlapping systems.
“So for the roughly one dozen acquisitions prior to my time [she began in March 2021], it was a mess,” says Stampfer. “But we know that we’re acquisitive…it’s part of our strategy, and as such we needed to invest in [system] consolidation plus a playbook so that when it comes to integrating, we can do it well.“
At Aurecon, the commitment to developing internal skills also came from the top with a push for staff to develop digital skills, says Dave Mackenzie, the engineering consulting firm’s managing principal of digital.
“The big ticket item was standing up our digital network, and defining and creating our digital practice … that’s a network of senior positions across the organisation that sit regionally … they are really a catalyst for change in the organisation,” Mackenzie says.
Dave Mackenzie, the managing principal for digital at Aurecon.  Elke Meitze
The initial goal was to equip about half of the firm’s 7000-strong staff with digital skills, a feat which was achieved in the first 24 months. Aurecon’s leaders now want all staff to have core digital competencies, such as computational design, data and analytics, and digital modelling.
“We [are] talking about the digital skills that were required for our future ways of working in digital practice,” Mackenzie says.
The company’s staff have also developed the Aurecon Project Information Management Standard, a system for engineering projects based on the firm’s common standards.
The projects within the system can contain “gigabytes to terabytes” of data such as spatial information, aerial photography and engineering drawings, along with the relevant metadata to make it all “searchable and indexable,” he says.
”What we do see now is as we’ve got more and more structured data, we’re able to do things with that,” he says . “We’re able to pull together project reporting and dashboards that wouldn’t have happened beforehand, it really is about unlocking the potential of generative AI and other advanced technologies.”
Screen-shot of Aurecon’s generative AI tool Recall.  
The firm is already using generative AI, piloting the technology in two tools: Recall which allows users to retrieve Aurecon-specific information from the firm’s knowledge database, and WinWise which helps bidding teams quickly to process and generate key information from requests for proposals or tenders.
Separately, Aurecon has also formed a Digital Products and Services Group to integrate digital products into its services and commercialise the digital skills of staff such as visualisation and data analytics.
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