Interview: Daybreak McCarroll, director of provide chain and enterprise excellence, Helios Towers
Creating efficient digital options to intractable challenges is a business-as-usual exercise for Daybreak McCarroll, director of provide chain and enterprise excellence at Helios Towers, a FTSE 250-listed telecoms tower firm that gives mission-critical infrastructure to attach communities throughout Africa and the Center East. It’s a senior management position she relishes.
“I find it irresistible, and the problem isn’t letting up,” says McCarroll. “It’s a high-energy firm. It’s a rising firm. Its persons are various. And Africa and the Center East are such thrilling components of the world to function in. The expansion in our trade is nearly limitless.”
Helios delivers operations at almost 15,000 cellular tower websites throughout 9 international locations in Africa and the Center East, which energy providers for cellular community operators. Along with its personal workers, the corporate helps round 11,500 oblique contractors and companion workers, with over 80% of procurement spend directed to native suppliers.
McCarroll says Helios lately launched its Influence 2030 technique, a five-year plan targeted on continued progress in Africa and the Center East. As a part of this technique, the corporate will use folks, companions and applied sciences to spice up digital inclusion. Provide chain processes will play a vital position on this method.
“On the coronary heart of all of it, we’re making an attempt to attach Africa and the Center East, which has a honest intention behind it,” she says. “We’re making a distinction to folks, whether or not they’re a tribe in a distant a part of the Democratic Republic of Congo or somebody in Kinshasa, the place it’s an enormous, sprawling metropolis with hundreds of thousands of individuals.”
Pursuing excellence
McCarroll has 30 years of expertise in provide chain administration, working in high-volume electronics manufacturing, enterprise course of outsourcing and telecoms infrastructure, the place she helped organisations exploit the Lean Six Sigma course of enchancment methodology.
She joined Helios on the finish of 2021 as director of provide chain, earlier than shifting into her present position, the place she studies to Allan Fairbairn, who’s chief know-how and digital officer on the firm. McCarroll heads provide chain operations throughout the group, together with procurement, planning and warehousing groups.
“I’m accountable for ensuring we’re on the appropriate digital path, that we’re utilizing our knowledge in the appropriate manner, growing our folks, and driving range in folks management,” she says.
In mid-2025, she assumed extra obligations for enterprise excellence. The corporate has already skilled over 65% of its workforce to both inexperienced or black belt in Lean Six Sigma. Now, McCarroll is spreading this stage of excellence to the corporate’s community of companions.
“That’s one among our must-win battles in our technique for the following 5 years – to take what we’ve finished in-house exterior to our companions,” she says. “For scale, 80% of our 11,000-plus companions are in our working international locations. They’re the individuals who exit and construct our towers and keep our websites. Our dedication is to coach 60% of those folks in Lean Six Sigma rules within the subsequent 5 years. So, that’s no imply feat.”
Along with spreading finest practices throughout the enterprise, McCarroll says deploying know-how is more and more essential to her position. She describes her management model as enabling, encouraging and direct. She says she’s pursuing excellence within the provide chain, suggesting this need has steered the organisation in a digital course below her watch.
“Even earlier than I joined, there have been nice signposts. I may see the chance for higher provide chain orchestration, which is one thing I used to be used to in my earlier organisations. Helios was on the cusp of going from 5 markets to 9, and that stage of enlargement, once more, was an excellent signpost to affix,” she says.
“I may see there was so much that may very well be finished. There was additionally the folks aspect of the position – first, giving folks digital instruments to do their jobs extra effectively, and second, giving them confidence to develop. I see AI and digital as confidence-givers, in addition to making issues simpler.”
Constructing resilience
McCarroll recognises that delivering provide chain and operational excellence is way from simple for an organisation that operates throughout disparate communities in Africa and the Center East.
Her crew navigates many socio-economic and political challenges. Nevertheless, the processes the organisation has established imply it’s properly positioned to handle these calls for. She returns to the instance of the Democratic Republic of Congo, suggesting folks would possibly query how the corporate can function successfully in a rustic typically characterised by conflicts and crises.
“Nevertheless, it’s an thrilling place to work,” she says. “There are nice progress alternatives. The power to attach folks in that nation is a compelling cause to come back to work day-after-day. We function in currency-volatile markets, and we’ve turn into adept at actually pivoting to deal with these calls for.”
“Africa and the Center East are such thrilling components of the world to function in. The expansion in our trade is nearly limitless”
Daybreak McCarroll, Helios Towers
McCarroll says the board was all for constructing resilience and managing threat in its more difficult markets when she joined the agency. Her organisation helped the enterprise obtain its goals in a number of methods. In some companion environments, the crew labored to consolidate and cut back threat.
In others, the crew expanded its portfolio of companions to extend its choices. Whether or not it’s responding to the coronavirus pandemic, controlling the impression of the battle in Ukraine, or managing regional gasoline crises, McCarroll says the inner crew and its exterior companions are a resilient bunch.
“We work in locations with tough terrain as properly,” she says. “If you consider Madagascar, and the way mountainous and hilly it’s, we have to guarantee we provide nice uptime for our prospects. Working with our companions to at all times make {that a} actuality is an on a regular basis alternative. And we go at it collectively as one crew, one enterprise.”
Boosting efficiency
McCarroll says one among her greatest achievements since working for Helios is utilizing know-how to enhance provide chain efficiency.
“As quickly as I entered the doorways of the corporate, I instantly began seeing how we may very well be extra tech-enabled,” she says. “We had been already on SAP Enterprise ByDesign [ByD], and we had been speaking about shifting to S/4Hana, which we bought into critically two years in the past. We’re midstream on that contemporary method.”
The corporate’s finance crew was a heavy consumer of SAP ByD. Nevertheless, different capabilities weren’t absolutely leveraging its digital capabilities. With the transfer to S/4Hana, the corporate goals to determine digitalised provide chain operations, from buyer processes to AI-leveraged warehouses, and onto threat, resilience and due diligence.
“I maintain speaking about provide chain orchestration, however that’s actually what it’s about – eradicating all these silos and optimising throughout these completely different parts,” McCarroll says. “That’s a giant achievement. I’m very happy with your entire enterprise’s engagement in that course of.”
One other massive success is feminine management. When McCarroll began working for Helios, round 20% of the organisation’s provide chain leaders had been ladies. Whereas common for the trade, she was eager to do extra. At this time, along with her intervention, ladies account for 60% of first-level managers in buying, procurement and warehousing.
“It’s one thing that I’ve labored on intentionally with the assist of the management crew,” she says. “It’s not about selecting females. It’s about making certain that we’re advocating for feminine leaders. We’re creating alternatives, and in the event that they’re the perfect particular person, then they’ll get the promotion and the job. In the event that they’re not, then they received’t.”
McCarroll says Helios has a tradition of selling and growing expertise from inside, together with certification in Lean Six Sigma by way of a management programme with Cranfield College. She says there’s an inner concentrate on growth, partnerships with HR and common succession planning. McCarroll needs to create a legacy of future leaders.
“The way in which I take into account gender stability within the crew is that it’s not essentially a male-female factor, however about having various voices, thought management cultures, backgrounds and ranging expertise ranges, which is one thing I’ve labored onerous to curate. It’s a profound change.”
Integrating operations
McCarroll says Helios is keen to use rising know-how. The corporate makes use of knowledge and AI for gross sales and operations planning, demand planning and to foster partnerships with industrial groups and prospects.
“We’re doing numerous heavy lifting with massive knowledge in S4/Hana,” she says. “We’re additionally on a path this yr to leverage AI utilizing SAP Ariba and different SAP merchandise, which permits us to use instruments for contract administration, provider efficiency administration, on a regular basis procurement and sourcing, and worth scanning. You would wish a military of workers to do what the know-how in Ariba can do. We additionally use AI to scan for safety dangers and potential socio-economic points.”
In the course of the subsequent 24 months, McCarroll will lead the second wave of the corporate’s S4/Hana deployment. She’ll additionally launch the agency’s companion programme, the place companion workers throughout the agency’s markets shall be skilled in Lean Six Sigma. The method has already began in Oman, because the maiden nation for coaching.
“All of our companions on the market are very receptive to it,” she says. “It’s one thing that’s an energetic reciprocity to long-term companions of ours to upskill their groups who work in our websites, day in, day trip, to permit them to take a look at processes and issues precisely as we do. We wish to create a seamless neighborhood.”
By the tip of the last decade, McCarroll anticipates her crew could have created a completely built-in, end-to-end provide chain stretching from the client’s first enquiry by way of to the industrial crew assessing the chance, and onto the planning crew allocating capital and procuring sources for the initiative.
“We wish to execute that demand on the proper time, in the appropriate place, in the appropriate amount,” she says. “We wish to be optimising stock or warehouses with effectivity in-built, leveraging AI during to the fabric being dispatched out to our websites, constructing our towers, sustaining them for his or her lifecycle, after which, when know-how must be disposed of, it’s a digital expertise – after which the cycle begins once more.”
