France Telecom-Orange plans to hire 10,000 more people and find 50% more customers. Stéphane Richard, Chief Executive Officer of France Telecom-Orange has unveiled his Group-wide industrial project. This five-year action plan, called "conquests 2015", is aimed at setting out the challenges and perspectives that lie ahead, clarifying the Group's business activities and regaining a sense of conquest and pride within the company.

It faces three major challenges, he says: 

• an unprecedented social crisis in France,
• a fast-changing ecosystem as technological development continues to accelerate, bringing with it new uses, and in particular image-based services. 
• a tense, competitive and regulatory environment: the incursion of new players from the Internet world; the impact of lower regulated tariffs on the wholesale market, etc.

To meet these challenges, Orange has resorted to a "co-development" methodology that brings together employees from both its business lines and its countries. The first phase began in March in which groups of around 50 people met to define the broad outlines. These were then reworked by around 500 managers from every country and business line, who then went back to share these joint reflections with their teams.

Through "conquests 2015", Orange is aiming to simultaneously address its employees, customers, shareholders but also, more generally, the society in which the company operates, it says.

Orange aims first and foremost to win over its staff. The Group is committed to offering its employees a beneficial working environment thanks to a new vision of human resources, a new management style and shared values. The company has already acted on this through the creation of Orange campus. This aims to build a community of managers from January 2011 first in Paris and then in Serock (Poland), Madrid, Bordeaux, Marseille, Nancy, Rennes and six other locations outside Europe

Secondly, the IT systems, which have become increasingly complicated over the years, will be greatly simplified or entirely overhauled in certain cases. Finally, to address the challenge posed by the rising average age of employees in France, the Group plans to recruit 10,000 additional employees from 2010 to end 2012. The measures set-out in the Group's new social contract for France represent a total budget of €900m over the same period, excluding anticipated savings from the ‘part-time for seniors' plan and natural attrition.

Orange reaffirms that its networks are its core business and its future. The Group has been built around its network and the expertise of its technicians, and its employees take great pride in that. The ‘conquest of networks' means increasing coverage and bandwidth for both fixed and mobile networks, in both mature and emerging countries. In France, Orange will invest two billion euros by 2015 to deploy a new fibre optic network.

The company will continue its strategy of growth through innovation whether by providing the best possible voice quality, putting additional features in the SIM card, or by developing new services such as Orange Care (warranty, insurance and online support). Orange is also developing products in healthcare and education as well as mobile payment or money transfer services such as its Orange Money programme in Africa.

The conquest of international development. The Group has also set its sights on reviving a spirit of growth through international development. This will be based on the same acquisition policy as before and rules out any "transformational" deals. Sales are expected to double over the next five years in emerging markets.

Finally, Orange plans to grow globally from close to 200 million customers at present to 300 million by 2015.