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SOLUTION PROFILE

 

Along with other communications companies the world over, Telkom has to contend with a challenging and rapidly evolving environment, marked by intensifying competition, a changing regulatory landscape and technological advances, particularly convergence.

 

As a first step in overcoming these challenges as well as maintaining and growing our market share in South Africa and building a significant footprint in Africa, we believe we have already achieved better alignment of our organisational structure with our Defend and Grow strategy.

 

The new structure consists of a corporate centre and three operating business units. The unit under my leadership, Telkom SA, is tasked with growing the Group’s South African businesses, protecting market share and delivering customer and shareholder value.

 

To achieve its objectives, Telkom SA will focus on a number of critical imperatives:

 

• Continued investment in infrastructure – Now in the fourth year of our R30 billion next-generation network (NGN) build-out programme, we have substantially increased the capacity and reliability of our network, as well as our ability to get innovative products to market faster. But if our network is to remain a key differentiator, we must continue on the path of renewal. Only through ongoing investment in our already ubiquitous, sophisticated and robust network will we withstand challenges from technological advances and increased customer demands for quality, innovation and service of the highest standard.

 

• Defend our customer base - Providing more value than our competitors is no easy task in an era of open markets, stiffening competition and fluctuating consumer loyalty, but Telkom SA has an abundance of expertise and experience that bode well for the future, as the case studies in this journal amply demonstrate.

 

• Grow - Focusing exclusively on defending one’s market share is not a sustainable business strategy. Other ICT operators are already moving into what used to be Telkom’s sole domain. In turn, we have to explore new frontiers, among which the key areas of fixed-mobile convergence and the enterprise data centre business. In the consumer market, our convergence thrust will focus on the digital home concept, by offering triple play on the back of our broadband infrastructure.

 

• Another imperative is customer service. Telkom SA’s aim is for the quality of our service to become another element that differentiates us from our competitors. We will pay particular attention to strengthening our customer relationship management capabilities and learning from the customer information at our disposal. By segmenting our customer base, we also expect to improve our communication with customers.

 

The challenge will be to build on progress already made, to better manage the customer experience and, crucially, anticipate customer needs. Improved service begins with training and development. Telkom has a proud record as one of South Africa’s main investors in ICT skills, and this will continue to prepare employees for the demands posed by a fluid and challenging industry.

 

At this critical juncture in Telkom SA’s history, the demands on us have never been greater. But I have no doubt we can capitalise and build on our existing capabilities, as well as develop new ones, to achieve our objectives.