Telkom SA SOC Limited
Integrated Report 2017
For the year ended 31 March 2017
Performance
Intellectual capital
Telkom is a different company than it was a few years ago – we transformed from a telecommunications provider to an integrated ICT services provider. IT played a critical part in the transformation journey.
Information technology
We are at an important point in our transformation journey where we need to prepare for a higher pace of change and more demand from business. This is fuelled by our focus on satisfying ever-changing customer demands for new and innovative communication and ICT solutions. We spent a considerable amount of time during the first three years of our transformation journey to get closer to the business, and to understand business plans, customer strategies and digital ambitions - what we deliver to each business unit. This culminated in a revised Telkom IT strategy. At the same time, we look at further transforming how we deliver IT solutions. Our IT strategy will continue to guide our delivery and strategic investments going forward, and will guide us to achieve a better balance between investing in “transforming and growing the businesses” versus “running the business”.
During the year we made progress in aligning IT with business as captured in our IT strategy. We evaluated our investments in business support system/operations support system (BSS/OSS) and identified areas that will have to change going forward. We are evaluating our strategic vendors and partnerships to ensure they are able and ready for the changes. We are pushing ahead with further restructuring and outsourcing IT functions to align with our new operating model.
IT contributed to enhancing the customer experience (improved NPS) by reducing systems response time, increasing self-service systems response time, increasing self-service via mobile applications, and streamlining processes to reduce the multiple steps in the approval process for Telkom customers.
IT strategy
| Telkom IT strategy More business-aligned, enabler of business plans, driving digitisation and automation |
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| Faster time to market and increased agility with a focus on innovation and customer experience enhancements through digitisation and automation of end-to-end business processes | Enabling the integrated telecommunications and ICT service and product portfolio requires new ways of engaging with customers to understand their business needs. It requires the ability to quickly convert a sales discussion into a serviceable order that automatically integrates into a multitude of back-end provisioning systems to deliver a consistent customer experience |
Expanding on its leading position as the primary wholesale infrastructure connectivity provider, enabling a new business partner ecosystem by integrating various retail service providers and other wholesalers to deliver higher-quality solutions faster | ||||||||||
BSS/OSS
The BSS/OSS landscape typically attracts significant investment from
telecommunications service providers. We continued to invest in this
area, cognisant of its positive impact on customer experience and time-to-market improvements. As part of our IT strategy formulation, we
performed a critical review of BSS/OSS investments in light of the changing
operating model, changes in the business plans and the product offerings
we will launch, and aligning to the ever-changing business environment.
We are finalising a three-year road map that will involve changes in the
BSS/OSS landscape to address areas that have not kept pace with the
transformation journey.
We are engaging with our strategic delivery partners to ensure they are ready and able to walk this journey with us. The review of BSS/OSS investments coincides with the maturity of long-term support agreements with vendors. It provides an opportunity for renegotiation to achieve cost efficiencies and service delivery improvements.
Looking forward
We are pushing ahead with outsourcing our IT development and operations functions to BCX, which should be completed in FY2018. We are evaluating cloud alternatives for some areas of our business and determining how it enables cost efficiencies and reduces dependency on costly and ageing in-house infrastructure.
We invest in IT to ensure a consistent experience across all customer touchpoints, whether online or in stores wherever and whenever our customers choose to engage with us. Further integration is underway of customer touch points and interfaces into the new back-end systems to deliver a more seamless and consistent experience.
Further focus areas include:
- to appoint chief information officers for each business unit in line with our new operating model
- retire old legacy platforms and the systems once the new ones are fully implemented
- migrating Telkom group IT team to BCX, aiming for completion in FY2018
- BCX to service business units, chief information officers and corporate centre
IT governance
Telkom group IT governance is based on King III principles.
Telkom’s technology is considered and positioned based on
strategic enterprise architecture frameworks and roadmaps
to ensure the best solutions and technologies are adopted.
Strategic considerations are given to selected strategic IT
partners and technologies. Specialist teams oversee that
we adhere to proper governance and compliance. Constant
validations are made in terms of best practices and best
demonstrated practices to ensure that we select, build and
integrate our technology through properly governed processes
and practices.
Innovation
We continue to develop and implement FreeMe products, new mobile applications and an e-shop capability across the group.
We launched the new Telkom App that enables customers to order products from their mobile devices, buy bundles, track usage, track orders,among others. We also launched our e-shop portal on our website, simplifying the ordering process.
Our IT systems enabled the simple and quick purchase of FreeMe packages.
We are engaging with our strategic delivery partners to ensure they are ready and able to walk this journey with us.