TELKOM
DIGITAL REPORT 2020
Driving digital transformation in South Africa IN ASSOCIATION WITH
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Driving digital transformation in South Africa WRITTEN BY
SEAN GALEA-PACE
PRODUCED BY
JAMES BERRY
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TELKOM
Head of Data Insights Management at Telkom, on the challenge of navigating the South African market amidst a digital transform
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elkom is a leading communications service provider in South Africa, operating in more than 38 countries across the continent of
Africa. Founded in 1991, it has transformed from the only telecommunications provider in South Africa to the diversified organisation delivering end-to-end 04
solutions to consumers and enterprise customers that it is today. Telkom serves a range of business and residential customers and has all the key components of true convergence, allowing the organisation to provide integrated voice, data, fixed, mobile, IT and data centre solutions. Zjaen Coetzee is Head of Data Insights Management at Telkom. He affirms his organisation has significantly changed the way it operates over the last decade. “In the last 10 years, Telkom has transformed from a fixed line operator to a mobile operator,� he says. “We own and operate several subsidiaries; we do property management through gyro as well as the traditional Yellowpages, but we now have a complete digital platform incorporated specifically called Telkom SMB. We have a retail business that does mobile
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TELKOM
and fixed line for consumers. We also
in other countries in packaging and
have BCX, which is the largest ICT
delivering solutions that don’t work in
company in South Africa, and has an
South Africa. However, this isn’t unique
international footprint specialising in
to us and is also the case for many
everything ICT-related. We really have
other telecom providers in the country.
become a fully diversified platform.”
South Africa is extremely diverse and
Coetzee believes there are sub-
it’s important that whatever you do in
stantial hurdles to overcome in the
packaging, it adds value and your ser-
South African market. “Navigating the
vice is reliable.”
market is the biggest challenge that we
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In a bid to address a skills short-
face. There’s a big drive to cut down on
age in the country, the Explore Data
costs because people obviously want
Science Academy (EDSA) was estab-
cheaper services,” he says. “There’s
lished to increase local data science
also the cultural challenge because
skills through partnerships and spon-
there are things that typically work
sorship from large organisations to tap
“ We really have become a fully diversified platform” Zjaen Coetzee, Head of Data Insights Management, Telkom
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07 into this resource pool. Since its incep-
Engineer at Telkom, believes there has
tion in 2016, over 1,000 students have
been significant focus on developing
gone through the programme. “The
the role of the data scientist. “It has
EDSA has grown to become a massive
worked very well and injected lots of
learning platform that caters for data
resources into the marketplace,” he
science training in several ways, as well
says. “Telkom has benefited con-
as for individuals to use it to change
siderably as we see data scientists
career or pursue their passion in data
appointed into different divisions, as
science,” says Coetzee. “It has short
well as assisting with other types of
and long courses and ranges from
workloads that are powering Big Data.
high school programmes to executive
We’re also centred around enabling the
training. The prime aim was to invest
data engineering type of training and
back into the South African market
providing for those roles too.”
and get a running pipeline of skills to tap into each year.” CJ Smit, Lead Data
Smit understands the importance of leveraging Big Data into operations w w w.te l ko m . co. z a
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and affirms harnessing value remains
People don’t always understand that
the key. “The traditional way in which
Big Data isn’t just the only technology
we produced customer insight and
that they use but is also one of the
recommendations was to simply
necessary technologies to enable
analyse transaction activity in a data
quicker time to value. It’s important to
warehouse,” he says. “However, the
deploy the right technology at the right
limitation is that only transaction
time in order to produce the quickest
activity is analysed. It doesn’t include
time to value.”
analysis of other high value data that
Thembani Phaweni, Senior Data
when pieced together offers a much
Scientist in the BCX division, believes
more complete understanding of a
Big Data has brought significant ben-
customer’s DNA. Therein, lies the
efits to countries such as South Africa
problem. We have to understand the
that have vastly different speaking
customer from a holistic perspective.
cultures. “There are many advantages.
“ Navigating the South African market is the biggest challenge that we face” Zjaen Coetzee, Head of Data Insights Management, Telkom 09
As a retail focused business, distrib-
that while no one can successfully
uted technology personalisation and
predict the future accurately, instead
autonomous or smart technology have
you can take a view on the kinds of
all been key drivers,” says Phaweni.
technologies that seem promising.
“Personalisation is possible with deeper
“Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
insights into customer behaviour and
is one of those promising technologies
their preferences. This means more
especially in a market as diverse and
granular segmentation and user driven
culturally rich as Africa,” he says. “The
product development. Autonomous
challenge is that speech requires good
and smart technology means fibre
and large datasets many of which don’t
networks and towers that report their
exist and others are simply too small
own faults and eventually autonomous
for commercial tools. Of course, the
agents that can repair them without
ASR does not standalone, it requires a
risking human lives.” Phaweni believes
plethora of natural language tools.” w w w.te l ko m . co. z a
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“ Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is one of those promising technologies, especially in a market as diverse and culturally rich as Africa� Thembani Phaweni, Senior Data Scientist, BCX
When beginning its data science journey in 2016, the first partner that Telkom collaborated with was Cloudera for a formal Big Data platform and the alliance remains strong today. “Cloudera has played an influential role and assisted in shaping the roadmap and strategy for expansion, as well as increasing capabilities in tandem with BCX. As part of that, there is a strong partnership with BCX and Cloudera from an external marketing facing perspective” explains Coetzee. “For our cloud-based solutions we use Google Cloud Platform to develop and host most of our data science and analytics cloud-based applications and proprietary tools. Paired with this and the drive to rapidly prototype and deliver solutions faster we required a strong local partner that can assist with leading technology and for this we use Slipstream to manage our Tableau and Alteryx licencing, support and training relationships.” Coetzee understands the importance of forming sustainable and mutually beneficial partnerships. “We’re typically seeking a collaboration with someone that has the capabilities to support us, because if we do run into w w w.te l ko m . co. z a
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TELKOM
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any issues such as licencing then they
overall digital literacy within the organi-
can be easily resolved,” says Coetzee.
sation across the business,” explains
“We must always ask ourselves: is it
Coetzee. “We’ve been pushing data
affordable and does it make sense?
literacy for some time but people aren’t
Ultimately, it must be a company that we
always aware of the true value of data.
can go on a journey with and they must
This is one of the biggest challenges
be open to offering continuous support.”
that we face in terms of Big Data
Over the next few months, Coetzee affirms that Telkom will focus on data literacy. “Data literacy is a massive
because if you forget about the value of data then the platform won’t work.” With the future in mind, Thembani is
driver and over the next few months,
excited about the impact that speech
we will be focusing on increasing the
technology could have on the South
“ It’s important to deploy the right technology at the right time in order to produce the quickest time to value” 15
CJ Smit, Lead Data Engineer, Telkom
African landscape. “We’re invested in
for English does not work very well on
technologies that provide a richer user
South African accents. We’ve since
experience,” says Phaweni. “We are
realised that we need to build our own
very passionate about computer vision
ASR. We are starting by building a large
and natural language processing. The
dataset with thousands of hours of
future of autonomous technology is
transcribed audio. We’re excited about
very promising. Speech technology is
the potential that this has.”
a fascinating and important area going forward. We recently built a prototype meeting assistant for the South African market. We quickly realised that Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) w w w.te l ko m . co. z a
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