Botswana Telecommunications Corporation

B OT S WA N A T E L E C O M M U N I C AT I O N S C O R P O R AT I O N

Connecting communities across Botswana

BOTSWANA

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Strategic

CORPORATION

SUCCESS From the introduction of next-generation LTE to extensive cost optimisation processes, BTC is championing change when it comes to connectivity Project Manager: Vivek Valmiki

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uch like the rest of Africa, Botswana’s telecommunications market is evolving rapidly.

As the rise of long-term evolution (LTE) technologies remains meteoric, and 2G and 3G continue to be replaced by their modernised successors in the form of 4G and even 5G, the country is beginning to leverage a host of new, transformative capabilities.

The crux of these is mobile connectivity, an industry that is anticipated to grow at roughly 12.3 percent per year and account for 79.3 percent of national telecom service revenue by 2023. Combine this with a whole host of associated branches such as the internet of things and cloud services, and it’s easy to see why Botswana is gearing up for a period of extensive, progressive change.

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Africa emerging as a hub of contact centre excellence Written by Bruce Arnold, Chief Executive Officer, Pivotal Data

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frica is emerging as a powerhouse in the global contact centre and business process outsourcing and services (BPO&S) sectors. Numerous countries in North and Sub-Saharan Africa already boast vibrant and growing captive contact centre and BPO industries, supported by large-scale communication and IT infrastructure investments.

These operations span multiple vertical markets, including the public sector, and facilitate a broad range of services, including inbound and outbound call management, customer service support, mobile app and technical support, sales services, finance and accounting services, and debt collections.

Various government and investment agencies across Africa have also adopted or are in the process of implementing national contact centre strategies, supported by IT-enabled services, to drive economic growth and job creation. These initiatives will lead to further development of the contact centre industries in these countries.

Rwanda is a case in point. According to the All Africa Global Business Services (GBS) and CX Investment Survey currently being conducted by Knowledge Executive, the country’s contact centre industry is enabled by excellent ICT cyber-infrastructure (expected to be worth $646 million by 2020) and collaborative support and incentives from government and development agencies, which also improve the ease of doing business in the country.

Kenya and Uganda are the other African nations emerging as key global BPO providers. While both countries are hampered by infrastructure challenges and geopolitical uncertainty, they have created burgeoning, vibrant contact centre industries. These competencies are predicated on a large pool of English-speaking, well educated talent and a growing techsavvy youth population, estimated to be 9.2 million in Uganda and 4.4 million in Kenya.

In Kenya’s case, the contact centre industry currently employs about 3,000 youth for brands such as Safricom and Equity Bank. The country has also formed a contact centre association and customer service professional body for the customer experience (CX) industry, as have Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

These initiatives aim to emulate, align and collaborate with markets such as South Africa, which was recently ranked second in the world by over 300 global enterprise contact centre decision makers in the 2019 Front Office Omnibus Survey conducted by Ryan Strategic Advisory.

Intra-Africa collaboration between countries such as Rwanda and South Africa aims to further promote and improve CX services across the continent, while enterprising customer service professionals in Zimbabwe (which boasts a contact centre industry with 3,600 workers) have formed the Chartered Institute of Customer Management (CiCM) and has opened regional hubs in

Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia.

These developments support and complement other developments within specific African markets, where contact centres and shared services facilities are favourably positioned to surpass many of their counterparts in developed and mature markets by embracing various advanced technologies.

According to the 2018 Genesys Cloud Transformation Survey, over 90% of contact centres surveyed in Botswana, Kenya, Ghana, Namibia and South Africa have already adopted multi-channel solutions to meet shifting market dynamics.

More tellingly, 56% of the African contact centres interviewed for the survey have adopted some form of cloud computing over the past 2 to 3 years. These captive and outsourced African operators understand that due to the historically slow pace of technological advancement on the continent, cloud adoption gives these contact centres access to platforms, applications and solutions previously only available to large enterprises.

This presents an opportunity to bridge the digital divide and leapfrog ahead of large contact centres and enterprises that are sweating their legacy systems.

As such, cloud adoption in Africa is forecast to grow by over 41% over the next four years, according to Knowledge Executive research. In this regard, African contact centre operators intend to deploy new technologies such as AI, web chat and intelligent automated agents or chatbots in the next 12 months.

To unlock this potential and realise the benefits, the contact centres included in the 2018 Genesys Cloud Transformation survey are taking various paths on their contact centre technology migration journeys. While almost 30% of the respondents want

to grow their premise-based models, more contact centres in Africa are opting for the flexibility of hybrid and full-cloud options.

And many will rely on cloud technology providers to realise these capabilities with flexible and stackable finance options, in addition to the appropriate technological solution and the industry experience and certified staff needed to implement and enable true omnichannel contact centre capabilities.

Partnering with client to realise pan-African success

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ivotal Data is a South Africanbased managed services provider that offers a range of industry-leading omnichannel digital contact centre, customer engagement and enabling IT and connectivity solutions.

Founded in 2012, the company’s entrepreneurial mindset, its bold, innovative company culture and its client-centric strategy have been the catalysts for the business’s rapid organic grown.

Various strategic acquisitions have built out capabilities and core competencies that have helped Pivotal Data become a recognised contact centre and customer experience (CX) market leader.

Over the years, Pivotal Data has developed proficiency within a range of industry verticals, with specific expertise and experience in providing captive corporate contact centre solutions in financial services for banking and insurance clients, the

telecoms market and the burgeoning business process outsourcing and services (BPO&S) sector.

African expansion plans

The company is now applying its vast experience, expertise and unique skills set to become a prominent multinational player, providing its award-winning capabilities to help clients achieve their pan-African growth ambitions.

Pivotal Data’s value proposition is built on the company’s vast industry experience and unrivalled technical capabilities, with its market-leading contact centre solutions and endto-end cloud services offering at the core of its success.

Award-winning capabilities

Pivotal Data’s impactful customer engagement and contact centre implementations have earned the company acclaim from the global leader in customer experience and contact centre technology, Genesys.

In 2019, Pivotal Data was

recognised as Genesys’ leading partner in Africa and achieved Gold Partner status – the highest

level within the partner program.

The company was also the proud recipient of the prestigious 2019 Genesys Partner of the Year award.

Pivotal Data is the only Gold partner with the ability to sell, deploy and support the full Genesys range of omnichannel and analytic solutions, including PureEngage, PureCloud and PureConnect, and Genesys Interaction Analytics (GIA) as on-premises, hosted or cloud deployment models.

For more information, email info@pivotalgroup.co.za or visit pivotaldata.co.za

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This in mind, it’s understandably exciting times for Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC).

An organisation established almost four decades ago to provide, develop, operate and manage Botswana’s national and international telecommunications services, the now privatised entity stands front and centre of the industry, helping to facilitate the aforementioned ascendancy.

Finding value

Providing both mobile data services in the form of its flagship beMOBILE brand, alongside its BTC Wholesale and BTC Fixed offerings, BTC remains a market leader in communications services, priding itself on upholding superior customer service through innovative solutions.

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BTC: A HISTORY From 1980 onwards, BTC took over from Botswana’s Department of Posts and Telecommunications in upholding the country’s telecommunications services, services that it monopolised until 1996.

At this time, an amendment of the Telecommunications Act repealed this monopoly, introducing other service providers and raising industry competition. Further, the industry became liberalised in 1998, quickly followed by the inauguration of two mobile operators in the national market.

Fast forward to 2006, and competition was also introduced to the international calling market, allowing ISPs to provide voice over internet protocol services. A year later, and all telecommunications network providers were given neutral licenses, permitting them to operate in the cellular and fixed line segments.

In 2008, BTC itself then was authorised to become a privatised entity and launched beMOBILE – its own mobile network. Eight years, on and the organisation became listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange following a successful IPO that saw 50,000 shareholders come on board.

Today, the company runs all three of its business units (beMOBILE, BTC Wholesale and BTC Fixed) under one roof, making it agile and responsive to its customers’ needs.

Pivotal Data paves path for Harambee’s African expansion

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ivotal Data is a proud technology partner to Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, an award-winning South African non-profit organisation that is changing the trajectory of young lives through impact sourcing and inclusive hiring.

Harambee builds scalable solutions for the youth labour market, leveraging innovative contact centre and customer experience (CX) technology to support young people who have been excluded from the formal economy.

Harambee then provides workreadiness programmes, using its real-world training methodology to up-skill these candidates, and its high-tech “pathwaying platform” to connect job seekers with opportunities developed through partnerships with businesses. It also applies matching tools to help employers quickly and reliably gauge work-readiness and increase retention.

Facilitating impactful contact The company’s Genesys-enabled contact centre, supported by Pivotal Data, sits at the heart of the social enterprise’s efforts to reach candidates that corporate networks can’t reach, and introduce these young people into the formal economy.

The resilient and scalable multichannel Genesys PureConnect contact centre solution developed

by Pivotal Data forms part of an integrated cloud-based solution that seamlessly integrates with Harambee’s core systems and data environments. This enables

Harambee to leverage its machine learning algorithms to inform how the company engages with the young people.

Integrating Harambee’s pathway platform with the contact centre solution also builds information into workflows and usable formats, which helps advisors to more accurately assess a candidate’s current status and skills to match these to relevant work opportunities.

Social and business impact The cloud model also ensures that Harambee benefits from a flexible licensing model to reduce IT costs.

“And by releasing our contact centre staff from the burden of manual dialling, Pivotal Data helped us achieve a 45% increase in productivity”, explains Harambee’s Head of Contact Centre, Jacques Jonker.

Harambee previously made roughly 50,000 call attempts a month, but since Pivotal Data implemented the Genesys solution, the contact centre now makes up to 1.5 million calls.

Harambee now works with about 500 business partners in South Africa, ranging from large corporates to micro-enterprises, across a wide spectrum of economic sectors, helping buyers and service providers to effectively and efficiently identify, screen, and train entry-level candidates through job readiness.

African expansion Following a successful partnership with the Mastercard Foundation in South Africa to equip young workseekers with work opportunities

and skills to enable them to become more employable and remain employed, the organisations looked to broaden the project’s reach and impact into Africa.

The Foundation and Harambee partnered on the Hanga Ahazaza – Rwanda Youth Employment Accelerator project which works to identify, screen and test a network of 100,000 young people and place 25,000 into work opportunities.

“To realise similar success in Rwanda, we want to replicate the wellestablished South African model, which relies heavily on Pivotal Data’s expertise and cloud capabilities to provision the contact centre technology in this new market,” explains Jonker.

“Once operational, our contact centre showcase will lay the groundwork for other operators, so that they can easily enter the market and scale to solve for unemployment, without breaking the bank. This will ultimately benefit the country on multiple fronts by driving economic growth and stimulating job creation,” concludes Jonker.

For more information, email info@pivotalgroup.co.za or visit pivotalgroup.co.za

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“We exhibit a sense of pride in the work we do and take accountability for the quality of our efforts and the organisation as a whole,” the company states on its website where it outlines its values statement. “We commit to the best customer experience through effective, efficient and agile service delivery within defined timeframes.”

Such traits are no better reflected than in the firm’s selection of mobile plans.

These come in the form of both prepaid and post-paid tariffs including its new TurnUp bundles, offering anywhere between 500 megabytes of data and five gigabytes of data, these two options costing P40 ($3.78) and P299 ($28.28) respectively.

Additionally, the company’s valueadded mobile services are another defining feature of the beMOBILE brand.

These include Nshape, a service which allows subscribers to share

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We exhibit a sense of pride in the work we do and take accountability for the quality of our efforts and the organisation as a whole... We commit to the best customer experience through effective, efficient and agile service delivery within defined timeframes”

airtime credit with friends and family; Ntshware, a free call back service; call barring, preventing certain calls such as international calls from being made; and CRBT, allowing users to suspend an in-progress call while accepting a second call.

Combined with the company’s extensive roaming footprint spanning anywhere from Canada to the UK to Australia, these are just some of BTC’s crucial differentiators, enabling it to remain at the forefront of the Botswanan telecommunications market.

Strategic success

The services in question have been crucial to the company’s recent rise, an upward trajectory that can largely be traced back to the integration of its three core service portfolios under one, united BTC brand in 2016.

Looking at the firm’s most recently available results figures for the

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financial year ended March 31, 2017, this is clear to see.

The company registered an impressive profit after tax of P237 million ($22.42 million), a 164 percent increase year-on-year, while its revenue also rose eight percent to P1.6 billion ($151 million), the jump in profit largely owed to a 26 percent fall in costs and 21 percent rise in data services revenue.

“I am delighted to report that this overall improvement in performance is a combination of both better business focus and improved operational efficiencies,” stated Lorato Boakgomo, BTC’s Board Chairperson, in the Annual Report. “Overall the company performed very well against the main strategic objectives of growing mobile market share and revenue, data and broadband revenue, optimising costs, and improving customer satisfaction levels.”

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I am delighted to report that this overall improvement in performance is a combination of both better business focus and improved operational efficiencies. Overall the company performed very well against the main strategic objectives...”

Moving forward, this sharp rise is not expected to be subject to much of a slowdown anytime soon, with the enterprise currently amid a three-year strategy focused on a new transformation and growth agenda in the short to medium term.

Centred around business growth, customer experience, operational efficiency, innovation and highperformance culture, the five-pronged blueprint is attempting to create a revitalised business environment, enabling the company to leverage and forge value adding strategic partnerships with both the public and private sector.

Such will be the latest chapter in BTC’s illustrious history, the organisation that was once the only telecommunications company in the country now standing as one of the Botswana Stock Exchange’s largest entities.

A company of many firsts and continuously changing the rules of competition

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rom the very first ground emergency medical evacuation in 1992 to a growing network of clinics and pharmacies in 2019, MRI Botswana Limited envisions to be a model healthcare organisation

that will drive the primary healthcare landscape of Botswana.

“Through innovative technology and a highly skilled team of healthcare professionals, we commit to offer the best emergency medical and primary healthcare services, putting our customers’ needs at the heart of our operations and focusing on building their lasting trust in us” says the Managing Director, Dr Lorato Mangadi.

Having pioneered emergency medical services in Botswana about 27 years ago, MRI Botswana remains the leading provider of pre-hospital emergency medical response and assistance. Our tagline ‘when seconds count’ indicates our promise and commitment to providing rapid response and rescue during crucial times when seconds indeed count.

MRI Botswana Limited has over the last five years undergone a tremendous transition and is today a truly diverse organisation, leading in every service we provide and continuously changing the rules of competition to stay ahead. Our key operations are as follows: • Med Rescue 992 which is coordinated through a 24/7/365 medical contact centre to provide pre-hospital assistance and inter-hospital transfers throughout Botswana and the SADC region. We have partnered with key international assistance companies to ensure that we provide superior service to our local, regional and international customers.

• Prime Health Clinics & Pharmacies is the first network of clinics and pharmacies that bring to the market quality, affordable and convenient healthcare services with the aim to influence a paradigm shift from high cost hospital centric care to a high value low cost primary care model. We embrace our tagline ‘your partner in health’ to leave long lasting impression on every life we touch. Our Prime Health Pharmacies are entrusted on a monthly basis to distribute chronic medicines to a large customer base across the entire breadth and span of the country.

• MRI Onsite, the first ever remote and industrial site medical services covering occupational health and wellness, primary healthcare and emergency medical services.

• MRI Training Academy the first ever training site that offers a variety of courses including First Aid and Healthcare Provider Courses (BLS, ACLS, PALS, ITLS) as well as Disaster Preparedness. The Academy is registered and accredited with the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) and is also a recognised American Heart Association (AHA) training site affiliated with the Resuscitation Council of South Africa.

• MRI Contact Centre which leverages robust and cutting edge technology to provide inbound and outbound contact centre services to a wide range of clients across different business sectors. Our highly skilled and dedicated teams are always on standby to connect businesses to their customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.

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