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Cognition will grow skills base

Nicola Mawson
By Nicola Mawson, Contributor.
Johannesburg, 27 Mar 2015
Cognition is in talks in a bid to bolster its skills base, says CEO Mark Smith.
Cognition is in talks in a bid to bolster its skills base, says CEO Mark Smith.

Cognition - which until October last year was called FoneWorx - is set to employ more specialised skills as it pursues its data, information, and knowledge strategy.

The listed company says, in its results commentary for the six months to December, this strategy will be complemented by its "active" drive to invest in firms that focus on actuarial science, data analytics, social media, data management and consulting.

Cognition has been pursuing growth in "new and exciting opportunities" in what it calls the "new knowledge economy". This comes as mass marketing declines, and digital marketing opportunities open up.

In the first half of the year, Cognition saw revenue drop 1.31% to R62.4 million, but managed to grow pre-tax profit 11.87% to R21.3 million, and headline earnings gained 9.23% to R14.7 million.

Cognition notes the slowdown in revenue growth is because it has shifted to seeking more profitable revenue that offers more margins, as well as a decline in income from faxing. It also had timing issues with some projects within MediaWorx, which it hopes will be wrapped up in the second half of the year.

Moving forward

CEO Mark Smith says Cognition has made "significant progress" in developing its knowledge economy strategy on the back of current active data exchange services such as SMS, MMS and instant messaging. He notes, while the company will continue to grow these services in South Africa and the rest of Africa, it is "very focused on developing and growing our skills in knowledge creation and management".

Cognition's strategy is to develop customer-centric databases for its own services as well as on behalf of its clients, Smith says. He notes that data, in itself, is meaningless so its offerings aim to create the necessary insights and inferences around data and leverage this to information and, finally, knowledge.

"Our focus is to provide knowledge mapping around customer lists, databases and contracts to yield economic value for clients. The information and knowledge will be structured around our Knowledge 350^0 product," says Smith.

Knowledge 350o provides a business process plan for clients, which will then be augmented by technology as a facilitator. It is a "15-step business process which creates an integrated and logical strategic process that assists companies to build up meaningful databases in line with the pending Protection of Personal Information Act and to move away from segmenting customers, to building single customer profiles with detailed demographics and psychographics associated to each customer".

Growing capacity

To add to this capacity, last July, FoneWorx bought a 35% stake in BMI Research for an undisclosed amount. This follows its May acquisition of a 44% stake in Living Facts to boost the capabilities of Knowledge 350^0 as it allows the company to better understand customer needs, perceptions and realities.

Knowledge 350^0 is expected to create new market sectors, new clients, and additional revenue streams for FoneWorx. During 2015, the company aims to move new clients onto its Knowledge 350^0 base, identify new clients, and "aggressively" pursue its acquisition strategy, it says.

Smith says Cognition's intention is to increase its skills to complement the knowledge strategy. "We are in discussions with other businesses that offer us the requisite skills and market share in certain desired sectors. Our focus will be on data analytics, predictive modelling and knowledge mapping for customer data integration."

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