Specialist telecommunications company Multimatics now guarantees cost savings for clients. This is good news for South African businesses, and a sure sign that the local telecoms sector continues to evolve at a rapid pace.
South Africa still has one of the most expensive telecommunications environments in the world, making it imperative for the country's businesses to take every possible measure to optimise their phone bills and general telecoms expenses.
In recent years, least cost routing (LCR) providers have offered guaranteed savings on cellular and national calls. Now this LCR guarantee has evolved to encompass a cost saving guarantee across the total telecoms expenditure.
Multimatics, a specialist telephone management company, is the first in South Africa to back its telephone management offering with a savings guarantee.
"Our premium offering, Telesentry, is guaranteed to reduce costs," says Steven Brown, Multimatics Managing Director. "We work with the client to define targeted cost savings. Once these targets have been agreed on, Multimatics then contractually binds itself to meet those targets. If we don't, or can't, meet these targets, we'll give the client their money back. Pure and simple.
"Any telecommunications company offering savings should be able to guarantee its results," says Brown. "While there is always room for 'boxed' solutions in the market, our belief is that most companies really need a solution that is tailored to specific organisational needs and underpinned by clearly set goals and guarantees. In the context of South Africa's very expensive telecoms environment, this can have a major impact on the bottom line. Our view is that telephone management companies need to put their money where their mouth is and truly incentivise organisations to partner with them. Anything less is a dilution of what is possible, from the client's perspective."
So, just how does a company like Multimatics go about guaranteeing cost savings, without absorbing unacceptable risks?
"It's a question of the right mix of experience, intellectual capital and technology," says Brown. "If you've been in the business long enough you will have the necessary expertise and tools to deliver defined results in defined areas."
Multimatics' Telesentry offering, for example, is underpinned by a Private Number Predictor, specifically designed by an actuary to track and analyse staff behaviour patterns and business trends using complex algorithms. The Private Number Predictor allows a company to easily identify abusive telephone behaviour and once identified, corrective action will lead to a reduction in the abuse and overall spend. In addition, the Telesentry offering carefully evaluates traffic management on LCR lines, ensuring that overflow calls are kept to an absolute minimum.
Multimatics' telephone management guarantee will certainly place pressure on other players in the sector to offer similar security in their services, although Brown does not view his company's move in a strictly competitive light.
"Yes, it's good to be the first in the industry to make a move like this, but we have made it with a view to offering the best possible service to our clients, rather than 'one-upping' other service providers. The world of telecommunications is constantly changing and evolving, and if you want to be a leading player you need to make sure you evolve with the sector, and pass the benefits of that evolution on to your clients."
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