After decades of a telecommunications monopoly, and despite deregulation, the price of telephony in South Africa has skyrocketed. The issue has even drawn fire from President Thabo Mbeki, who has complained that the high costs of telephony are deterring investors.
But despite complaints, Telkom`s monopoly remains entrenched and while government and ICASA contemplate `policy reviews`, it is left up to individual companies to explore methods of reducing their telecoms spend - a real challenge as telecommunications costs in South Africa are among the highest in the world, and businesses typically overspend by anything from 15% to 50%.
"Customers are looking for new and intelligent ways to analyse and streamline their telecommunications spend. Recent requests for solutions include the Cape Town Unicity and Parliament. These are typical examples of BIG business shouting for help," says John van den Munckhof, CEO of Hymax SA.
He says one of the major problems in terms of escalating costs is that most companies use a complex mix of traditional landline phones, their own WAN for voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), different cellular network and multiple cellular service providers, to deliver telecommunications to their branches nationwide. As time goes on, customers find it increasingly difficult to manage their costs as bills become more unwieldy.
"More and more customers are asking for a single point of contact. The basic problem is that you cannot manage a problem which you cannot measure. And even if you can measure it, you need the skill set [and time] to implement change efficiently. There are companies in the marketplace charging small fortunes to perform telecoms audits for customers. Once complete, the customer then has to find a service provider to deliver the change required and then 12 months on, if the customer wishes to measure success, perform the whole complex costly exercise again," Van den Munckhof explains.
Hymax SA is the key distributor of a locally developed cost management solution called Managed Voice Services (MVS) that is used to manage customer telecoms.
"What we have is a solution that gives the customer a consolidated view of his telecoms spend, irrespective of supplier. It takes into account the business needs, geographical location, supplier invoices and supplier detailed billing, analyses the call patterns and then uses all this data to come up with an optimal telecoms plan.
"Basically, we take a snapshot of the customer`s existing infrastructure, current spend patterns and add value to it. We change his call patterns, bring all his spend under control and consolidate his infrastructure. If, for example, a company is spending R100 000 per month and getting 50 000 minutes worth of calls, our MVS solution will determine how and if it can be done cheaper. Almost always it can," he says.
Van den Munckhof says Hymax SA has positioned itself as a `one-stop-shop` which means they can manage every possible type of voice call. "It means total telecommunications costs are optimised - not just certain portions."
This is different to the average service provider (SP) out there, in that most SPs are able to provide a portion of their clients` telecommunications needs, which means that nine times out of 10, they will miss out on one or more opportunity.
"What I mean by this is that, for example, a service provider of least-cost routing (LCR) services understands LCR, but generally they do not understand cellular handsets, PBX or VOIP. The same would be true for any service provider who does not provide a complete offering to market. This is where Hymax SA differentiates itself," he says.
There are two components to the MVS solution, firstly, the ability to perform an ongoing electronic analysis of supplier data on a completely independent basis, meaning the analysis favours no service provider; and secondly, the Hymax product set, knowledge base and customer support that allows medium to large businesses to change their spending patterns and optimise costs.
"On a value for money basis it delivers savings across 90% of a business` spend. The other 10% is not worth chasing; it will cost more than the savings are worth," says Van den Munckhof.
"Until now it has been both tremendously difficult and costly to get an overall picture of the true cost of telecommunications in a business because of all the different suppliers it may have.
"The information tended to be available in isolated pockets and managed by different people within the same organisation. It is generally a headache for the customers. MVS gathers information on all telecommunications activities and points out where savings can be made," he says.
"There are three ways we sell MVS to our customers," adds Van den Munckhof. "You can take a single snapshot and make adjustments, get a more detailed three-month analysis or take the 12-month option where expenses are constantly monitored and adjusted."
MVS delivers tailor-made solutions resulting in significant savings.
Case study: Fidelity Khulani Security Services
Hymax measured the company`s telecoms spend and assessed call patterns to establish a benchmark. Once the background studies were complete, Hymax sat down with Fidelity Khulani Security Services to ascertain the company`s current and future business needs before proposing a set of telecommunications solutions that would provide the best return on their investment.
The project spans 65 branches nationwide with 1 150 lines under management (LCR cellular, Telkom and cellphones) and is now midway through its implementation phase but is already delivering considerable savings for the company.
Before its implementation, the company had nine voice service providers and more than 10 infrastructure vendors, including Telkom.
It is estimated that future savings could add up to several million per annum on completion of the project - more than 35% of benchmarked spend across all vendors.
Share
Editorial contacts