Telkom customers are reaping the rewards of the company`s investment in information technology (IT), which has seen the telecommunications group improving its operational efficiencies and expanding its product offerings.
Improved customer satisfaction, revenue growth, increased billing and pricing flexibility, improved service activation and faster fault resolution are some of the benefits resulting from Telkom successfully deploying technology to improve business processes.
Speaking at the Brainstorm 2003 Conference in Sandton this week, Telkom`s IT services managing executive, Melvin McArthur, spotlighted some of the Telkom IT initiatives that have enabled Telkom to improve efficiencies and develop new products and services that add value to customer experiences.
Through `Flexible Billing`, Telkom is now able to offer products such as Smart access, the Talkplus product range, Best friends, Call plans, InfinitCall, Televoting on competition lines, Telkom Internet bundles and many others.
A number of these new technology-driven Telkom products are on show at the Computer Faire, which runs concurrently with the conference.
Telkom continually strives to better its customer service; another initiative making great strides in this respect is the Operations Support Systems (OSS) Programme. Through the many sub-projects that make up this wide-ranging endeavour, Telkom aims to get better and quicker at managing installations and repairs for customers, aligning in this way, with customers` expectations of what a quality service should be. This is being achieved by means of the integration, mechanisation and automation of key business processes.
The company introduced major changes to its existing desktop and file-server computing environments, thereby, introducing many productivity benefits, among them "self-healing" applications for all the desktops deployed in the company and remote desktop management. These have reduced support staff requirements; and decreased support costs, while significantly improving the service levels.
McArthur says: "We continue to drive operational efficiencies to the point where we can now offer our expertise and skills to our customers. Telkom, for example, offers hosting services, IT security services and Cybertrade Exchange, an e-business facility and electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) to its customers.
"EBPP gives corporates and businesses in SA a payment gateway that they can utilize to present their customers with online bills and to facilitate online payment," he said.
"No IT business can function without a great deal of effort and work going into ensuring that all facets of the business run like clockwork. As our challenges get bigger and the promise of convergence increasingly becomes a reality, the IT division of Telkom is striving to ensure that it continues to support and drive Telkom`s strategy through providing world-class IT services and solutions," McArthur added.
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