Unisys Africa re-focuses service centres programme

Unisys Africa has consolidated its nine-year-old Authorised Customer Service Centre (ACSC) programme in a move that will enhance customer service.

"Surviving and thriving in the `new` economy is all about choosing the right partners and using these partners aggressively to optimise processes, cost-to-income ratios and delivery of `best-in-class` service levels," says Dave Methven, director, Global Outsourcing and Infrastructure Services at Unisys Africa. "This consolidation follows a lengthy investigation into the project and resulted in consolidating the service centres to improve management and service delivery efficacy.

"Our programme, started in 1996, needed to be refreshed to meet the evolving needs of our customers. As a US multinational operating in the new South Africa, we decided to hive off small self-sustaining businesses as part of a greater BEE programme, staffed by ex-Unisys employees," he says.

Part of the programme saw these employees trained in small business operation and administration and their teams` technical skills uplifted to service customers.

Unisys Africa now has four BEE ACSC partner companies delivering service to customers around South Africa. "The benefits to Unisys Africa have been enormous," says Methven. "We have better control over service delivery against customer agreements, which makes for happier customers; our administration and management workload has been significantly streamlined, reducing the overhead ASCSs face; and there`s been improved resource allocation making ASCSs more efficient."

Besides Unisys Africa and its customers, the consolidation programme has also benefited the ACSCs.

"The ACSCs benefit from better economies of scale, improved efficiencies, better focus and commitment from Unisys Africa," says Methven.