Telephony group Telkom is eyeing small and medium enterprises (SMEs), as it seeks to diversify its revenue streams through a cocktail of solutions, including e-commerce.
Telkom, which is facing a massive decline in fixed voice revenue, says in the coming days, it will launch a digital ecosystem targeting SMEs.
The company this week presented a weakened financial picture, reporting declines of 66.7% to 208.1c per share in headline earnings, and basic earnings per share also decreased 78.4% to 121.1c per share.
As a result of the declines, Telkom is expanding its offerings and CEO Sipho Maseko believes SMEs are a potential market for the company as they will play a critical role in restarting the stagnated economy due to COVID-19.
“At the moment, one of the things we are doing is that we are providing the government portal that is being used to register all small and medium businesses.
“We are looking to scale our digital system through the platform ecosystem, both in terms of how we are looking at financial solutions and e-commerce platforms, and the lockdown actually has made us see a bit of traction in this area.”
Maseko says Telkom is also transforming its Yellow Pages division and equally it will tap into the potential of small business.
Yellow Pages has been available as an app for iOS and Android devices for several years.
“We will be relaunching our Yellow Pages platform to what we call YEP and it builds on the current yellow pages platform, the Internet Yellow Pages and the app. We will transform them into an online marketplace for small businesses and help them scale, grow and transact with customers.
“Evolving the current platform into an e-commerce platform enables SMEs to purchase solutions tailor-made to them, manage their profiles, their accounts, upgrade their services in a seamless experience offered on a digital platform.”
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