Collaborating to transform - Telkom SA alfabet Case Study

alfabet Case Study

  Collaborating to transform
  Telkom SA

ensuring IT powers business success

CASE STUDY I TElkom sa

                Telkom is one of the largest communications service provid-
                ers in Africa and a Forbes Top 2000 company.

                To meet consumer expectations in a converging world, it
                needs to completely overhaul its operational support and
                business support systems (OSS and BSS).

                Telkom recruited an independent Systems Integrator to work
                alongside its IT team. Together, they used planningIT to cre-
                ate a roadmap to the future and manage the challenging
                transformation.

2 I ensuring IT powers business success

CASE STUDY I TElkom SA

Transformation and ‘business as usual’
Like successful telecommunications companies the world over, South Africa’s Telkom
SA has been innovating its products and services to meet changing demands. Con-
sumer patterns are clear: people want integrated fixed and mobile communications,
as well as high-speed multi-device digital connectivity.

Telkom already operates fixed, mobile and data services, but it knew there were a
number of technology overlaps, duplications and inefficiencies, resulting in high
costs and slow time-to-market for new products. To achieve its vision of becoming
South Africa’s leading ICT services provider, Telkom SA embarked on a complete
transformation of its operational support systems (OSS) and business support sys-
tems (BSS), with the aim of promoting fixed/mobile convergence.

    “Convergence has changed our business model,” said Riekie Erasmus, Se-
    nior IT/Telecommunications Specialist at Telkom. “We need to transform
    not only our network, but also all our support systems. We need to ratio-
    nalize an old fixed-line product set, and the capabilities that support it.
    We also need to rationalize business processes, inefficiencies and legacy
    environments that are costly, high-maintenance and no longer serve the
    business.”

                                                     ensuring IT powers business success I 3

CASE STUDY I TELKOM SA

 Telkom required TOGAF-aligned, reusable, architecture artifacts for 12 major projects,
 integrated with maximum automation. The program is set to run for three years, and
 Telkom is jointly developing the business case for Phase II implementation.

  “The expected outcome is to have a complete set of architecture artifacts,
  building a completely new IT landscape to position Telkom South Africa
  for the future,” says Erasmus.

 For Telkom, there was no question of interrupting services. The company’s technol-
 ogy had powered the international television broadcast of the 2010 football World Cup
 finals, without a second’s ICT downtime, and it wanted to keep its exemplary record.
 Erasmus adds: “It’s easy to plan, but execution is critical, and business had to be
 maintained while we carried out the program”.

 Bringing in outside partners with
 planningIT
 Telkom’s Enterprise Architecture team searched for outside partners to help it trans-
 form itself effectively. It was looking for an independent Systems Integrator (ISI) who
 could give an unbiased view of the best software, technology and applications.

  “We were looking for the global experience to take us on a journey and
  achieve our goals in the shortest possible time,” Erasmus says. “In our RFP
  process, we explicitly stipulated that we wanted partners that would work
  with us as one team, and that they would use planningIT as the core of this
  transformation journey. We needed to establish a knowledge base – one
  ‘truth’ that everyone could use. Every stakeholder, every team, had to be
  familiar with the vision and the objectives at all times.”

4 I ensuring IT powers business success

CASE STUDY I TELKOM SA

The Business Value Release Plan demanded that 12 major projects be simplified.
Telkom’s breakthrough was to integrate planningIT into its architecture process. This
gave complete visibility of what everyone was doing, allowing individuals and teams
to innovate and be creative, while allowing the Enterprise Architecture team to keep
control centrally.

Telkom branded planningIT as ‘Karabo’, a name meaning ‘the answer’ in Setswana.
This was the name given by the Enterprise Architecture team in an exercise designed
to give them ownership of the tool.

                           Creating the foundation of
                                      business value
With a complete view of the IT landscape, the partners developed a road map for up-
dating the legacy systems, and integrating them into the structures defined by the ISI
for the Business Value Release Plan. Over a 12-week period, enabled by planningIT,
the internal and external teams worked closely together to build a three to four year
plan.

Thanks to this vital teamwork, Telkom understands how to build its network infra-
structure, and rationalize its IT landscape and support systems, while being totally
confident of maintaining business as usual. “If you build on a solid foundation, you
can’t go wrong,” Erasmus says.

  Telkom SA
  >>	Founded 1991
  >> A semi-privatized, 39% state-owned company
  >>	Operates in 38 African countries
  >>	1.2 million mobile subscribers
  >>	4.1 million landline subscribers

                                                     ensuring IT powers business success I 5

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