MTN Case Study

The MTN Group Limited (MTN Group) is one of the Africa’s largest providers of telecommunication services, offering cellular network access, business solutions, and other services. At its South African operations, where the company has its roots, the company employs some 5000 people. Launched in 1994, the multinational MTN Group operates in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East. As of March 2010, the company has more than 123 million subscribers across its operations. The MTN Group is listed in South Africa on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange under the Industrial – Telecommunications sector.

The Challenge

As a major player in the South African mobile telecommunications market, MTN processes a significant amount of applications for ‘post-paid’ cellular contracts on a daily basis, through its dealer network. Each application requires the completion of a credit vetting process before the potential client has their contract approved or declined.” With little control over a paper-intensive process, driven by ‘piles and piles of papers, often with duplicate or missing information’, turnaround times were slow, the cost of the process was high, requiring substantial human resources and the effect on customer service substantial”, says Jayesh Hargovan, Microsoft domain expert at the MTN Innovation Centre in Johannesburg. “As a consequence, we identified ample opportunities for improvement. Problems we wanted to solve included eliminating reams of wasted paper, improving information access and control, and processing applications faster to achieve greater customer and dealer satisfaction,” said Hargovan. “We wanted to automate what was a rather tedious and time consuming process.”

The Solution

Hargovan explains that a workflow solution presented obvious benefits. “While the solution seems easy on the face of it, it becomes complex when considering the supporting work that has to be done around credit vetting. The answer lay in a flexible workflow and content management solution from Global 360, which includes imaging software, automated routing and automated capture of work. From an exchange of paper, often by fax, we have moved to a system that provides the ability to digitally manage nearly all aspects of application processing using imaging and centralised information storing. Faxing has been replaced with electronic fax imaging, with all relevant information imported digitally into the Quality Assurance vetting department. This ensures that all information is correct before applications are approved. If any information is missing, dealers are notified immediately by SMS; similarly, they receive a message confirming acceptance of valid applications.” Hargovan explains how all parties in the value chain benefit. “MTN gets more customers on board faster, quicker approvals for dealers means money in their pockets sooner, and the end customer gets their contract activated quicker.”

Impact On Managers

While it wasn’t an initial benefit anticipated from the deployment of a digitized process solution, MTN management is now in a position to assess and track the performance of workers conducting the credit vetting process. “The availability of simple information such as the number of applications processed, the accuracy with which they are processed and the completeness of information submitted from dealers is of considerable value,” says Hargovan. “Using this information, we have also been able to identify and solve problems that arise at the dealer, enabling them to be more effective in writing new business, and enhancing our relationship with them. We can identify reasons for rejections and advise the dealers, which allows them to avoid such issues before submitting contracts for approval. Furthermore, the solution has allowed us to reduce risk by identifying and closing loopholes in the process, which may have previously allowed approval of non-qualifying applications. This kind of management information was just not readily available prior to implementing the Global 360 solution.”

Impact On Participants

One of the major challenges in changing a business process is the inevitable resistance from users. Hargovan confirms that this phenomenon was apparent. “Users tend to be reluctant to change and get into a new process. However, once users of the system could see the benefit of enabling them to do their jobs more efficiently with less shuffling through paperwork and endlessly searching for missing faxes and other documents, adoption was quite straightforward.”

Impact On IT

From somewhat small beginnings over four years ago, the use of the workflow solution has grown substantially based on the value it delivers to MTN, says Hargovan. “Not only is the implementation of the solution fairly straightforward, but the clear benefit has led to its expansion across the business to the extent that some 100 queues for different service lines are now powered by the Global 360 system. Put simply, its use within MTN has exploded. We now have over 1000 users, with some 400 concurrent on any given day.”

Impact On The Business

“We had sheaves of paper, made up sometimes of faxes of 15 pages or more, piling up all over the place. Managing the applications process was becoming a very tricky thing,” says Hargovan. “This necessitated the introduction of a better system to ensure that once submitted, documents wouldn’t be misplaced or lost.” “More than that”, Hargovan says “a digitised system accelerates approvals (or declinations) and allows management to track performance of individual workers. Customers can be acquired faster and start using their phones, which translates into income. And it is possible to see how much value each worker is adding within the value chain based on their processing of applications.”