South African communications service provider Telkom created its wholesale and networks division, Openserve, in 2015. In this interview, Portia Maluleke, CIO of Openserve, discusses Telkom’s digital transformation strategy, remarking that culture remains the greatest challenge they are facing.How would you describe your organization’s enterprise-wide digital transformation strategy?
Telkom’s digital transformation aims to apply digital technology to bring efficiencies to better serve the current customer base and also extend offering and market share. The digital transformation strategy centers around four pillars:
- Customer – superior customer services with focus on self-service
- Product – faster product launches/modifications enabled by agile application architecture
- Channel – digital channels; B2B2X model
- Process – operational efficiency
What targets does your organization have to guide this strategy?
The key milestones guiding the strategy are:
- Replacement of legacy OSS/BSS stack
- Back office automation through robotic process automation (RPA)
- Digitization of channels through TM Forum Open APIs
How does TM Forum help you to achieve your digital transformation objectives?
The
Open Digital Architecture underpins our digital approach, enabling us to leverage the rich knowledge base that TM Forum provides.
What’s the biggest ‘win’ you’ve achieved so far?TM Forum’s Open APIs have been implemented for provisioning and assurance of our key products; RPA technology has been piloted in the supplier management space; and the field services environment has been digitized, leading to increased efficiencies and improved customer service.
What are the biggest challenges you face in achieving your digital transformation aims?
The focus on digital transformation remains on the actual technology and as a result, opportunities are missed to start realising value through other means of innovation. In addition, it has been challenging to simplify and standardize processes to leading practice as the organization had a history of over-customization. In addition to culture, there is a challenge with skills and mindset. A digitalized organization has the customer at the center, and this requires a completely different mindset from a predominantly engineering-driven mindset.
Digital transformation is not just about changing processes and technology; it also involves a shift in organizational culture. How is your teamwork changing and what’s your role as a team leader? This is still a process. Culture remains the greatest challenge we are facing.
A diverse workforce is defined as one that is made up of individuals with a wide range of characteristics and experiences, such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, ability and sexual orientation. What initiatives does your company have to become a more diverse and inclusive workforce? South Africa is rich in diversity and this is reflected by the vibrant mix of culture, generations and other groups that form our workforce. The diversity brings different perspectives to how we work leading to solutions and products that appeal to a broader market. There is a drive at government level to promote inclusivity in the workplace. So, we firstly consider diversity on macro level as part of the national transformation programme.
In addition, there are development programmes for female employees only. These are the Female Leadership Deployment Programme (FLPD) and the Emerald programmes. I have a diverse team and we have team events that are used as a platform to understand and embrace diversity. One of the public holidays in South Africa is Heritage Day. This day has a specific focus on diversity, and we use it to focus on gender, culture and religious diversity.
What are the 3 biggest changes in digital technology that the next decade will bring? How we live, work and travel. Firstly, AI is finally coming into its own with the increased use of virtual assistants such as Siri and Alexa. The embedded machine learning capability will see these taking complete control, of our lives – booking doctor’s appointment for us proactively etc.
Secondly, RPA challenges how humans structure jobs. As robots take over more routine and mundane tasks, we need to question our value proposition as human workers.
Lastly, virtual and augmented reality might negatively affect the tourism industry as one can now have the same experience from their living room; I see significant disruption of the travel industry by this technology. The 4th Industrial Revolution brings about interesting value propositions and I am quite excited to see how our organizations will change to adapt to this ‘new way of working’.
What are you most looking forward to?I am excited about the workplace of the future and the efficiencies and flexibility that technology is already bringing. The nature of work is changing as machines start taking on mundane tasks. This challenges humans to take on higher-order work which cannot be replicated. I think this will really push us to draw from deeper places as opposed to just executing on pre-defined procedures.
What are you most concerned about?Singularity! I am concerned about the new threats that these technology advancements bring and the impact on privacy. We are only scratching the surface in terms of mastering technologies such as AI and robotics. The full extent of how these technologies need to be governed or secured is still quite immature. The sustainability and environmental impact are yet to be understood. Looking at 5G, for example, there are health concerns which are yet to be disproved; I am personally concerned about radiation. I am concerned about how digitalization will affect jobs. South Africa has very high unemployment and I am concerned that the technology advancements will only worsen the situation.
To meet more digital leaders and read about their transformation journeys, go to https://www.tmforum.org/face-digital-leadership 
