Frost & Sullivan Applauds T-Systems' Success in the IT Services Industry Through Its Customer-Centric Approach to Product Development and Service Delivery
- Through continued focus on sustainable development across all areas of business and communities it serves, T-Systems can become a significant organisation in South Africa
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Aug. 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the IT services industry, Frost & Sullivan recognizes T-Systems with the 2014 South African Company of the Year Award. T-Systems in South Africa has gained a reputation for providing a superior set of ICT solutions, and is one of the leading outsourcing service providers locally. The company offers end-to-end solutions across ICT operations and systems integration, and is particularly strong in the data centre and enterprise resource planning markets. T-Systems in South Africa has an extensive portfolio of services, which it delivers to organisations across a variety of horizontal and vertical sectors including IT outsourcing and SAP services to South Africa's leading enterprises across all industries and Public Services.
Being part of the German-based Deutsche Telekom Group, T-Systems has access to the parent company's centralized market and competitive intelligence in South Africa. Therefore, it is well-placed to leverage the international best practices in application services, infrastructure services and IT, including cloud computing, managed services and SAP solutions, and adapt them to the local market. This advantage has allowed the company to rack up a number of firsts in practices and solutions. For example, T-Systems is considered the first service provider to offer a cloud-based service for SAP solutions in the local market.
"T-Systems uses innovation as a key differentiator to enable digital transformation. By leveraging novel solutions and internalising innovative thinking in the local context, T-Systems has been able to establish the T-Systems Innovation Factory in collaboration with the Innovation Hub and the Maxum Business Incubator," said Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Lehlohonolo Mokenela.
"With hot-desking solutions, boardrooms and a collaboration space, the Innovation Factory was designed to foster innovation and collaborations among the company, its customers and leading market experts."
Emerging technologies such as cloud computing, big data, collaboration and mobility help customers achieve closer proximity to their customers and workforce, a concept T-Systems calls 'Zero Distance'. Zero Distance is all about providing solutions that address consumer pain points, which will ensure operational efficiency and boost revenues.
T-Systems other notable efforts to innovate to zero distance include the Zero Outage quality initiative, which is aimed at ensuring that employees are prepared to handle occasional power failures and outages. This is supported by a training and certification program to reinforce a Zero Outage mindset, encouraging employees to conceptualise new ways to reduce the time to repair outages and improve processes to prevent recurrences.
Meanwhile, the Zero Outage Supplier Certification programme complements the Zero Outage initiative by confirming quality across the value chain. The Zero Deviation quality initiative ensures that projects run according to the agreed timelines, cost and quality levels contracted with the customers. Lastly, the Intensive Quality Care initiative facilitates the remediation of escalated environments in collaboration with customers to agreed service levels as rapidly as possible.
T-Systems has developed a standardised portfolio of data centre, collaboration and end-user services, and gradually migrates enterprises' processes from legacy systems to dynamic high-performing ICT. As a result, by the time cloud and big data services become more mature and ready for use by enterprises, T-Systems would have set the stage to support the services. One of T-Systems' key strengths is having shared platforms over which services are provided and then having a different journey with each customer based on their specific needs.
Beyond profit-driven objectives and maximizing investor value, T-Systems has demonstrated a willingness to embrace a more powerful ideal of bringing greater value to customers and the country. Aligned with the National Development Plan, T-Systems contributes through skills development, localisation and job creation. This is demonstrated in the company's participation in South Africa's transformation objectives. A long-standing investment in the ICT Academy and the T-Systems Learnership programme is proof of its commitment and passion for skills development within the ICT sector.
"The company has been able to maintain a local relevance in its understanding of the market, by employing a predominantly South African workforce that has better insights into the local market," noted Mr Mokenela. "Despite Deutsche Telekom's majority shareholding in T-Systems in South Africa, an estimated 97 percent of the company's employees are South African."
The company's core values ensure that it adapts to its local environment, in terms of culture and enterprises. This also enables it to provide more tailored, non-generic solutions across industries and enterprises.
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in terms of growth strategy and implementation. The award recognizes a high degree of innovation with products and technologies and the resulting leadership in terms of customer value and market penetration.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.
About T-Systems
Drawing on a global infrastructure of data centres and networks, T-Systems operates information and communication technology (ICT) systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions. T-Systems provides integrated solutions for the networked future of business and society. Some 50,000 employees at T-Systems combine industry expertise and ICT innovations to add significant value to the digitization strategies and core business of customers all over the world. T-Systems generated revenue of around EUR 9,5 billion in the 2013 financial year.
Since the inception of T-Systems in South Africa in 1997, the company has cemented its position as one of the most successful T-Systems companies outside of Europe. A leading ICT outsourcing service provider locally, T-Systems offers end-to-end ICT solutions in both the ICT Operations and Systems Integration markets. Their extensive portfolio of services covers the vertical, horizontal, IT and TC space. T-Systems South Africa's head office is located in Midrand with another major office in Cape Town, and 20 further representative offices in locations throughout southern Africa.
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T-Systems in South Africa press contact
Lebohang Thokoane
Head of Marketing & Communications
@: Lebohang.Thokoane@t-systems.co.za
T: +27(11)266-0266
M: +27(78)803-0634
Frost & Sullivan press contact
Samantha James
Corporate Communications Africa, Frost & Sullivan
@: samantha.james@frost.com
T: +27-21-680-3574
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