MTN’s South African arc-rival, Vodacom launches into the Nigerian market via its Vodacom Business. This may be the only way to go to keep its eyes on the “ball” pending when a bigger opportunity knocks writes O’Lekan Babatunde
Gateway Business recently unveiled its new brand to key Customers, Staff, Regulators and other strategic partners in Nigeria. Going forward the business will operate under the Vodacom Business brand, completing the integration into its shareholders, the Vodacom Group, and aligning its brand promise to the Vodacom slogan ‘Power to You’. The result will ensure a greater emphasis on customer experience and a committed focus towards improving Enterprise ICT service delivery across the African continent.
Speaking about the re-brand, Louisa van Beek, Vodacom Business Africa Chief Executive Officer said: “This is an enormously exciting development for our business, our staff and most importantly, our valued customers. Today we start a new chapter grounded in our commitment of placing our customers at the centre of everything we do.”
Historically, the needs of African businesses have been met with a one-size-fits-all approach. Van Beek Explains, “Businesses in Africa often face unique challenges, which organizations elsewhere in the world wouldn’t ordinarily have to contend with. We recognise this and intend leveraging our new brand and our intense focus on our customers to ensure that we deliver relevant and flexible solutions that will enable our customers to drive operational efficiency, cost reduction, improve their service delivery and expand into new territories.”
Vodacom Business provides customers with a wide portfolio of Enterprise ICT solutions ranging from pure Access Solutions to fully outsourced Managed Network Services and Managed Hosted Services. As more Enterprise move towards cloud based services, Vodacom Business will launch innovative and competitive products that will transform the African landscape.
“Turning dreams of fully converged networks into reality is our business. Our customers need to be able to connect from anywhere, to any device, at any time, over any medium and we’re committed to making this happen.” she adds.
With an established position as the leading provider of business communications services to regional and multinational corporations operating in Africa, the rebrand is expected to accelerate Vodacom Business’ operations with customers in the banking and finance, insurance, education and hospitality industries – key markets earmarked for expansion. Its widespread terrestrial Pan-African MPLS Network that spans over 40 African countries and expands across the globe is key to delivering upon this objective.
“We aim to further build and grow our customer base within the world’s top global companies which will all aim to operate throughout the African continent in coming years. This rebrand is one of the first major steps in making sure we achieve this.” said van Beek.
Mr. Guy Clarke, Vodacom Business Nigeria Managing Director, agrees: “The introduction of Vodacom Business to the Nigerian market is far more than just a new name, logo and colour. We have shifted the way we do things in Nigeria, with significant investment in our staff together with facilities upgrades and the deployment of our national terrestrial MPLS network. This network roll-out is further supported by our carrier grade Broadband Wireless Access network allowing Vodacom Business to delivery services end to end.” Business communication has long since moved beyond the capabilities of traditional voice calls, faxes and internet access.
Says Clarke, “Our customers are operating in increasingly competitive and marginal markets and our challenge is to make sure that through our Managed Network and Managed Hosted services, we are able to stay one step ahead in the game. We continue to focus our attention towards providing value added services to our customers, using our existing access platforms to deliver high quality managed network and hosted services.
van Beek agrees, concluding: “As new fibre cables arrive into Nigeria, communication models and Enterprise service availability are changing at a rapid pace. At Vodacom Business, we are taking the lead to provide our customers with a diversified portfolio of services that they can tailor for their respective businesses. It is an exciting prospect to have the privilege of a new brand at our disposal to arm our efforts going forward and we look forward to watching the growth and development of our business into the future.”
It will be recalled that Vodacom has had a rough shod in the Nigerian marketing trying to get a piece of the action in the highly competitive telecoms market. The company had to call it quit after six months of partnership with Econet Wireless which was the in a process of transiting to become Vodacom. Several other attempts at securing a space in the industry also proved abortive. It’s former CEO, Alan Knot-Craig while retiring from the company had exclaimed that one of his regrets was not being able to secure a place in the Nigerian market.
Therefore, its decision to launch Vodacom Business into the Nigerian market is probably the way to go in order to keep its eye on the ball pending when the opportunity to secure a place for its telecoms’ brand and MTN’s South African’s arch-rival opens up. {jcomments on}
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