The rise of digitisation is affecting business as we know it today and, as such, T-Systems has developed a new approach called Un-Outsourcer to better meet its customer’s needs.
“Disruption is not only impacting one or two industries, but all industries and businesses that used to have a 10-year lifespan now have only got a 3-year lifespan,” Bronwyn Williams, Flux Trends Trend Analyst told attendees of T-Systems South Africa’s INTOUCH TECHNOLOGY 2017.
INTOUCH TECHNOLOGY 2017 is T-Systems South Africa’s flagship industries and solutions showcase event, allowing attendees to experience how T-Systems connects, integrates and orchestrates central players in the larger digital Ecosystem in a complex environment.
“This is being driven by digitisation as one of the biggest trends impacting businesses today, as trends such as individualisation and the rise of on-demand services becoming increasingly important,” Williams added.
Over the past few years, as digitisation became more prominent, T-Systems recognised the need to transform in order to remain relevant to its customers, said Gert Schoonbee, T-System South Africa MD.
“T-Systems has traditionally been an outsourcing company, and we wanted to share the trend of digitisation with our customers – but outsourcing is a system that assumes the customer knows exactly what they want and need and we simply need to supply the necessary services,” Schoonbee told attendees.
“As part of our own digital transformation, we recognised that we needed to change to remain relevant to our customers, and that’s when we launched the un-outsourcing concept, allowing the customer to walk away if they don’t find value in our services.”
Un-Outsourcer is a T-Systems approach to enabling digitisation that, at its core, represents a new philosophy that challenges the industry by transferring risk from the customer through a change in the way technology systems are delivered.
“The result is that our relationship with our customers is less secure, but it has made it more important for us to work to retain our customers as we to help them move into the digital economy,” Schoonbee said.
“From a T-Systems perspective, we realised that we couldn’t continue to treat our customers in a homogenous way, and we now have a different kind of conversation with our customers that focuses more on their industries so we could understand them better.”
Schoonbee explained that T-Systems developed a three horizon focus that focused on the company needed to focus on in the short term in order to stay relevant while considering its future in digitisation and the ways in which the two could be bridged.
“This helped us to focus our internal transformation and guide our relationships with our customers, as we also considered our nation-building intent and the ways in which we integrate these priorities into the 4th industrial revolution.”
T-Systems realised that customers don’t simply want to observe trends anymore. As they have begun to understand the drive of digital transformation, they now want to participate in it.
“Yet it’s not just about having the answers, you need the right partner in making these answers a reality. Digitisation is not a simple journey, so we realised we need to stand alongside our customers to ‘Simply Make It Happen’ and assist our customers in creating this new future,” Schoonbee concluded.
“We are very excited about this journey we are embarking on, and I feel very proud to be associated with this organisation, its people, our customers, and the partners we have, and I am excited about the value we can add moving forward.”
For more information, visit the T-Systems website.
