Ethio Telecom has launched a development strategy to accelerate Ethiopia’s digital transformation by providing reliable communication and digital financial services.
The three-year LEAD Growth Strategy, which started on July 01, 2022, is expected to run through July 2025, with a vision of providing services beyond connectivity, enabling inclusive growth by providing digital and financial services and simplifying organisations’ daily activities and individuals.
In the first two months of implementing its newly devised LEAD strategy in July 2022, Ethio Telecom achieved 98% of its target, including satisfying its customers and increasing their loyalty by releasing different products and services.
According to the company’s press release, the aim of the strategy is “To realise the defined strategic thematic areas: Supreme Customer Experience, Sustainable Business Growth, Excellence in Technology & Solutions, Operational Excellence, Leading Brand and People-centric High performing company by properly managing its human resources, knowledge and resources and strives to be a leading company preferred by its customers, partners and stakeholders.”
The company identified potential challenges during the strategy period: “service outages related to security, lack of supply of foreign currency, market competition, market instability and inflation, global supply challenges, infrastructure damage, telecom fraud and cyber-attacks, regulatory issues, etc.”
The company’s CEO has, however, affirmed that various solutions and programs are being designed and implemented with a separate work unit assigned to solve the threats and challenges identified by the strategy.
Speaking at the event, the CEO of Ethio Telecom, Frehiwot Tamiru, explained that the strategy was designed to shift revenue from traditional revenue streams to value-added and content-driven services. The services will ease customers’ experience and speed up digital transformation. The services will boost agriculture, education, cloud-based customer service solution, base kit website builder and e-sim card.
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Ethio Telecom LEAD Growth Strategy
This strategy is a rolling strategy with deliberate and emergent strategy development approaches to accommodate a changing reality, considering the nature of the business and the ongoing market conditions. To ensure competitiveness and sustainable growth of the company, this strategy has been developed by considering and reviewing relevant government policies, international best practices, and Industry trends. Various critical analyses have also been made, such as internal and external stakeholders’ interests and expectations (Customers, Employees, Vendors/suppliers and various government organs), past company performances, internal strengths, organisational resources and capacities, and weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the outer environment and the market dynamics. After these multi-faceted observations and environmental conditions analysis, 20 strategic issues were identified, and six strategic thematic areas were formulated.
In this strategy, the company’s vision, mission and values, which have been in use for the past 10 years, are changed in a way that allows it to have a winning and leading position in the competitive market considering its current institutional capacity, the market and industry conditions, and are presented as follows:
The strategy is designed to satisfy the ever-changing customer demand and digital inclusion to create a better digital economy and financial inclusion, enhance productivity, and shift the revenue from traditional revenue streams to value-added and content-driven services by introducing new business streams and solutions.
In the competitive market, we shall work towards satisfying our customers, who are the basis of our company’s existence, by providing various service options that will increase their loyalty, improving the accessibility of our service, facilitating digital channels, improving post-sales services to enable them to have a better experience, and implement network expansion programs that increase the quality of service and network density.
To boost customer satisfaction and ensure customer loyalty, we are working on creating an effortless customer journey by simplifying offers, availing multiple products and services, empowering our customers, and enhancing after-sales services and loyalty programs. In addition, we are working on improving the accessibility of our service, facilitating digital channels, engaging more partners, offering subsidised and instalment-based handsets and availing credit services etc.
The strategy will also continue to focus on the most critical company asset – employees, to equip them with relevant knowledge and develop a high-performance culture with skills that will enable them to grasp and catch up with the telecom industry dynamism, to exploit opportunities arising from the development of the industry and cope with the challenges.
In this fiscal year, the company plans to increase our subscriber base by 10.3% to reach 73.5 million and increase our mobile voice customers by 10.5% to reach 71 million and increase the number of fixed broadband customers by 37.4% to reach 696.7 K and increase tele density by 68%.
Ethio telecom aims to generate 75.05 billion birr, a 22.4% increment, by engaging in new business streams and shifting revenue sources from traditional to value-added services, offering local and international products & services to the market, increasing telebirr’s access, service types and partners, improving service delivery and by increasing customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty.
Ethio telecom is expected to face market competition from Safaricom, a Kenyan-led telecom company launching its services in Ethiopia
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The Company’s Digital Transformation Footprint
Ethio Telecom has conducted vast reform activities in the last four years with remarkable achievements. As part of the reform initiative, the company took the initiative to develop and execute a three-year BRIDGE strategy from July 2019 to June 2022.
Among the initiatives following the institutional reform, BRIDGE’s strategy was designed to meet the market dynamism, reshaping and leading the company with a competitive mindset with the ultimate aim of making the company a Preferred Operator.
Through the reform and during the entire strategy period of BRIDGE, the company achieved 75.6% growth in customer base, 76% growth in revenue, 104% growth in foreign exchange, 142% growth in net profit, and 125% growth in the number of smartphones.
The company offers discounted products & services with up to 86% tariff reduction and is offering 306 local and international products and services: 140 new and 166 revamped ones.