Case Study:
Vodacom
Streamlining effective collections
for leading South African
mobile operator
About Vodacom
Vodacom (www.vodacom.com) is a Pan-African cellular
communications company with more than 43.5 million
subscribers across South Africa and provides network
coverage to more than 26.5 million South Africans.
Vodacom has 65 percent of its shares owned by the
global telecommunications company, Vodafone.
“The South African mobile market
is increasingly competitive and
we needed to improve the way we
interacted with subscribers at every
stage of the relationship, even in
delinquency.”
“The Tallyman collections solution
has enabled us to adopt a far more
effective approach to managing
subscribers who are in arrears with
their bills. By treating them in a
more personalised way, we are far
more effective in rehabilitation and
therefore retaining them to continue
their relationship with us. This
reduces our compulsory churn and
bad debts but, equally as important,
it helps our business to grow its
market share and revenues and
provide a better customer experience
through improved service.”
“Experian has supported us at
every stage of our credit roadmap
and the partnership has delivered
results which have exceeded our
expectations.”
- Veran Kathan, Managing Executive
for Credit and Risk, Finance, Vodacom
Challenge
The South African mobile market
is growing fast and becoming
increasingly competitive.
In this dynamic market, Vodacom
committed to developing worldclass credit risk management and
partnered with Experian to create
and implement a credit management
roadmap to maximise revenue and
provide a strong base for future
growth.
Along with integrated Experian
systems to manage subscriber
acquisition and customer
management, Vodacom focused on
collections management to reduce
both its bad debt write-offs and its
compulsory churn rate.
The key to achieving these objectives
was implementation of several
segmentations, each with their own
effective collection strategies for
managing subscribers in arrears and
improving customer service.
Previously, collections was managed
using the collections module of
Vodacom’s billing system but it
was clear that investment in a best
practice specialist collections system
would enable Vodacom to adopt
the most effective techniques for
managing all subscribers who were
in arrears, in query or had ID Theft
issues.
Decision Analytics answer
As part of the implementation of the
credit roadmap, Vodacom selected
Experian’s Tallyman debt collection
system to manage its ‘Out of Order’
subscribers.
In particular, Vodacom was
impressed by the ease with which
Tallyman could be customised and
integrated with existing internal
systems, including Experian’s Probe
SM for customer management
and the Strategy Management
decisioning system to create an
integrated credit risk and relationship
management solution.
Tallyman would enable Vodacom to
be more proactive and effective in
managing subscribers, regardless
of the reason or the business area in
which they require management.
www.experian.co.za/tallyman-easystart
Benefits
• Reduced operational costs by
38 percent with automation of
manual processes
• Reduced write-off by 53
percent by increasing the
number of debts recovered
• Future revenue protected by
improved customer service
and rehabilitating more
subscribers
• Increased productivity by
180 percent with collectors
focused on high value activities
whilst automating a significant
number of collection actions
• Improved roll rates by taking
effective action early in the
collections cycle
• Reduced compulsory churn
which added to the subscriber
base and increased revenue
Resolution
Tallyman manages all subscribers
who are in arrears through early and
late collections, pre-legal and legal
situations.
Integration
Tallyman has been integrated
with Vodacom’s main system for
managing all of the post-paid
accounts.
It uses various subscriber profiles
derived from Experian’s Probe SM
customer management system
and a variety of arrears categories
to segment delinquent customers
using rules developed specifically
by Vodacom. This enables them to
accurately assess the risk factor of
each account and adopt a far more
targeted and personalised approach
to debt collection.
Tallyman receives updates from the
billing system on a near-real-time
(NRT) basis so the collections team
always has an up-to-date view of the
customer and their level of arrears.
Tallyman automates the collections
process by consolidating all creditrelated communications, including
phone calls, emails, texts, letters and
faxes, between the organisation and
its subscribers into a single database.
It automates many of the standard
collections practices, such as the
issue of SMS’s and reminder letters,
freeing up collections staff to focus
on higher-value activities.
Vodacom is fully utilising the
Management Information (MI)
capabilities available. Real-time
information is available in an
on-screen dashboard format
with graphical summaries. This
gives a complete overview of the
current situation of the collections
department allowing drill-down to
investigate areas of concern.
The current performance of the
collections team can also be easily
monitored against a range of Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs)
and used to identify where early
management intervention may
be required.
Integration with the telephone dialler
used by the collections department
enables all the information held about
an account to automatically load onto
the Tallyman screen of the collector
who receives the incoming call.
Information from Tallyman is fed into
Vodacom’s data warehouse, which
holds data from the billing system
and the integrated Experian systems
for subscriber acquisition and
customer management, to ensure
that subscribers in arrears will not be
offered other products or services.
Tallyman is also integrated with a
number of third party trace agencies,
including Experian South Africa.
Future outlook
The credit management roadmap
is a long-term investment and is
part of the journey towards a worldclass credit risk management
infrastructure. This will continue
to support Vodacom as it grows
in South Africa and expands its
services and operations to bring the
benefits of mobile communications
across Africa.
© Experian 04/2012.
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