The woman blazing a trail through corporate South Africa

There is a lot to learn from the woman who is blazing a trail through corporate South Africa. Yolanda Cuba, regional Vice President at MTN, was?once?the youngest CEO of a JSE-listed company. She?is?a force to be reckoned with.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Yolanda at her home. Read on for a written version of the interview. Click the link below to watch the interview.

Later in the interview

"The net result is that I give you what you want before you know that you want it. I am delighting you. I am turning you, just from a normal customer to a fan of what we do."

Tell us about Yolanda

She's a girl from Gugulethu who was born and raised half in Johannesburg and Nigel, half in Cape Town. I was sort of a deputy CEO by the age of 24, 25 and I was a listed company CEO by the age of 29. So obviously that taught me a lot. Early on I've been on boards as a non executive director of many companies on the JSE.

Tell us a little bit about how you've gone about managing customer expectations through periods of disruption.

"I think one can look at disruption through the lens of an external disruption or something that's actually been benign across the board. So I'll give you a classical example. When I got to Ghana, for example, when I was a folder phone, one of the things that we said we want to become as a business there is that we said we wanted to lead Ghana's digital revolution. We wanted to be a technology company leading Ghana's digital revolution. And we said we don't want to leave anyone behind in a digital world. Right? That was our expression. And in doing that, for example, we started actually looking and saying, guys, where are the points of prices for a technology and a communications company, not a telecoms communications company. And we realized that there were actually segments of our own kind of customers that we are actually leaving behind. The first thing we have to do is actually understand the market segment, which obviously we need to go out there and get the right data around that. The second thing we had to do is actually say what are the processes that we need to change internally in order to include everyone and leave no one behind.

So we actually had to go through the process of actually first understanding the customer, then actually changing our processes in order to ensure that we create an environment where the customer actually has a sustainable and seamless kind of experience. And then thirdly actually then customize or personalize the data, the customer information, and the proposition that we're actually given to the customer. And that leads to sort of something that's interesting that's then happened since then is you've seen hyper personalization as a key theme. Now that actually is happening within all industries. And we've moved from sort of what we call a segment of many where you are just an average of many to really a segment of one where we're understanding a customer on an individual basis. So even those customers that now we've actually aggregated, you are able to actually understand them even more in terms of their consumption and how you can improve services as well to those customers. And once we implemented that, one of the interesting things. We're actually implementing it as sort of our inclusion kind of agenda and being deliberate about it. The byproducts or the benefits that actually came is that we used to have some old infrastructure in our fixed network in the country, and we realized that we now could use video as a way of actually letting our engineers not go out as many times to customers that actually had problematic routers and things like that.

Because each time there was a call, there was a problem with customers connectivity, fixed connectivity. We actually had to send out an engineer, and now all of a sudden we actually ask the customers, can we see your router? Can we actually see this? Can you reset this so you troubleshoot from the comfort of your office, rather than actually sending an expensive engineer to just go and most probably reset a router or just actually fix a quick connectivity thing and so on."

How are you using technology platforms in digital to bring this hyper personalization vision to life?

"Yeah. So for example, at MTN, we've actually created our own kind of data enabled division within the business in order to actually go a lot deeper in terms of this. Today we use all our data analytics for things like predictive churn, for example, where we actually are able to actually know what is the likelihood of a customer actually churning, and then we actually can put together specific interventions in that regard. We use it as a way to upsell. So today around personalization, you dial a quick code and you can actually have a personalized offer that is based on your consumption. So a friend of yours that's actually next to you who does everything with you, who doesn't have the same consumption pattern as you, if they actually request from the same code, they will get a different offer based on their own personal usage. Right? So that, for me, is actually an important part of what we do. Ultimately. Where do we need to get to? I know many moons ago I went to Seattle and we have the pleasure of being taken everywhere. And basically I saw that Microsoft actually had made some big strides in this area to say, actually, how do we participate in making sure that we help enterprises actually do better with their data?

The use cases for just general services is so broad, from just automation of services, RPA and so on in actually ensuring that we deliver services. One of the things that is my big bug there, for example, is budgeting and focusing time. I really don't understand. I'm an accountant. I know, but I really do not understand why in the world we actually have to spend a month and a half doing budgets. And the whole organization pretty much comes to a standstill. And then we do forecast every three months and a whole organization comes here, standstill for about two weeks in that period. It doesn't make sense we should be doing this at a kick out of a button and predictive models. They are good enough today to give me with 90% confidence the real kind of outcome that I'm going to get in six months time, in a year's time. So I really think we can free up time from executives and the organization to be more creative by using technology."

What is your vision for your organization in terms of repeatable mundane tasks and how we structure the organization so that people are used for what they do best to bring out their creative potential?

"Yeah. So for me, if we literally could eliminate any kind of time on repetitive kind of tasks or mundane tasks from people, we are actually then maximizing the value from the resource. Remember, at the end of the day when everyone goes to work, including myself, I'm exchanging my resources for financial gain. So those resources like you do with anything else, you're trying to maximize the value that you get as a corporate for actually paying that resource. And if you want the best out of that resource, it's not by actually clicking the same button a hundred times a day. It's by them actually applying their minds and their creativity to whatever the task is."

How are we using data to improve that connection and that relationship with the customer to improve their purchases?

"I think one of the key issues that I mentioned earlier is that ultimately why are we using kind of technology to do the things that we do is to do what we need to do in business is to acquire customers, to engage customers, and ultimately to retain customers. At any point where we can use data to actually improve any of that, then we are able to do that. So if we look at, for example, cohort analysis, what you actually start finding there is if I belong to a specific cohort, and the general behavior of that cohort is why. Right. And then I then start offering products that actually appeal generally to that cohort, then it is not like coaling where you actually have a 5% inductance between two and 5% hit rate versus actually a very targeted predictive and data driven kind of precision modeling process. Now you are able to hit that same customer, but with the probability of them actually taking up the service at an acquisition state by 50, 60 or 70%. Right. Completely changing the economics of even how you acquire now that customer. Secondly, around engagement. Right. If you know what I'm doing every day, if you know where I go every day now, you can actually make me offers that are contextually aware of what I do and where I am.

You can start making the offers. For example, if I love going to, let's say McDonald's, KFC or whatever, every Friday, partner with KFC or McDonald's and say, give me an offer for your lender that would actually make her actually buy more of what she's already buying. So KFC is a winner. And also I'm a winner in the sense that I get to retain a customer. And for me, it's important that I go beyond telecom. Right. In terms of the benefits that I'm giving, because people are saying to me, guys, you're giving me more voicemails, guys, you're giving me more data, but I don't need it right now. Right. Give me something more. And these partnerships start actually then making sense. And we can use that data inside to actually be able to drive that kind of engagement with our customers. When is the customer going to actually have to renew their contract? Right. And what offers then should you give the customer? If we actually use, again, the same data around court analysis, what phones does that Cohort actually use, for example? Right. If I can see that you are calling 90% of the people on Android that you're actually calling, then it makes sense that I make you an offer that is an Android enabled device.

Right. It doesn't make sense for me to do an iOS. It makes sense for me to do an Android. Right. So those kinds of things are really, really important around that. And then on retention again, same principle. If I keep on giving you what you want before you even know that you need it, that is an amazing thing. So there was a tool that we once used in one of the companies that I worked with, and it could actually monitor how long you charge your phone and how many times a day you charge your phone. That is such a useless tax on its own because for many years, no one actually knew what it was for. Right. Until one person actually said, we can use this for actually offering customers the appropriate kind of phone. Right. Because if you're charging your phone, if you meet you and me using a high end phone and you're starting to charge it three times a day, I promise you within a week you're going to actually change that phone. So I know through your charging behavior that you're going to change it. Right. So now I can actually, before you even know it that you need a phone, I can start offering you that phone that you want, combining again the data with the Cohort analysis and everything else that you actually do in order to get that out outcome.

The net result of that is that I give you what you want before you know that you want it. I am delighting you. I am turning you just from a normal customer to a fan of what we do."

Can you talk to us about the difference between seeing technology as the solution versus an enabler?

"Yes. I think you still have to understand your business. That doesn't change. However, what changes is how quickly you can do that whole data collection and automation process in order to enable the decisions that actually allow for that ultimate purchase decision by the customer."

A lot of business leaders today feel that they need to have a big developer squad in order to get work done and in order to run queries on the database, in order to build applications and to be agile. They feel that they need to have a big competence in house to be able to create value for their customers. What are your thoughts on that?

"I think absolutely not. Right. It is actually contextual different businesses need different things. But I can tell you now, 90% of the businesses don't need that in house, don't need that capability in house because they are not building platforms. So they need other people that are working on solutions that are better in their own, solutions that have squads that have everything to actually deliver the solution to them. When I run a query on anything that I do, the first thing that I'm thinking about is not who's doing it. I'm thinking about whether it can do it. Right. And since most probably the late 2000s, we actually started seeing a lot of platforms come online where you can actually run queries and get people to actually do stuff for you. I mean, APIs make things easy for us to actually be able to plug and play with different systems. And at the same time there are people like Microsoft and others that allow you to actually use segments of what you need because you don't actually have to. Now take an entire stack. Right. You actually pick and choose what you need from a capability perspective and pay for it on a need to basis.

And I think that's important is that we are not buying infrastructure and resources we don't need. We actually now are able to get licensed for only the capability that we need. What we need to do more of as I said earlier, as businesses is actually understanding our businesses a lot better and actually understanding what processes can we eliminate? What processes do we need to introduce in order to better serve our end customers?"

Managing suppliers has become difficult. Covid has taught us many lessons. We've had to be a lot more precision than we could be in the past. What are your thoughts on that?

"Absolutely. Remember, every piece of stuff that you have or inventory that you have that you don't need is money, right? And the one thing that we learned under financial crisis covert is that cash is King. So having your money trapped in inventory does not make sense. So now how do we use technology in order to do that? And the first part, for example, in supply chain management is really around actually understanding what is your sellout rate and therefore what level of inventory should you be holding? And then if you have ethical suppliers, you then start actually aggregating data and anonymising data and sharing it with your suppliers. In order for the two of you to be able to actually determine what are the lead times and the appropriate kind of stock levels that you should have and we see more and more of that actually starting to happen where we're seeing that suppliers now are not treated only as just someone I buy things from but as strategic partners and that is a big and fundamental change that we've seen Cobbt for example it actually impacted the transportation of goods and services and ships were not in the sea and this was happening and so on if you didn't have that good relationship with your key supplier now all of a sudden you are running out of stock right?

By the way, all companies that actually grew during the culvert kind of period if I call it that actually saw out of stocks actually happen but each out of stock is a lost sale It's money that someone was willing to use to purchase your product actually they're saying I can't purchase your product but I'm going to purchase Mr. B's product because that one is available right it's a customer that you might lose as a result now of actually opening them up to an alternative product that they might actually enjoy more than yours you don't know right or that might be cheaper more than yours and actually does exactly the same thing So from that perspective I think the integrated supply chain and actually introducing precision in that supply chain not only works for the supplier it actually first and foremost actually works for you it releases that inventory holding that you have which means increase in cash it does ensure that you are actually driving what moves the idea of the old times when my family used to have shops and it was my aunt that used to say we want to buy ten times ten kg of millimeters, ten times of this, 15 times of this and you're like but where does that come from right but it was her intuition and her experience that actually was determining the prosperity and the welfare of the source and now you can use data to actually do that you don't actually have to guess it, you don't have to do anything and nowadays what we do is actually we also send the orders directly through an integrated process with the suppliers without any human intervention again in that process So I think from a process perspective, from an operational perspective definitely supply chain is a big part of what we need to get right and people to start thinking differently around the specific area in closing."

What advice do you have for business leaders as they chart their progress forward in order to make that change in how you engage with your customer.

"In how you free up resources both your own cash and the capability of your own staff to actually be more creative, be more innovative then it means that actually just investing a little bit in order to actually get that then to general business in terms of disruption and so on. Disruption will always happen. This time it came in the form of covert, the next time it might come in the form of a financial crisis, the other time it might come in terms of a natural disaster. It doesn't matter. It always comes. That's the certainty that we have. So when disruption comes, you actually have one of two choices. It's to sit and watch it happen or you can be a participant and actually shape how it actually plays out in your environment. And if you choose to actually do the letter, which is to shape right, it means you have to take Proactive steps to understand your business more deeply, ensure that you have the right insights and then use those insights as foresight for your business because the guys that are able to do that, that use this information, these kinds of crises as foresight are the ones that are going to be ultimately be winners in the long term.

And lastly, for me, as I say, all businesses that are driven by purpose in the long term always win. So be clear on why you exist for the customer, for society and for the environment and drive that really hard every day because it is through that that focus on three or four key issues that you will not be able to use technology, not as a side thing that happens, but as an industry for your business."