The proceeds garnered from the recent privatization of Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited (BTCL) will fund the company’s overall acceleration change programme which includes a new billing system and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) estimated at $65 million (P650 million).
Over a fortnight ago, former Botswana Telecommunication Corporation Limited (BTCL) Managing Director Paul Taylor said the capital will be spent over the next two to three years for the replacement of the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure which includes sales force automation, business intelligence and the administrative IT system.
“Within the next six months there will be just one single brand and no longer the green and blue colours as it is currently,” he revealed.
Taylor said that the company raised P250 million from the listing, part of which will be used to fund projects. He stated that the IPO was in two parts: offer for sale by government selling its piece and offer for subscription.
He spoke of the new BTCL billing system called Converse which will be done by a company called Amdocs adding that they have selected a system to manage the field workforce. He stated that BTCL has specified but not yet tendered for customer relationship management which he said is a central depository for customer’s interactions. He revealed that the company has also specified a new enterprise resource planning which will do things like stock, financials and human resource. He remained tight lipped why he is leaving BTCL while the project is ongoing after kick-starting it.
“BTCL also handed over to BoFiNet the East Africa Sea System (EASSy) and West Africa Cable System (WACS) rights and obligations plus backhaul links connecting systems through Telkom Namibia and Telkom South Africa,” said Taylor. Among other assets, Taylor said BTCL also handed over all supporting supplier agreements that enable end-to-end connectivity of the international links, such as the Global Switch co-location agreement, Master Services Agreement and Djibouti Telecom Master Services Agreement.
He stated the corporation has spent a considerable amount of money improving 2G and 3G mobile services adding that BTCL is now aggressively rolling 4G high speed data service.
Taylor left the employ of the company on July 19th 2016. The BTCL Board of Directors said his contributions include revenue growth of nearly 50 percent, integration of three separate businesses beMOBILE , BTCL Home and Office and Botsnet into one converged organisation as well as leading and guiding the listing of BTCL on the Botswana Stock Exchange(BSE) in April 2016.
