The business community is feeling optimistic about prospects in Africa. In 2013, it was the continent which experienced the largest economic growth and by 2014it contained six of the world’s top 12-fastest growing economies. This rapid economic development, combined with a growing, more affluent and aspirational middle class, is attracting many of the world’s largest multinationals which are fast realising the revenue-boosting opportunities the continent has to offer.
But business moves fast. Global organisations setting up operations in any emerging market need to quickly establish the technical infrastructure and operating models required to harness the market’s potential. While infrastructure investment is rising more rapidly in Africa than anywhere else, the sheer scale of the continent – which is bigger than the USA, China, India, Europe and Japan combined, poses its own distinct set of issues. Spanning more than 50 countries, each with its own regulatory environments, historical backgrounds, legacy languages and political and cultural differences, Africa can be a complex continent to do business in. For DHL Supply Chain, the biggest supply chain and logistics provider in the world, this complexity presented unique challenges. Establishing a consistent communications network and IT infrastructure in each country was an intimidating objective. With different data centres, suppliers, contracts and billing in each country, even the simplest task, such as tracking anything from a parcel journey across Africa to a Line haul vehicle road trip, became difficult to manage. This not only slowed down business, but generated higher set-up costs for customers. One of its key imperatives was to connect its data centres through a single communications network, and so DHL Supply Chain went out to tender to 16 possible partners. Only one rose to the challenge. Establishing consistency “We were told by several of the partners that what we wanted to achieve just wouldn’t be possible in Africa for three or four more years, but Vodafone had the vision and the willingness to invest,” says Ewan Shannon, IT Lead for Infrastructure and Service Management for DHL in Africa. “We now deal with just one supplier under one contract and one master service agreement, without having to worry about the complex country-by-country negotiations needed to find the right communications and IT suppliers. Vodafone fully manages this for us.” Together the companies built a single high performance network, connecting all of DHL Supply Chain’s data centres, from Prague, to Johannesburg and Singapore through one converged, shared Wide Area Network. The data centres are now able to interact directly in a way that is both cost effective and bandwidth efficient.“This was a real breakthrough for our business,” continues Shannon. “We can now offer the same global applications and services in Africa as we can anywhere else in the world. A customer using our retail distribution service, for instance, can now turn on the same systems anywhere on the continent, without needing to think about building a new independent system.
“Customers no longer need to accept the expensive set-up costs caused by developing bespoke systems, nor do they incur the expense of stockpiling goods in countries to cover the gaps in logistics. Instead they get the simple, consistent and unified service they would expect anywhere else in the world as well as the operational agility to quickly capitalise on the opportunities in the African business market.” “We provided DHL with the connectivity to transform its business in Africa,” says Deon Liebenberg, Executive Vice President for Africa at Vodafone Global Enterprise. “Knowing that all day, every day our virtual team of project managers and solution architects are ready to deal with complex regional issues, rein in costs and manage the challenges of local currency billing, local politics and local regulators, freed up DHL to focus on core business competencies. As a result DHL is able to focus on delivering flexible services that fit around the needs of its customers. It keeps employees connected at all times with critical business applications. And it helps its customers expand into Africa and other emerging markets without the headache and cost of negotiating new logistics infrastructure every time.” Ready for anything Together Vodafone and DHL have built an efficient, cost-effective communications backbone for global businesses to depend on. They have brought highly reliable tracking and industry leading logistics to Africa. This is not only benefitting local economies, but helping Africa to realise its global trade ambitions.
