Sicap Schweiz AG, the global mobile device management vendor has furthered its expansion into Africa by partnering with Vodacom Lesotho, the mobile service provider in this Southern African country. Vodacom Lesotho has adopted Sicap’s cloud-based Device Management Centre (DMC) and combined it with the context-aware customer insight and engagement automation solution TargetMe, thus replacing its legacy device management system.

Legacy device management systems have the issue that valuable data and real-time events collected during the device detection process cannot be used by the operator and Vodacom Lesotho felt it was time to upgrade its services with the help of Swiss firm, Sicap.

Sicap’s combined DMC and TargetMe solution represent the next generation of device management and utilises the device detection and characteristics data by providing operators detailed, real-time analytics and segmentation of its customer base.

For the African mobile provider, this now means that this improved customer engagement functionality will enable the delivery of personalised customer engagement messages targeted per customer segment basis. This delivery of messages is triggered automatically when a subscriber belonging to any target segment is detected. The TargetMe solution can automatically trigger system notifications to activate new services, price plans or pre-paid top-ups based on event triggers.

Vodacom Lesotho can now fully automate the configuration of its 1,3 million customers’ handset settings, which saves costs by reducing problem calls to its care centres. The new customer insight and engagement automation enables the company to grow sales with the adoption of new services through timely and relevant promotion messages via the automated activation of services.

Tsepo Thabisi, executive head of Consumer Business and Customer Value Management at Vodacom Lesotho’s agrees that automated device configuration is a fundamental network function for African mobile operators to help the many subscribers using low-quality handsets to get connected to a network. “We can configure handsets for our network, and increase customer lifetime value by automating the promotion and activation of new value-added services and pre-paid top-ups by using Sicap’s device management and customer engagement automation solution,” he adds.

“This is a key milestone for us,“ says Markus Doetch, chief executive officer at Sicap, “The Vodacom Group is the leading mobile service provider group in the Sub-Saharan African region and Vodacom Lesotho, as the largest operator in Lesotho is a key milestone for Sicap’s TargetMe solution.” “Sicap is proud to provide the power of automated and context-aware customer engagement to Vodacom Lesotho’s clients,” he concludes.

At present more than 70 mobile service providers in 40 countries use Sicap’s Device Management Centre and over 10 service providers use TargetMe, the customer insight and engagement automation solution, which would make it  the world’s most deployed next-generation device management solution.

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