Aspasia Karras speaks to Vodacom general manager Joan
Joan Joffe, general manager of Vodacom’s marketing and sales department, is no newcomer to media attention.
Since she first stepped into the business world, she has been a well-documented phenomenon in the computer industry — an industry she describes, in apocalyptic terms, as an opportunity that appeared like a ball of fire in front of her.
But reaching success has entailed a tough balancing act between family and career. Joffe has juggled them well: her computer company, established after an already illustrious career with industry giants, IBM and Hewlett Packard, had a turnover of more than R100- million when she left.
So how did Joffe come to Vodacom? “I have always being quite successful at spotting opportunity, and, after I sold my company, I was being offered a lot of them, but somehow Vodacom and the cellular industry struck me as a blinding opportunity. I decided to ride the stallion, and it has been a very wild, exciting and dangerous one,” she says.
“Cellular phones have dramatically changed the way we do business. If you are a communication buff, like me, you want to be in touch, constantly, but people forget that you can switch it off if you want to.
“From a business point of view, it has changed the way we operate; for example, receiving your faxes over the phone has interesting consequences in terms of the amount of time you spend in the office, productivity, and time constraints.
“Certainly the international trend is to move away from the traditional office space, and so away from the traditional corporate set-up. Long-term prospects in one company with life-long tenures are not as ensured as they used to be, and facilities like video- conferencing can almost do away with the need to commute and conduct business in a certain manner. Essentially, you save time and money.”
There is some concern that while the cellular industry might be bringing South Africa into the future it is only one privileged part of South Africa that is benefiting. Joffe points out that Vodacom has a highly developed community programme.
“Vodacom is very much aware of its responsibilities to the communities. It has being a focus of our business. It is, in fact, a condition of our licence.
“We have a competent team that runs our community services, both through the creation of entrepreneurial businesses in most underprivileged areas, but also providing training in skills for capacity building.”
Vodacom has also just decided to pursue a joint economic development programme with international technology training institute Ort-Step, which targets disadvantaged and distant communities.
Vodacom has also followed a development path in terms of its management style. Joffe stresses that it is its unstructured, unbureaucratic, focused structure that has appealed most to her, both because she has the latitude to feel that she is still running her own business, and because the company specifically decided to follow an entrepreneurial model in order to avoid the management traps that most parastatals fall into.
Vodacom’s association with Telkom may have initially appeared negative, but Joffe maintains it is one of the most positive aspects of Vodacom’s service owing to Telkom’s technological capacities and technical
‘The other network jumped on this point, but we proved them wrong. Not only have we got the most user- friendly customer-care model, but we also have a chief executive who is a world leader in GSM technology.”
Vodacom also has Joan Joffe, whose marketing expertise has succeeded in building up a base of more than 250 000 subscribers since April 1994, which is where Vodacom expected to be only after 10 years.
Joffe attributes this success to several factors, one being the advertising campaign which started before the industry was ready to enter the market.
“We launched a completely new industry so we started early, creating brand awareness and using an educational approach. Our advertising campaigns have concentrated on the hearts-and-minds approach, being warm and consumer-friendly, sponsoring the World Cup, and introducing slogans like ‘Yebo Gogo’ which have become so popular with the public.”
Vodacom has also exceeded its financial targets as a result of its choice in distribution channels, choosing the retail route relatively early on.
Retail is still a major player in distribution, says Joffe. “We have a field marketing division that supports over 1 000 dealers, providing them, on a monthly basis, with everything from coverage maps to
But cellular business is not only about telephony, stresses Joffe. It is also about the value-added services the network provides, such as fax and data facilities, voice mail, information services, pre-paid cards and even the Vodacom-702 Cell Watch, that reports on car hijacking.
Joffe believes differentiating yourself and your product in the field is the only way to go, and her approach has certainly produced results.
Vodacom managing director Alan Knott-Craig describes her as “untiring and committed”. He says: “Joan’s excellent reputation and extensive network of influential persons makes her absolutely invaluable to
Joan sees herself as the Bill Gates of mobile telephony. “He wanted a PC on every desk, I want a cellular in every hand.”
She says cellular telephony has only just begun to address the business market. The corporate market will come into its own, as will the family and security