Breaking News: Bharti Airtel names Ogunsanya CEO, Nigeria, Ghana

Breaking News@ITRealms:

The management of Bharti Airtel in Africa has named Mr. Segun Ogunsanya, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Airtel operations in Nigeria and Ghana, reports ITRealms.

Airtel also said that with this change, effective April 1, 2016, the Managing Director of Airtel Ghana, Lucy Quist, will now report to Mr. Ogunsanya.

ITRealms gathered that Bharti Airtel recently announced the top level changes for its Africa operations, noting that the new structure would further enhance the level of empowerment and enable faster decision making as well as speed to market.

Also, the latest structure saw to the elevation of Mr. Christian de Faria, who was formerly the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer for Airtel Africa, to the position of Executive Chairman, Airtel Africa.

Christian de Faria, would in this new role continue to support the vision of Airtel Africa and lead all matters relating to legal, regulatory affairs, shareholders as well as Mergers and Acquisitions.

In a related development, Raghunath Mandava, who was the Director – Customer Experience India & South Asia, has now been elevated to Chief Operating Officer, Airtel Africa.

He is expected to relocate to Nairobi and take full responsible for the commercial operations.

Chairman, Bharti Airtel, Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal, said “Christian has done an excellent job by streamlining the operations, strengthening the leadership teams across Africa while enhancing the image of Airtel brand across Africa.”

Mr. Bharti said, he believes they have a strong platform to accelerate our journey towards profitability and market leadership and the new cluster based organisation design will provide an enabling environment to the teams.

“The appointment of Raghu will help leverage the platform and sharpen our market focus and strengthen the innovation pipeline. We remain fully committed to Africa and will continue to invest in the growth of our operations. I wish Christian, Raghu and the operating teams the very best for their new roles,” he said.

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Pix: Segun Ogunsanya, Airtel CEO for Nigeria, Ghana

Rajapakse inaugurates CHOGM’13, tweets on Airtel

ITRealms:

The Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Tuesday, inaugurated the Business Forum of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) at the Hotel Cinnamon Grand  and visited the Bharti Airtel experience booth from where he sent out tweets about the opening of the Commonwealth Business Forum to the world through the Bharti Airtel network.

ITRealms reports that as principal sponsor of the Commonwealth Business Forum 2013, Bharti Airtel through Suren Goonewardene, Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director of Bharti Airtel Lanka reassured the company’s support to CHOGM.

“Airtel Lanka’s affiliation with the prestigious CHOGM 2013 summit opens new doors for the telecommunication industry and the country as a whole. The Airtel Lanka sponsorship of the CHOGM Business Forum is a historic event as is Sri Lanka hosting this global summit” he said.

Sri Lanka, he also observed, is a land emerging out of the shadows of the past, and the fact that Bharti Airtel is hosting the prestigious CHOGM summit opens new doors for the economy and a country as a whole.

“It gives us the chance to howcase to the world that we are a nation ready to go forth in to the world and that we possess the knowledge, resources and expertise required to take a more active role in implementing development initiatives. While this forum is the ideal occasion for Sri Lanka to send out a clear message that would encourage international investors, it will also provide a common 360 degree platform for sharing strategies and discussing opportunities for wealth creation and social development which would lead to making a better impact on the global economy.” Goonewardene said.

ITRealms recalls Bharti Airtel is a global telecommunications organization that has been a trend setter by introducing many innovative ideas and products to the local telecom market. Manoj Kohli CEO and Managing Director Bharti Airtel will also be a guest speaker at the forum, which will bring together many local and global business leaders. He will be speaking at sessions on the 13th of November at the Partnership Roundtables – on ‘Facilitating Asian investment into Africa forum’ and on the 14th Nov at the ‘Africa & Asia: Reshaping Partnerships for Sustainable Growth forum.’

Equally, ITRealms reports that earlier this month Bharti Airtel launched an exclusive, limited offer CHOGM 249 package which offered special International Direct Dial (IDD) and DATA rates to users connecting with the 53 member countries of the Commonwealth Association.

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Bharti Airtel rides on Avaya to enhance 5-year customer capabilities

Bharti Airtel Limited and Avaya have signed a five-year partnership to enhance Airtel’s customer capabilities across its operations.

The partnership signed under the aegis of Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions would provide contact center technology and managed services designed to increase the performance, reduce the costs and accelerate the transformation of Airtel’s customer service experience.

Airtel in a press statement made available to ITRealms Online showed that Avaya partner, Mara Ison stands in the midele of the deal, reassuring that they would provide services and application cum infrastructure support to Airtel in Africa.

It was also gathered that the new agreement demonstrates the breadth and scope of the long-standing relationship between the two companies.

“It encompasses a broad suite of Avaya technology and expertise, enabling Avaya to implement, source, manage and enhance contact center technology operations throughout Africa. By using Avaya for this complete end-to-end solution, Airtel can move from a capital-intensive model to a utility-based model across its network with ‘a pay per usage’ agreement,” says Bill Crawley, the Managing Director, Mara-Ison.

Airtel’s contact centers will initiative a more agile customer service strategy through deployment of Avaya’s proactive outreach manager (POM) and proactive Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems, in addition to communicating with customers through voice, email, and Short Messaging Service (SMS) notifications.

With these solutions, Airtel officials said, it would enable customers with the latest in contact services, by not only allowing for a higher number of incoming calls but also actively reaching out to their customers with outgoing service and campaigns.

Speaking on the project, Jayant Khosla – CEO, Anglophone at Bharti Airtel, said that at Bharti Airtel, the customer is at the core of everything.

“We constantly innovate and partner with the best to offer our customers a world-class service experience at every touch point. Our partnership with Avaya is in line with the rapid evolution into the data world, and will provide superior customer service experience and extends from traditional voice based to video and social media interactions. Additionally, Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions will enhance our service capabilities, and help us deliver superior customer experiences across our operations," he said.

For Nidal Abou-Ltaif, Vice President of Emerging Regions, Avaya, Africa represents one of the world’s fastest-growing and most innovative telecoms markets, and Bharti Airtel has created a forward-thinking strategy to provide superior service to existing customers while anticipating future opportunities.

“This partnership ensures that Bharti Airtel and Avaya can continue to collaborate effectively together for the benefit of the company’s customers across multiple geographies. With a custom-built solution for each client, Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions can help innovative companies like Airtel to get the most out of their communications infrastructure investments for the benefit of current and future customers,” he said.

Further, Mr. Crawley, pointed out that they have invested heavily in both people and presence in order to establish a strong Pan African operation capable of supporting leading African and multinational companies as they deploy leading-edge technologies and global best practices for their operations. 

“This agreement with Bharti Airtel and Avaya is a significant affirmation of this strategy.  We will continue to invest in Africa where we believe we can add significant value to our customers, our partners and our own organization,” he said.

Remmy Nweke
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