Samsung grows B2B across Africa

Global technology firm Samsung, better known in Africa for its smartphones, TVs and appliances, is growing its business-to-business (B2B) initiative across the continent.

Prem Pather, representing medical and financial segments for Samsung Africa, explained the company's B2B strategy at its media and partner conference in Nairobi, Kenya, last week.

“Traditionally, Samsung has been a global leader in business-to-consumer (B2C),” said Pather at the conference. “Using our acquired business intelligence from B2C, we found it appropriate to launch Samsung business-to-business in Africa.”

B2B is part of Samsung's plans for the continent. The company aims to increase its annual business in Africa from $1.23 billion to $10 billion by 2015, according to Samsung Electronics SA CEO George Ferreira.

Samsung Africa B2B will focus on localising the company's industry solutions for customers, adapting to the level of infrastructure maturity in each area.

“Within the Samsung group, there are 68 organisations,” continued Pather. “The B2B strategy is to identify key Samsung solutions within various industries and bring those into the African market. Samsung is involved in the medical, financial and hospitality sectors, just to mention a few.

“We have different levels of maturity within the 48 African countries that Samsung B2B stretches across. For example, we may look at a bank that operates in different countries. We have a bank in SA that has a local strategy. I have not painted that strategy across the other countries in Africa they operate in. I visited each country, each organisation, and understood what they want. Those personal, localised discussions then allow us to formulate solutions around the main contract.”

At the conference, Pather highlighted solutions for enterprise mobility, hospitals, surveillance, hotels, industrial air-conditioning, insurance claim resolution and real-time distance education for children in rural areas.

“In many African countries, Samsung has developed strong business relationships with the government and the financial, hospitality and medical sectors,” said Pather. “Our focus around 'built for Africa, by Africa, in Africa' allows Samsung to understand the markets and to deliver to them.”

Pather outlined a hospital solution developed and deployed at Samsung Hospital, in Korea, as an example of the company's B2B approach to customers. “Dr Smarts” is a hospital care solution, giving doctors and nurses mobile access to patient information on Galaxy tablets.

In general, Pather aims to evolve customers, integrating their current environment into a Samsung solution, rather than advocating rip-and-replace of their existing systems.

“Although the solution is available as Dr Smarts, Samsung will encourage hospitals and clinics to utilise their current core back-end applications to integrate and port onto the Samsung Galaxy tablet. Then we localise and customise our solution for the customer's needs.”

If the environment and solution are not compatible yet, Samsung develops compatibility in its labs.

Apart from existing end-to-end solutions, the Galaxy tablet computers feature in other ways in Samsung's B2B go-to-market strategy. Currently, businesses can choose from three desktop virtualisation solutions on the Galaxy tablets.

“The virtualisation partners we already have are VMware, Citrix and Microsoft,” said Pather. “We deal with them quite closely. From a B2B point of view, I'm having discussions and creating partnerships with them. When we deploy this type of solution, it is end-to-end.”

Within its first five months, Samsung B2B has deployed two projects, while customers approved another two proofs-of-concept.

B2B deployed a full variable-capacity compressor air-conditioning system in a Nairobi hotel and a video wall solution for the South African Intelligence Management Centre. At another Nairobi hotel, it deployed 50 large format displays as a proof of concept, and will install an additional 1 000 units.

In Algeria, a proof-of-concept for a city-wide surveillance and monitoring solution has been approved.

But Samsung's growth plans and the complexity of its hi-tech solutions require sustainable local skills for implementation and support.

“Our in-country fulfilment model will be established through local partners and distributors, trained and skilled at country level,” explained Pather. “It ensures that revenue growth is generated within the country. Skills development across partners and customers will be an integral part of every customer engagement. When we look at Samsung's range of solutions, we continue to focus on the key products; however, our delivery is solution-based.”

For Pather, his comprehensive B2B Africa strategy does not focus on selling product, but on localising and integrating Samsung solutions, while ensuring local people are skilled.