Bheki Maseko Email and Phone Number

My key focus areas in this role is to develop the Vodacom’s network strategy by ensuring that our Enterprise Internet and Connectivity services are aligned with the broader objectives of the organisation. The objectives are structured into primary and secondary objectives:• Primary ObjectivesManage the product development process through interfacing with all key stakeholders in the in the organisation, i.e. technical operations, finance, legal, risk, etc.Manage the product’s life cycle from introduction to retirement. Other key responsibilities include managing the commercial performance of the product in terms of sales, revenue, and profitability.Develop a greater understanding of the South African telecommunications landscape, and implement strategies to ensure competitiveness of our business value proposition in relation competing products. Develop strategic and tactical approaches to ensure long-term and short-term achievement of portfolio objective, e.g. engage marketing department in developing a marketing plan to support product performance, and regularly liaise with the technical operations and commercial finance teams to investigate mechanisms to optimize the business cost structure to allow for increase profit margins, and increased competitiveness.• Secondary ObjectivesOther responsibilities of a portfolio manager is to regularly provide executive feedback to senior management of the business on the performance of the portfolio in line with the group’s objectives, and other commercial performance areas.

My key mandate in this position is to develop and profitably managed Vodacom’s Video Collaboration services for the corporate market.The key responsibilities in this position include inter alia:• Product strategy development• Product Development activities, which include business case development, and all other activities involved in the product development life cycle.• Go-to-Market • Product Marketing• Develop a commercial model• On-going product life-cycle management • Vendor management• Engage with all stakeholders throughout the business, to ensure that the product is successfully taken to market, this includes, Finance, Legal, Regulatory, Risk, Market, Sales, etc.• Performance customer presentations and internal and external stakeholder training.Within my portfolio of service, the following are the some of the services that I look after:• Hosted Video Collaboration – which is a service focused at allowing customers with different end-points to get the benefits of a cloud-based video bridge service. • Manage the on-going relationship with leading end-point vendors, e.g. Cisco, Polycom, etc. to enable my organization to deliver managed Video equipment that would enable customers to make use of the hosted Video Collaboration service.

My role in this position is to serve as the custodian of Vodacom’s Virtual Private Network’s strategy.As a Product Manager I was tasked with guiding a team that is charged with a product line contribution within the business unit. This extends from increasing the profitability of existing products to developing new products for the company. This included building products from existing ideas, and help to develop new ideas based on your industry experience and contact with all key stakeholders, inter alia, customercount managers, marketing, customers and prospects. In this position I was required to blend business and technical knowledge. The ability to effectively communicate with all stakeholders, from executive managers to low-level technical teams. Other key requirements in this position involve working with marketing communications to define the go-to-market strategy, helping them understand the product positioning, key benefits, and target customer.

This role was occupied during the formative stages of the enterprise unit of Vodacom. I was invited to join the organisation to contribute in its formulation. My primary role was to assist the business development a catalogue of competitive products to help Vodacom in its strategy to develop to extend its services into the enterprise market.

• Assisting IS Sales force in concluding IS VPN deals.• Retention of existing VPN revenue.• Develop new revenue streams.• Liaison with sales team on VPN opportunities. • Business Unit ownership of account opportunities until conclusion.• High level presentations of the VPN value proposition to prospective clients and to the existing strategic customer base.• Developing relationships with the IS Sales teams from a product management perspective.• Provide business analysis and direction to the technical product managers / developers in the development of new services.• Implementation of pricing and costing models for the business unit.• Manage the business unit’s billing• Negotiation with potential clients where a good understanding of IS’ costing and pricing models is required. • Develop product and sales documentation• Provide an analysis of the competitive market, and provide strategies to counter any competition.• Understanding of the current Telecommunications environment and the regulations thereof. • Manage the VPN business unit revenue against possible churn and possible price pressures in the market.• Provide regular press updates.• Conduct training to business partners and customers.

In this role my responsibilities were to support the sales representatives by meeting with potential customers, and understanding their solution requirements. Upon gathering all the necessary information from the customer, I have to propose the best solution from a range of services that Internet Solutions offers. At the core of my responsibilities, is to ensure that the proposed solution is technically viable; and also provide product integration between all lines of business with Internet Solutions.The role of a Solutions Architect enables one to be equipped with the skills of value selling.Some of the skills I have developed in the role of a Solutions Architect include among others the following:• Internet service provisioning and operations• DNS functionality• Layer 4 switching and load-balancing technologies – Radware WSD• Routing operations (BGP, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, RIPv1 & v2, HSRP & GLBP )• Switching operation(Layer 2, Layer 3, Layer 4, and Multilayer Switching)• Mobile Technologies – GPRS, 3G, HSDPA.• VPN technologies - (Internet VPNs, MPLS technologies, Frame-Relay Technologies, ATM switches technologies, ADSL)• Dial technologies• Firewall services (Cisco PIX firewall & Checkpoint FW-1)• Basics in Voice over IP• Compression and network acceleration technology• Hosting services• Understanding of the common Internet applications• Identify business opportunities where Internet services may be offered as a business solution.

• 1st line network support – I was responsible to receiving and troubleshooting customer network or systems problems. This also included logging trouble tickets for more complex problems which required senior network engineer assistance. • Unix administrator and Network security – trainee