[CASE STUDY]: Multichoice

Multichoice digitise their RFP process and shave months off their process time

Intro

Multichoice is Africa’s leading entertainment company, creating and distributing content from all over the world to approximately 14 million people, across 50 countries. The company delivers various entertainment platforms including DStv, GOtv, Showmax and DStv Now, through digital terrestrial television and online video entertainment services. 

Through their sister company Irdeto, they are a world leader in digital platform security for video entertainment, video games, connected transport and IoT connected industries.

Challenges

Before using Sourcing Dojo, Multichoice were using a number of methods to manage their processes, including the use of printed spreadsheets as well as running an existing ERP Solution. As a company they were, and had been, keen to start eSourcing efficiently by streamlining their various processes into one distinct method, however, the existing ERP solution wasn’t working, due to the complexities of the tool. 

Chris Lacy is the IT Category Manager at Multichoice, responsible for the strategy and a certain level of execution on sourcing initiatives within Multichoice.

“We had very manual paper-based processes and ran our tenders that way. For tenders we had used an ERP solution previously, which didn’t work. We spent so many hours trying to get the system configured. We managed to run two unsuccessful RFPs of which we had to close down before the RFPs were even due, so we wanted to go into esourcing and we saw an opportunity to utilise our client base with a service such as Sourcing Dojo. The idea was, in essence, to see how we could streamline our processes. This was something we’ve wanted to do for years, we just didn’t have the capability or technology to do it.”

Overcoming the issue

The RFP process for Chris and Multichoice was improved substantially as a result of using Sourcing Dojo. The time taken to run an RFP drastically decreased. An additional benefit was that Chris could centralise all RFP documents into one manageable online system, with the ability to archive older documents. 

“Sourcing Dojo has helped us to streamline our process a huge amount, not just the manual RFP’s that we had to collect and photocopy and print and distribute, but even from an archiving point of view. I have this drawer full of USB flash drives that have old RFP‘s on and now we just put it into one centralized area. It definitely streamlines the RFP process regardless of whether you use the system to evaluate a full response or a tool to collect an esourcing RFP.” 

Expanding the tool usage

Having successfully rolled out Sourcing Dojo across Multichoice, the company has recently expanded their licenses across their sister company Irdeto.

“They seem quite excited to use the tool. We want to spend some time with them to make sure we utilize it to our fullest extent. As it stands I’m setting-up our key stakeholders. With some standards processes together, we can turn it into a template and issue an RFP in a couple of minutes. We are using it well and we are hoping to increase our use of it further.” 

Complete Transformation

Multichoice gained significant improvements in their previous processes by using Sourcing Dojo, with  RFP times being drastically reduced, which was one of the critical areas to address for Chris. 

Despite practising and demoing with the tool, he continued to be surprised by just how effective the introduction of Sourcing Dojo could be to his processes.

“I think just ease of use has been the biggest surprise and it has completely transformed the way we used to run RFP’s. For me, RFP’s used to be a 4-6 month process. Now with the right information, we literally upload the documents, issue them to market over 3 weeks, evaluate in 2 weeks, so we have dramatically cut down our entire process from 4-6 months, to under 3 months.”