Launched in 1994, MTN South Africa is a subsidiary of MTN Group, a leading emerging market operator with a clear vision to lead the delivery of a bold new digital world to our customers. We are inspired by our belief that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern connected life. The MTN Group is listed on the JSE Securities Exchange in South Africa under the share code ‘MTN’. Our strategy, Ambition 2025, is anchored on building the largest and most valuable platform business, with a clear focus on Africa. Visit www.mtn.com or www.mtn.co.za for more information.
March 28, 2023
MTN South Africa harnesses Microsoft Power Platform to slash fraud risk
Telecommunications giant MTN South Africa has improved its fraud risk and prevented losses by automating key fraud verification and reporting processes using Microsoft’s Power Platform and Power Automate.
Covid-19, credit bureau data leak increase industry risk
In 2020, credit information agency Experian experienced a data breach exposing the personal information of up to 24 million South Africans and nearly 800,000 business entities. At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic dramatically increased the number of online transactions taking place and forced more collaboration to take place via email, increasing the risk of fraud and cyber-attacks. For South African businesses, particularly large retailers and telcos like MTN, this environment meant an increased risk of fraud, losses and customer impact.
MTN South Africa’s anti-fraud teams, already looking to automate reporting processes using Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft SharePoint lists, needed to move quickly to address the emerging risks.
They sought to integrate internal and third-party systems, automate key verification processes and gain enriched data for monitoring and reporting.
The team had already found that Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft SharePoint lists delivered the capability of introducing issue tracking and project tracking, addressing the growing manageability challenges of dealing with large numbers of issues and incidents.
They also learned that having a centralized and easily accessible web-based platform to manage issues and projects was proving truly beneficial, with automated reporting on Power BI allowing it to easily issue reports to customers.
Instant success
Seeking to harness further Microsoft capabilities, the team used the free trial license of Microsoft Power Automate to develop a proof of concept for anti-fraud management. Thanks to the platform’s low-code/no-code architecture, the team quickly and easily developed solutions for their use cases. The team replaced manual processes and back and forth emailed attachments and phone calls with schedulers automatically fetching data, third-party API services and data enrichments.
They rapidly realised the capabilities of Microsoft Power Automate, and within six months they had used it to develop a fully-fledged tool which fetched data from the source, enriched it, fetched exogenous data from third party locations, and processed the data through a decision engine. This dramatically improved efficiencies, visibility and reporting.
“The telecommunications industry is quite complex. We needed a technology that would allow us to be agile, to change at the speed the fraudsters are changing”
Msimisi Fakudze, Senior Manager, MTN South Africa
“With the success of this project, we are now looking at automating all our processes with Power Automate. We’re also planning many hackathons with Microsoft to see how we can incorporate Power Apps and Power Automate into other areas of our operations”
Gareth Hall, Head of Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management, MTN South Africa
Snowballing benefits
As a leading telecommunications provider in South Africa, MTN sees it as vital to lead in terms of fraud prevention strategies that protect its customers and add value.
The solutions built on Microsoft Power Platform and Power Automate have given MTN South Africa’s anti-fraud analysts an automated decision engine that frees them to focus on important, core issues and removes the ‘noise’ of dealing with multiple verifications.
Digitisation with the Microsoft Power platform enables MTN South Africa to bring together data scattered across different platforms for simplified fraud prevention and detection. Thanks to its agility and ease of use, the team can work together and collaborate more easily.
Microsoft Power Platform has allowed MTN South Africa to connect internal and external stakeholders and data, delivering live dashboards and automated reporting that have enabled the company to better protect its customers and save the business money.
Describing the Power Automate platform project as ‘very successful’, MTN South Africa’s anti-fraud team is now looking at automating all of its processes with Power Automate - from the way the analysts operate their day to day activities, all the way through to the management reporting and month end closures.
The team is also working with Microsoft on a number of hackathons to identify ways to incorporate Power Apps and Power Automate into other areas of its operations.
“For me, what was amazing is that the fraud division did this all on their own. They started off with the trial licenses, adopted the technology and applied it in their environment, which gave them all the opportunities to reduce their risk”
Nishen Naidoo, Sales Executive, Microsoft South Africa
“The team is excited about how this can automate the way we do business. Microsoft have been phenomenal in the way that they have interacted with us and assisted us with training. We look forward to the future and the way Microsoft is helping us automate our business”
Gareth Hall, Head of Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management, MTN South Africa
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