Leveraging technology

We are living through a time of historic challenges and opportunity. Our markets currently face ongoing economic and social volatility. At the same time we are witnessing the dawn of a new age of artificial intelligence (AI), poised to revolutionise productivity across individuals, organisations and industries worldwide. This transformative technology can potentially address some of our most urgent local challenges. Blue Label’s Technology is a cornerstone in driving the business toward its overarching objectives. Adapting swiftly to internal shifts and external forces, we actively reshape Blue Label Technology to foster a contemporary, efficient and flexible organisation. This means we are building a flexible technology platform, infrastructure and operating model that increases our speed to market and simplifies how our customers and subsidiaries operate. Our unwavering commitment to technology-driven progress has fuelled our growth, enhanced customer experience and strengthened our position in the marketplace.

Core production market-facing platform changes

973
(2023: 1 107)

Stability of core production platforms

99.31%
(2023: 99.57%)

Platforms for new business innovation

5
(2023: 5)

ISO certification

ISO 27001 Certified

BUILDING ON OUR DIGITAL FOUNDATION

Blue Label Technology has reinforced and expanded its commitment to accelerating digital transformation by identifying and exploring numerous innovative opportunities within each subsidiary. We continued enhancing our market-facing platform, reaching an impressive 973 changes this year, a testament to our unwavering dedication to innovation. At the same time, we have started the journey to re-imagine and re-architect our core platforms which are application programming interface (API)-driven, composable and built on microservices. This transformation will provide greater flexibility, scalability and efficiency, ensuring our platforms and infrastructure are robust and future-ready.

ELEVATING RELIABILITY AND STABILITY

While pursuing digital innovation, we recognise the pivotal role of stability and reliability. Monitoring performance against key performance indicators (KPIs) and tracking their progress over time is crucial to ensuring that service-level agreements (SLAs) are met. Our core production platforms have exhibited exceptional performance, achieving a stability rate of 99.31%, reflecting our continued investment in fortifying our application and infrastructure uptime.

NAVIGATING THE CYBERSECURITY LANDSCAPE

As the rate and pace of cyber threats continue to accelerate, security remains our top priority. We continue to fortify our information, application, hardware and infrastructure security controls. The investment made in implementing our Security Operations Centre (SOC) is starting to pay dividends. The SOC and our fraud solution allow us to proactively monitor and act on any threats. At the same time, we have re-organised our cyber team and skills to ensure that we have the right focus in the right areas, such as incident response, engineering and architecture.

As part of our continued commitment to improve and demonstrate maturity of our governance and security practices, we embarked on a strategic journey to pursue the ISO 27001 certification. The pursuit of this internationally recognised security standard has a number of benefits which will accrue to the business once this accreditation/ certification has been achieved:

  • Demonstrate an improved security posture overall;
  • Improve information security processes;
  • Reduced time responding to security questionnaires;
  • Promote compliance with commercial, contractual requirements;
  • Competitive advantage due to the recognition of the standard; and
  • Enhanced security and risk management through the implementation of best security practices.

ISO 27001:2022 is the only auditable standard that deals with the overall management of information security, rather than just with technical controls to implement for information security. Certification is one way to demonstrate to stakeholders and customers that we are committed and able to manage information securely and safely.

EMPOWERING CUSTOMER-CENTRIC INNOVATION

Our dedication to our customers remains paramount. Blue Label Technology has extended the boundaries of consumer convenience through strategic investments and pioneering solutions. We have expanded our offerings with wallet and account management functionality for our informal market. The account management functionality has a store of value and can manage a deposit (deposit taking). Our new ticketing solution, which is built on the microservices architecture, includes reserved, unreserved and cashless functionality while having a newer and friendlier customer website and experience.

A VISION FOR THE FUTURE

As we look ahead, in 2025 we will complete the implementation of our new finance ERP system, allowing the businesses to further expand on data analytics, process automation and achieving higher efficiencies.

While our minimum viable product (MVP) for our market-facing core platform has been implemented, in 2025 we will continue to scale and extend our platform with enhanced features and capabilities, thereby simplifying and improving the speed at which our customers can launch new products and services.

We are resolute in maintaining and surpassing our high standards of stability and uptime, ensuring uninterrupted access for our customers.

Looking beyond 2025, we are committed to innovation and transformation. We will explore new technological advancements, invest in artificial intelligence and machine learning and expand our digital ecosystem to create seamless experiences for our customers. At the same time, we will invest in our people, ensuring that we have the latest skills required to deliver on our strategic intent. Our strategic partnerships and collaborative ventures will drive growth and open new avenues for business expansion. We envision a future where our Company not only meets but anticipates the needs of the market, setting new benchmarks in service excellence and operational efficiency. Our unwavering dedication to our core values and our customers’ success will guide us as we navigate the evolving landscape of our industry.