Telecommunications giant MTN South Africa has introduced a new executive structure following a review as the company pursues its Ambition 2025 strategy.

The company appointed Ernst Fonternel as chief consumer officer and Divyesh Joshi as chief strategy and transformation officer, both recruited internally, effective October 1.

Active recruiting continues for two new roles that were introduced into the executive structure, including that of chief commercial operations officer and chief risk officer.

“The current top-tier structure has been optimal to enable us to evolve and grow the business to where we are today. However, in pursuit of Ambition 2025, the current structure needed to be optimised to adequately support our strategic ambition,” says MTN South Africa CEO Charles Molapisi.

The appointments, as well as the recruitment for the new roles, are designed to deliver agile ways of work to simplify cross-functional interfaces, enhancing focus on key and new revenue streams, better aligning commercial and support functions and focused sales and distribution structures, he explains.

“The introduction of the chief commercial operations officer provides an elevated focus on brand and marketing, customer service operations, sales and distribution, regional operations and digital online.

“As telcos move towards delayering and greater verticalisation of business units, the risk function requires particular industry depth. The risk function requires a thorough telco consideration from finance, pricing, commercial partnerships, network, and information technology (IT) perspective,” he continues.

MTN also considered how to improve speed to market with fewer layers and evolution of its platform-play, as well as examined options of how it can best drive transformation through convergence in the network and IT environments.

“The fast-paced world of telecommunications and technology requires an agile, responsive, and pioneering leadership approach. To this end, our focus has been on defining, designing, and shaping a future-fit leadership model for MTN South Africa, leveraging the extensive experience and expertise within the senior leadership team,” concludes Molapisi.