Winston the pigeon takes flight down memory lane
September 10, 2009
Winston the Pigeon took some people down memory lane yesterday. The 11-month-old pigeon delivered a data card from Howick to Hillcrest in Durban, the same way information used to be transferred way back in the 19th century.
Call centre group Unlimited sent Winston to deliver 4 gigabytes of data, which was loaded onto a flash disk and then attached to the pigeon's leg. The process took 2 hours, 6 minutes and 57 seconds, including the delivery of the data, retrieving the flash disk and uploading the data.
Unlimited needs to get data from its 11 satellite call centres every day to monitor the quality of sales, to listen to voice logs and verify call costs - a key quality and data check issue.
The company claims that the current solution of downloading the data from one server to the next via existing infrastructure is not efficient from a time and cost perspective and is also unreliable due to an unstable communications backbone.
Kevin Rolfe, the head of information technology at Unlimited, said the exercise was not aimed at the telecoms companies but was about showing that there were other ways to deliver data.
He described this as a solution to revolutionise the way things work. But although this was not the ideal way of sending data, the firm would do it again.
Whatever Rolfe and his team were trying to achieve, it has undoubtedly got people talking. Reverting to a centuries-old method of transmitting information is more fun than a sustainable model of delivering information but the hype that it created makes the point quite forcefully.
Perhaps that should get companies such as Telkom to better their service delivery.
Winston the pigeon might have gained celebrity status, but it's unlikely that this method will be adopted by other companies. The bird also had his moment of fame in social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It's a pity he can't talk.
Media slack
Earlier this year, the Roberts Environmental Center in the US released research results on sustainability reporting by the world's biggest entertainment firms, including media groups. It found the sector lagging behind most others in corporate environmental and sustainability reporting.
The best-performing company was Bertelsmann, the world's third-biggest media group and the owner of RTL Group, Europe's biggest broadcaster.
The interesting observation was less that German-based Bertelsmann is located in a region facing greater pressure than most to integrate sustainability into business practices, but that Bertelsmann scored top of the log even though its corporate responsibility report had not been updated since 2005.
Poor sustainability reporting in the sector holds true in South Africa too. Last year, JSE media and entertainment companies scored miserably in research conducted by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which tracks voluntary reporting on carbon issues by the JSE's top 100 firms.
There was not one submission from the five companies listed under the media, photography, publishing, leisure, entertainment and hotel sectors. Two companies did not respond (Naspers and Gold Reef Resorts) while the other three (Avusa, Caxton and Sun International) declined to participate. The CDP labelled the response "disappointing" but harsher adjectives could easily be applied.
This is not an attempt to point fingers at our opposition. It is hard to imagine a response would have been forthcoming from Ireland's Independent News & Media, which publishes Business Report, even if it was listed on the JSE, given a poor understanding of our own carbon footprint.
What is it with entertainment and media companies that they lag other industries on reporting non-financial performance to such a degree?
The most obvious answer is that, unlike the really big carbon emitters that are under intense public scrutiny, media and entertainment groups face less public pressure. And so they allocate less internal resources to collecting the necessary data.
But there is quite possibly a bigger issue at play. BBC journalist Andrew Marr refers to it in his book My Trade: "We are the self-appointed referees of modern life and we are not greatly inclined to blow the whistle and send ourselves off the field."
Late homework
The JSE has dealt with at least 19 defaulters in the past year.
As if they were handing late assignments in high school, these defaults include not submitting financial statements timeously. Recently diversified group Labat Africa and Keg holding firm, King Consolidated (Kingco) were rapped over the knuckles for failing to comply.
Andre Visser of the JSE said that to inform and protect investors in listed firms, the bourse ensured that firms reported timeously using the Stock Exchange News Service. If they did not, the exchange took the appropriate action.
According to Visser, penalties for not reporting timeously ranged from a private warning to a public censure, a fine and ultimately suspension. In the past year five firms have been suspended for failing to file annual, interim or provisional results.
Labat Africa chairman Brian van Rooyen said the empowerment company would post financials soon, but he was not at liberty to give the reasons for the delay.
Van Rooyen confirmed in June that the group would outsource its integrated circuits manufacturing capacity to China and manufacture antiretrovirals at its plant in Koedoespoort instead.
Meanwhile, Kingco has said it intended to delist by the end of next month because it was in need of a complete turnaround.
Rumours of Kingco's delisting in the industry were going around for some time, especially because it is a repeat offender in the "late financial statements" category.
Edited by Peter DeIonno. With contributions by Thabiso Mochiko, Roy Cokayne and Florence de Vries
|
|
