Outlook - looking forward

Looking forward to a sustainable future through the gift of life

SANBS will continue to transform, innovate and respond with agility to meet the needs of our stakeholders, remaining an important role player as the cornerstone of healthcare services in South Africa.

Our outlook information covers the strategic path ahead – leadership’s view of the material uncertainties, disruptive factors, challenges that may affect the achievement of our strategic objectives and the potential implications for the organisation as well as opportunities that we have identified.

Our strategic path ahead, aligned to the six capitals, is positioned to deliver value and yield positive results in the short, medium and long term. This is demonstrated in each depiction below.

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Financial Capital

Strategic Priority

  • New revenue streams (increased source plasma collection for NBI), cellular therapies, research grant funding
  • Manage bad debts rigorously by improving debt collections tactics
  • Optimise process cost efficiency for delivery of blood products
Challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors
  • Medium to long term impact of Covid-19 on financial sustainability, blood usage and collections
  • Persistence of the Covid-19 pandemic and its macro impact on global economies; impact on currency exchange rates, implementation cost impact as SANBS is billed in Euros
  • Financial sustainability (collecting what is owed to us)
  • Government and medical aids financial sustainability and ability to pay for blood
  • Keeping the service fees for blood low
Mitigating factors/opportunities
  • Research on convalescent plasma to result in alternative revenue streams
  • Accessibility and affordability – blood benchmarkable with the rest of world
  • Collections expedited through an appointed Debtor Collection Task Team
  • Process improvements to increase first-time payment rates

Risks

Materiality Themes

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Manufactured Capital

Strategic Priority

  • Expand products and services through innovation
  • Mainstream digitalisation of business processes (outside of BECS & ERP)
  • Mobile Donor Centres/vehicles of the future
  • Process automation (Smart fridges for issue of blood, decentralised processing of blood)
  • Digitalisation in Order to Pay Processes
  • Inventory Management enhancement
Challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors
  • Maintaining and increasing the donor base
  • Patient blood management and reduced demand
  • Blood supply, given Covid-19 concerns
  • Supply and logistics uncertainties for critical consumables
Mitigating factors/opportunities
  • Process improvements (better models for service delivery) – donor convenience, smart fridges, processing
  • Increasing regional blood collection to reduce the cost of blood collection and distribution
  • Engaging communities to supply enough blood for their own needs
  • Educational tours for schools and universities at Mount Edgecombe to encourage the youth to donate
  • Use of drones in emergency situations
  • New blood collections models as remote working rendered traditional collection models from corporates, schools and universities no longer viable
  • Inventory Management enhancement
  • Supply Chain Management enhanced

Risks

Materiality Themes

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Human Capital

Strategic Priority

  • Drive a performance culture in SANBS with differential reward based on performance
  • Attraction and retention of critical staff
  • Driving culture improvement programme
  • Embed cross functional team work
  • Reskilling of staff and preparation to adapt to Digitisation & AI with a clearly defined learning strategy through the SANBS Academy
  • Meeting remote/work from home expectations of employees
Challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors
  • Change in work patterns necessitating change in how SANBS staff operate
  • Staff infected by Covid-19
  • Staff availability, given the impact of Covid-19 and increased absenteeism
  • Filling vacancies
  • Loss of critical staff
Mitigating factors/opportunities
  • Change – leadership, strategy, performance measurements, innovation
  • Culture/change initiative (DNA)
  • Improve wellness – health of donor pool and staff
  • Revise employee value proposition to attract and retain critical staff
  • Effective talent management and succession planning

Risks

Materiality Themes

"Trusted to save lives"

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Intellectual Capital

Strategic Priority

  • Reskilling of staff and preparation to adapt to Digitisation & AI with a clearly defined learning strategy through the SANBS RAD () Academy
  • Development, commercialisation and delivery of cellular therapies
  • Translational Research - To be an internationally recognised research unit known for innovation and collaboration
  • Enhance brand advocacy
  • Integrity of information management systems
Challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors
  • Adapting to the ''new normal'' way of managing a business, including embracing digital transformation
  • Increased cybercrime risks – opportunistic and targeted attacks
  • Increasing technological advancements requiring an appropriately skilled workforce
  • Future-proofing SANBS
Mitigating factors/opportunities
  • New work environment (remote work; redeployment; digital learning platforms)
  • Revised Target Operating Model
  • Creating “future fit” employees, a SANBS employee who is agile and adaptive to the new way of work
  • Robust Information Management Security systems
  • Research and Development – involvement in clinical trials (convalescent plasma) and funding grants/ Cellular therapies and genetic testing therapy
  • Research on convalescent plasma to result in alternative revenue streams
  • Dual career pathway implementation
  • Research and operational collaborations with key local and international stakeholders

Risks

Materiality Themes

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Social and Relationship Capital

Strategic Priority

  • Increase stakeholder satisfaction results
  • Continue to meet the quality control requirements of regulatory bodies and national standards to satisfy internal and external customer needs
  • Improved communication and engagement with stakeholders (BECS & donor app) and blood partners
  • Improving the donor experience
Challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors
  • Emerging and re-emerging viral risks and impact on safety
  • Impact of a potentially deteriorating SA healthcare system on SANBS
  • Burden and cost of compliance in general, and with POPIA in particular (this is new legislation, and has potential for an onerous compliance burden)
Mitigating factors/opportunities
  • Working synergistically with other SA Blood Partners (synergies WCBS) & NBI etc
  • Stakeholder engagement - Department of Health
  • Research and Development – involvement in clinical trials (convalescent plasma), grant funding , cellular therapies and genetic testing
  • Good governance-maintaining confidentiality of donor information
  • Improve donor health with iron supplementation
  • Improve wellness – health of donor pool and staff
  • Limiting additional financial burden on the health systems
  • Meeting requirements of ISO 9001 standards

Risks

Materiality Themes

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Natural Capital

Strategic Priority

  • Contributing to a sustainable future
  • SANBS operations are undertaken in a sustainable manner by environmentally conscious SANBS staff
Challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors
  • Lack of awareness of how behaviours and choices affect the environment
  • Legislative pressure on compliance with environmental laws and associated punitive action
Mitigating factors/opportunities
  • Greening SANBS
  • Improve staff access to data that drives understanding of how behaviours and choices affect the environment
  • Remote work opportunities reducing real estate foot print and associated costs
  • Waste management
  • Green lab-Mount Edgecombe
  • Contribution to UN 2030 sustainable development goals
  • Safety and environmental awareness interventions

Risks

Materiality Themes