OUR BUSINESS

Materiality Determination Process and Material Matters

OUR BUSINESS

Materiality Determination Process and Material Matters

3. Future Changing World – Innovation and Automation

Importance and Risks in Value Creation for SANBS

SANBS is advancing with a focus on innovation and automation to enhance patient outcomes and ensure the safety and well-being of donors. Our business processes increasingly rely on technology-driven systems, leveraging data for valuable insights. Embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and related innovations can transform our operating model, guided by high accreditation standards. The implementation of BECS and ERP Modernisation projects aim to leverage capabilities in AI, ML, mobility, digitalisation, and cloud adoption, ensuring strategic advancement.

This year was marked by significant accomplishments, including the successful implementation of the BECS project. Despite this milestone, post-implementation complexities and ongoing optimisation efforts remain.

Risks to value creation include SANBS' potential inability to respond to changing healthcare needs, failure to innovate and adopt advanced technology for efficient systems and processes, slow progress in adopting tech innovations, lack of data literacy and analytics skills, and uncertainties around cyber security, legislation, and risk exposures.

Opportunities and Strategic Response to Create Value

  • Formalising data governance and information management: Data is a powerful asset. Formalising data governance and information management will be a major focus area. This will ensure data accuracy, accessibility, and security, allowing for more informed decision-making across the organisation
  • Enhance business intelligence (BI) capability: There is an opportunity to further develop SANBS' Business Intelligence capability to extract more value from data for strategic insights and targeted operational improvements
  • Cloud adoption expansion: SANBS is actively exploring the significant opportunities that broader cloud adoption could lend in improving IT infrastructure capability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness
  • Infrastructure enhancement for BECS: Significant enabling infrastructure was deployed as part of BECS go-live readiness, including upgrades to fixed-line networks and increased bandwidth across all sites. Upgraded IT infrastructure for BECS enables the digitisation of additional processes, enhancing operational efficiency and effectiveness
  • Initiatives to drive innovation through collaboration include:
    • RAD Academy: Ongoing engagement with external stakeholders across the region, Africa, and beyond for knowledge sharing, business continuity, and development
    • Research collaborations: Active involvement in major research efforts like the Blood Genomics Consortium and multiple academic partnerships addressing donor health, product compliance, blood utilisation, patient studies, and staff motivation, resulting in 14 publications and numerous presentations at conferences
    • Support for Africa: Leading a collaboration with the Western Cape Blood Service and the African Society for Blood Transfusion to host the first Africa Transfusion Indaba, which brought together 36 participants from 12 African countries to share experiences and strengthen capacity-building relationships
    • Translational research: Focus on advancing research for novel products and providing technical support for cellular therapies to new units
    • SANBS profile enhancement: Increasing our presence in ISBT, AABB, and related committees
    • Data-driven decisions: Exploring opportunities to use data more effectively in decision-making

Outlook for the Year Ahead

  • Maximise synergies, data analytics, and BECS stabilisation: Leverage BECS to maximise synergies, efficiencies, and data analytics, while actively driving stabilisation efforts for seamless operation, ensuring resilience and adaptability amidst system refinements
  • Automate blood banks and expand cross-matching: Automate blood banks to improve turnaround times and expand electronic crossmatches
  • Expand cellular therapies and technical support: Develop the range of cellular therapies offered and expand technical support
  • Enhance BI resources and change management: Build internal BI resource capacity and change management capability to facilitate tech innovation adoption like AI and ML
  • Implement data literacy training: Develop and implement data literacy training to enable BI for critical business initiatives
  • Develop formal cloud strategy and plan: Create and implement a formal Cloud strategy and plan
  • Governance and data management: Assess and establish governance requirements for managing AI, ML, and related technologies adoption, as well as formal data governance and information management to ensure accuracy, accessibility, and security
  • Donor app development and communication: Focus on delivering the donor app to enhance donor engagement and retention

Capitals Impacted

Strategic Priorities

Top Risks

Driving innovation through synergy and technology: from BECS stabilisation and automation to expanding cellular therapies, data literacy, and cloud strategies—building a resilient future anchored by strong governance and enhanced donor engagement.

4. Financial and Organisational Sustainability

Importance and Risks in Value Creation for SANBS

SANBS operates within a challenging economic environment characterised by poor growth, high unemployment, and constrained healthcare budgets, alongside increasing operational costs. As South Africa's largest provider of blood products and services, maintaining robust governance, leadership, business continuity, stakeholder management, and financial stability is paramount for long-term sustainability.

Key risks include difficulty in collecting outstanding debt, rising operational costs, potential disruptions in the supply chain, reputational risks, challenges in meeting blood product demand, public perceptions about costs, and internal inefficiencies. Addressing these risks effectively is critical for SANBS to fulfil its mission of providing essential blood products and services, ensuring financial stability, and maintaining stakeholder confidence.

Opportunities and Strategic Response to Create Value

SANBS has implemented appropriate strategy execution, planning, systems, and controls to ensure revenue generation and surplus creation for sustainability. Initiatives aimed at strengthening financial resilience include:

  • Inventory optimisation: Enhancing inventory visibility throughout the value chain
  • Business process improvements: Streamlining procure-to-pay and order-to-collect processes to improve billing accuracy, efficiency, and debt management and improving internal systems for agile customer query responses
  • Skills and competency development: Ensuring future-fit skills and competencies among employees
  • Debt management: Managing bad debts in collaboration with the Department of Health, medical aids, hospitals, and RAF
  • Debt collection system enhancement: Successfully reducing debtor days with a robust finance team
  • Refined budgeting and expenditure discipline: Improving budget processes and maintaining disciplined expenditure
  • Procurement contracting: Enhancing procurement contracting and contract management processes
  • Efficient delivery: Optimising the delivery of blood products to reduce costs
  • Diversification of revenue streams: Focusing on growing alternative revenue sources

Outlook for the Year Ahead

  • Debt management initiatives: Continued efforts to increase debt collections, engage with medical aids for outstanding claims, and focus on resolving long-standing government debt
  • Procurement and contract management: Continuous improvement in procurement and contract management processes
  • Stakeholder engagement and relationship management: Implementing a structured stakeholder engagement framework to ensure coordinated customer engagement for timely payment, and strengthening relationships with medical aids, government, and other institutions to optimise billing and collection processes
  • Tariff management: Keeping tariffs at or below inflation rates
  • Cost management: Managing costs within inflation limits

Capitals Impacted

Strategic Priorities

Top Risks

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