OUR OUTLOOK AND ANCILLARY INFORMATION

Challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors FY24

Looking forward, we are strengthening our foundation to embrace the challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors that may affect the achievement of our strategic objectives.

We consider our vulnerabilities in our strategic planning and the potential implications for the organisation and the opportunities these present. By doing so we can continue to respond with agility to meet the needs of our stakeholders, and remain an important role player as the cornerstone of healthcare services in South Africa.

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.

Financial Capital

  • 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

  • Persistence of the Ukrainian/Russian war and their macro impact on global economies; impact on our exchange rates and the 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

  • We may have to consider hedging strategy
  • Strong financial management leadership provided by the new CFO
  • Building the required capability and capacity in the Finance team
  • Rejections by Medical Aids understood and reduced from lofty highs of 25% to around 3.5%
  • Improved cash collection efforts
  • Constant meetings held with important stakeholders and Medical Aid Schemes
  • Well-managed bad debt provision
  • Leveraging technology to manage debt collection efforts
  • Alternative revenue streams
  • Process improvements to increase first-time payment rates
  • Strengthening our Procure to Pay process
Strategic Objectives
Risks
Materiality Themes

Manufactured Capital

  • 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 of 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 concerns, areas affected by riots/protests/strikes and floods
  • Supply and logistics uncertainties for critical consumables

Mitigating factors/opportunities

  • Implementation of the new BECS system
  • Upgrading of SAP and implementing SAP S4 HANA
  • Process improvements (better models for service delivery) – donor convenience, smart fridges
  • Increasing regional blood collection to reduce the cost of blood collection and distribution
  • Engaging communities to supply enough blood for their own needs
  • Use of drones in emergency situations
  • New blood collections models
  • Donor health initiatives
  • Inventory Management enhancement
  • Supply Chain Management enhanced
Strategic Objectives
Risks
Materiality Themes

Human Capital

  • Drive a performance culture in SANBS with differential reward based on performance
  • Attraction and retention of critical employees
  • Driving culture improvement programme
  • Cross functional team work
  • Reskilling of employees and preparation to adapt to Digitisation & AI with a clearly defined learning strategy through SANBS’ Academy
  • Wellness – holistic health and wellbeing to achieve requisite balance
  • Change Resilience - to adopt new Targeted Operating Model (TOM) and new systems
  • Succession planning

Challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors

  • Skills shortages (especially nursing)
  • Work-life balance and potential burnout
  • Filling vacancies
  • Loss of critical employees
  • Consequences of macroeconomic environment and rising cost of living
  • Labour requirements

Mitigating factors/opportunities

  • Change – leadership, strategy, performance measurements, systems and processes
  • Culture/change initiative (DNA)
  • Improve wellness – health of employees
  • Revise employee value proposition to attract and retain critical employees; including dual career streams, identifying promotional opportunities, flexible pay (eg reduced contributions to funds)
  • Effective talent management and succession planning
  • Workforce planning/skills
  • Driving an ethical culture through implementation of the Ethics Plan
  • Refining and revision of policies and procedures
  • Cross functional team to resolve labour demands
Strategic Objectives
Risks
Materiality Themes

Intellectual Capital

  • Reskilling of employees and preparation to adapt to Digitisation & AI with a clearly defined learning strategy through SANBS’ RAD Academy
  • Development, commercialisation and delivery of cellular therapies
  • Translational R–search - 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 and embracing digital transformation, mindful of information and cyber risks
  • Increasing technological advancements requiring an appropriately skilled workforce
  • Future-proofing SANBS

Mitigating factors/opportunities

  • Revised Target Operating Model including recent appointment of Corporate Services Executive
  • Creating “future fit” employees, a SANBS employee who is agile and adaptive to the new way of work
  • Dual career pathway implementation
  • Robust Information Management Security systems
  • Research and Development – involvement in clinical trials and funding grants/ cellular therapies and genetic testing therapy
  • Research on convalescent plasma for alternative revenue streams
  • Research and operational collaborations with key local and international stakeholders
  • Research and development through SANBS’ RAD Academy
  • Expanding our footprint and targets for whole blood, source plasma and platelet collections
  • Innovating with regards to logistics with the rollout of Smart fridges and the drone project
Strategic Objectives
Risks
Materiality Themes

Social and relationship capital Capital

  • Increase stakeholder satisfaction
  • 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
  • Increased focus on ESG

Challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors

  • Impact of a potentially deteriorating SA healthcare system on SANBS
  • General health/wellness of the population
  • Burden and cost of compliance in general

Mitigating factors/opportunities

  • Stakeholder mapping, building a stakeholder engagement plan, establishing and strengthening relationships with certain key stakeholders
  • Working synergistically with other SA Blood Partners & NBI etc
  • Stakeholder engagement - Department of Health
  • Continued focus on Research and Development
  • Good governance-maintaining confidentiality of donor information
  • Improve donor health with iron supplementation
  • Improve wellness – health of donor pool and employees
  • Limiting additional financial burden on the health systems
  • Meeting requirements of ISO 9001 standards
Strategic Objectives
Risks
Materiality Themes

Natural Capital

  • Contributing to a sustainable future
  • SANBS operations are undertaken in a sustainable manner by environmentally conscious SANBS employees

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 strategy and initiatives
  • 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
Strategic Objectives
Risks
Materiality Themes