Transportation in this modern era has become an indispensable part of the very human existence. The world now is unimaginable without transportation system. Presence of transportation was there from the very initial state stage of humanity (Buthelezi & Davies, 2015). In the context of Africa, the need and impact of transportation system is immense . While on one hand transportation system connects the entire continent with other geographical presence, on the other hand transportation also plays a major role in Africa’s overall economy. Not only that, transportation in Africa has also left a major impact on infrastructure development and promotion of trades and business overseas (Jedwab & Moradi, 2016).
In this particular context of Africa, it would be worth mentioning that Sonef transportations is the most popular and one of the leading transportation chains in Africa and African sub continents.
Sonef is not only a transportation sector but also at the same time it has active participation in all the growth sectors in Africa. Sonef group has a huge contribution towards the development of Africa’s over all infrastructure and economy. The Sonef group single handedly brings together transportation and communication, construction, hydrocarbon and trade sectors under a single rooftop.
The company has been operational since a very long time. It emerged as a transportation company at the initial, the company now has branched into constructions, hydrocarbon industries and trade sectors, apart from transportation business. The Sonef Company is also popularly known as Sonef Transport Voyageurs. Sonef industries make a significant impact on the social and economic conditions of Africa (Berman & Benade, 2015).
The company primarily belonged to transportation sector. Sonef especially marked a significant change in Africa while it constructed an impressive car park on three destinations within the country. Those are Mali 72 bus, Mauritania 25 bus and Niger 40 bus. The number of employees working with Sonef group is large, if not huge. There are about 170 worker working with Sonef in Mali , 150 workers in Niger and in Muritania there are 75 workers and in there are 30 workers working with the company in Sengal. Apart from that in its other places like in Cote d Inorie there are 20 workers, in Benin there are 20 workers, Burkina Faso has 20 workers and Togo has 20 workers. In total, it can be seen that there are approximately five hundred workers working with the company. It would be also appropriate to mention that all the workers that are working with Sonef group are permanent. The company draws an approximate of twelve to thirteen percent salary only in the Bamako.
The investments of the company are well divided amongst its sub sections. The company invests a 70 percent in the maintenance of its stations and the rest 30 percent are invested in the lease contract. It has been recorded that, customers, that is passengers travel a minimum of 3- to 40 miles per month with Sonef transportations.
About the axes and stations of the Sonef company, there are in total nine axes and destinations that the company has its branches. All of these are interconnected and the operational department of the company is centralized. That is, the dare structure, rules and regulations and time charts of all the stations and axes are regulated by the same operational head. The eight destinations that Sonef company works in are Benign, Burkina, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo (Julien, 2018).
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Strengths · The company has experience and over the years have gathered goodwill among the stakeholders of the organisation · The company has positive growth and revenue trends · The organisation has resource and capabilities to keep up with the changing dynamics of the industry · The diversified array of products and service · The company has created its brand image among the target market |
Weakness · The number of people working for the company are low · There is a complex network of business operations · Advanced technologies are not used in the organization · Monitoring and keeping a track of the vehicles while they are on the move · There is no online existence of the company which at this stage poses threat to the credibility of the company |
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Opportunities · The company has the opportunity to expand the business in terms of its destination and reach. · The government encourages trade and business in the country is also an opportunity for the company to grow and develop · The company has the opportunity to grow their social media presence the company · The company has the opportunity to diversify their transport systems from buses to cars in the future · Develop application in order to conduct booking and other operations to develop the business |
Threats · There is rising competition in the industry · The public transportations like rail and airways are a major threat to the company. Car rental services are also a threat · There are chances of inflation in the economy which might negatively impact the business · The price of the variables that are associated with the company may also fluctuate causing negative impact on the business. |
The role of human resource department in the company is multi functional. The human resource manager at Sonef takes the responsibility for executing the orders of sales so that the activities like picking of tickets, distribution of tickets and other activities like handling of machines and equipments, operations related to loading and maintaining the quality of transportation. The competencies of the human resource manager in Sonef industries are also multi fold. They are proficient in communication and language, has excellent leadership and organizational skills, have a positive attitude towards problems and have an insight of analyzing and solving problems. What makes the difference from human resource managers of other sector and transportation sector is that, at transportation industry, the human resource managers has a technical capacity to analyze issues. It is not only about recruitment of employees, but at Sonef, the human resource managers and officials also serves the responsibility of analyzing the technical fault and difficulties that may occur while production of the transports or while operating those. At Sonef, the human resource managers also performs the supervisory responsibility (Cohen, 2017). That is, they are responsible to keep a track of the performance of the employees. Work environment is also a sector that the human resource managers need to look upon. In this section, the human resource managers arranges special offers and discounts in extreme climatic conditions. Also, it is the human resource managers that are responsible for rerouting the transportation from other routs if the climatic conditions are adverse. At Sonef, the human resource managers and officers also trains the drivers and the other employees in the transportation department. The training period is mostly conducted for 5 days a month, two hours each day (Schliwa et al., 2015).
Though Sonef is an established organization and it has its branches apart from tourism, yet there are certain difficulties that the industry faces in day to day operation. Some difficulties are traditional, whereas some other difficulties are intermittent. The traditional difficulties that the company faces while carrying on their daily business are high rate of taxes, very expensive border toll rates, the pitiable condition of roads and the ups and downs in rate of petrol and in the availability of petrol products all over the globe (Ozment, Kurtz & Gentry, 2015). Apart from that the company also faces difficulty in police interference, checking and monitoring, custom clearance and myriad other problems and issues that may result in the loss of cash or finance of the company. In order to understand in detail the key issues faced by Sonef transportation industry, a few can be mentioned and described along with the plausible solutions
Costs of fuel: Considering the huge distance that the transport of the company makes, the fuel costs are o the higher side. Again, given the fact that not all the time of the year the transportation services are fully availed by customers, the company also generates lesser revenue than usual. Given the fact that tourism in Africa is seasonal, the transportation of Sonef are run in loss. Most of the revenue is still managed during the festive time of the year.
Business improvement and implementation of technologies: While implementation of technologies may sound interesting, on the other hand implementing technologies and maintaining the same can be a bit difficult. Once technology is implemented with transportation sector, there is no iota of doubt that it will certainly be profitable. However, on a other hand there may be different picture as well. In order to generate the revenue that has been invested in the implementation of technology, the ticket fare needs to be raised. Comparing the economic conditions of the country, it can be said that there are least travelers who would invest upon luxurious transportation in Africa. As such, the company would again have a risk of running in loss. It has been observed that almost all the transport of the company are designed in accordance to modern technology. The reason and the profit in this context is questionable.
Improved customers service: This is a new feature that has been added to Sonef transportation system lately. This is a wonderful feature that the company has added into its organizational structure. In most of the transportation organizations, there are no proper structure of customer service desk. It has been seen that just for this additional feature, the company has been able to make in inflation in its sales of about 64 percent in the year 2016. Customer service plays an important role in solving the issues that are faced by the travelers. Customer service department in Sonef transportation takes care that all the customers are comfortable during the journey, especially the international customers (Julien, 2018). There are also customer service executives onboard in long distant travels that are proficient in languages. Such approach by the company makes the customers feel homely and perhaps that is the very reason the company has been able to witness a fast inflation in its growth and business, after the establishment of customer service department.
Driver shortage and attrition of employees: Due to the fact that long driving is a tiring process, it has been observed that most of the drivers and the employees that are recruited for working on board drops the job after sometime (Bedford & Harrison, 2015). In maximum of the cases, a time span of six months has been noticed. This results in continuous hiring. In this process, the key skills are at times compromised.
Government regulation and environmental issues: As already discussed, government rules and laws are significant barriers in the sector of transportation business. Environmental factors are the new add on to the already existing trouble.
Some of these are traditional barriers that cannot be worked upon. For example, the government rules and regulations, environmental factors are certain barriers that cannot be altered by the industry. However, there are certain barriers that the industry is facing issues with which are amendable. For example, the implementation of technological development has been a boon and bane for the industry. With the advent of technology and its implementation, it has led the company to design the transportations better, the production process is faster, the interior of the transport are also smoother and more comfortable. However, at the same time now the industry address a section of the customers. The transport are no longer open for all section of travelers since, the prices are on the higher side (Bedford & Harrison, 2015).
In this context, the plausible recommendation would be the company must not modify all of its buses and commercial vans at a go. The company must target all the customers. It must keep some of non-ac and some ac buses so that the opportunity to serve all section of customer remains and the company at the same time will be able to earn revenue from both the sources
Figure 1: GDP growth rate of Africa and corresponding rate of transportation
Source: Transport.sonef.net
Figure 2: Revenue earned by Sonef Transportation
Source: Transport.sonef.net
Figure: Factors impacting the growth of the transport industry
Source: Statista.com 2011
Reference List
Bedford, D., & Harrison, F. (2015). Leveraging environmental scanning methods to identify knowledge management activities in transportation. Journal of Knowledge Management, 19(3), 579-592.
Berman, R., & Benade, R. (2015). Performance based standards: A sustainable solution for transportation in South Africa.
Buthelezi, S. A., & Davies, T. C. (2015). Carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exposure from vehicular transportation and other industrial activities in the vicinity of Umlazi Township, South of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 70(3), 277-283.
Cohen, E. (2017). CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices. Routledge.
Jedwab, R., & Moradi, A. (2016). The permanent effects of transportation revolutions in poor countries: evidence from Africa. Review of economics and statistics, 98(2), 268-284.
Ozment, J., Kurtz, D. L., & Gentry, J. J. (2015). Transportation Infrastructure Investment in Developing Countries: Implications for International Marketers. In Global Perspectives in Marketing for the 21st Century (pp. 96-100). Springer, Cham.
Schliwa, G., Armitage, R., Aziz, S., Evans, J., & Rhoades, J. (2015). Research in Transportation Business & Management.
Transport.sonef.net, 2018
Statista.com. (2018). Leading drivers of growth in the emergence of Africa’s logistics market, according to respondents from 2016 to 2018. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/670916/drivers-of-growth-in-the-logistics-industry-africa-poll/
Julien, G. (2018). Sonef Transport Voyageurs. Transport.sonef.net. Retrieved 24 April 2018(Julien, 2018)
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