Maxim Nartov, chief business officer, Nexign conversed with Telecom Review during the GITEX 2021 event. In an exclusive interview, he puts into emphasis the aspects of digital transformation they have done as pandemic hits and how telcos can leverage their products and solutions.
Moving to a more virtual and omnichannel environment can be a key for CSPs capability to deliver better experiences to consumers and their internal teams. Maxim further stressed that MEA is one of the strategic regions for the company’s internationalization.
How do you support the digital transformation of telco operators?
We are already working with operators in their digital transformation over the years with different projects. Our focus initially is around BSS and revenue management capabilities. But now, we have introduced solutions to help them move forward faster.
One of those solutions is the microservices framework, which helps operators develop internal innovations and really adapt to the new technologies and fast market changes. Another important aspect of digital transformation that becomes more obvious these days is the employee experience.
Now the competition comes not only between the products but also for talents. As an IT company with almost 2,000 employees working in this market for over 30 years, we have developed a set of competencies and tools to rise our employee experience. What is more, we now presenting those tools to the market itself.
We have an employee portal that helps them keep engaged — no matter their generation and what different technologies they use. It also includes KPI management and gamification, among others.
How did the CSPs' needs and requirements change during the last two years (pandemic)? How did this affect Nexign’s product and service offerings?
The pandemic itself showed that CSPs need to move to a more virtual and omnichannel environment to support their consumers and employees. For us, it’s been a very interesting challenge as well when our country decided to go into lockdown.
We managed to shift to fully remote work in one day because our company processes are initially built in a very digital way that supports virtual environments. This is important as we have nine offices distributed around the country and some of them are even located outside. This helps us continuously deliver the projects and services we provide to our customers in non-stop mode. Moreover, we were able to manage the launching of new implementations during COVID-19, even without visiting the customers’ sites.
I think this is the same case for CSPs as well. They need to become virtual to work with their consumers in remote mode and have better ownership of the products and solutions they are using to enabling fast changes coming from regulations and consumer demand. In reality, some of them heavily rely on offshore people and external resources which results in frustration when it comes to shaping the team.
That’s one of the aspects of our transformation. We try to be very open with CSPs so they can have better ownership of their product by moving to more open environment and providing an omnichannel experience. Last year, we actually completed the acquisition of STORM Technologies who is focusing exactly on this type of experience.
IoT and 5G are both game-changers in the telco industry. How would this influence Nexign's business outcomes in the next five to ten years?
5G is at the core of our strategy because being a BSS provider, we need to enable our customers with the new features that 5G is bringing. It was pretty easy for us to switch into 5G mode because our solution is converged from day one.
If you see a 5G architecture, it’s changing from offline to online to converged charging, which for us is a native move. Now, we are working on deploying the next generation of our charging system which would be standalone 5G-ready.
What is Nexign mainly showcasing in this year's GITEX? Why is it important to participate in this event?
This event is very important to us as we believe that the MEA is one of the strategic regions for our company and for developing ourselves into an international environment. We brought here our traditional BSS products as well as the new generations of those products, at the same time expanding our portfolio to the microservices framework.
Through this, we believe that we can help CSPs to become more dynamic and digital and bring more employee engagement tools — keeping them moving forward.
How does Nexign help operators to maintain their market differentiation and keep up with customer demand?
Market differentiation moved far away from competing on rate plans on product offerings. Operators need to become ecosystem providers, coming closer to their customers. They need to move from just being CSPs into a lifestyle enabler, and that’s where we are working together with them.
For example, in the microservices framework that helps in the integration of new use cases, we have helped one of our customers launch into a specific digital subscription application (multiservice subscription) in a matter of days or weeks. For us, it’s very important to help our customers to move forward both on how they work with consumers and internally, becoming true digital inside and out.
