In late 2014, IT consulting and software development company, Codefish, was approached by ieng Group to design a customised site management system as the telecom services company was unsatisfied with existing platforms in the market. TowerXchange speak to Codefish to understand how the system was designed and rolled out and ask how ieng Group’s management have responded to the new system.
TowerXchange: Please can you introduce Codefish to TowerXchange readers unfamiliar with the company and explain who some of the clients are that you have worked with (both in and out of the telecoms sector).
Kamel Semakieh, Managing Partner, Codefish:
Codefish is an IT consulting and software development company with global delivery capabilities. Codefish provides a variety of homegrown turnkey solutions along with custom software consulting and development services.
Our services are vast and range from outsourced IT to in-house staff augmentation, consulting services to business process automation, website development to ecommerce solutions, mobile apps to TV web. To sum it up, we consider ourselves to be problem solvers with an expansive technology toolkit.
Some of our clients include: Nestle Waters, ieng Group, Samsung CTC, Mazda Lebanon, GlobeMed, Starbow.
TowerXchange: We understand ieng Group to have approached Codefish to develop a solution for them; why did ieng Group look to Codefish and what challenges did they want you to address?
Kamel Semakieh, Managing Partner, Codefish:
In late 2014, ieng Group were looking for a telecom site management solution. After evaluating already existing solutions at that time, they were not satisfied with what was being offered in the market for the following reasons:
- The current systems were technologically outdated and not cloud based
- They lacked main processes and didn’t cover the whole scope of the work
- Had way too many features that are not needed anymore in today’s environment and thus made them very hard to implement
- Were designed for a specific market and needed a lot of alteration to fit other markets and clients since ieng Group were in over 13 countries.
- Wouldn’t allow you to monitor different operations at once, which means no consolidation at group level. Group members were not able to view the KPIs on a single dashboard for all operations
- Very expensive to implement and maintain.
In Codefish, ieng Group found a technology partner that has a track record in developing customised solutions across several industries. Over the course of the past five years, Codefish had developed a cloud framework built with the latest technologies with integration capabilities to other modules such as warehouse management, invoicing, HR, and accounting. The platform was rich in visual dashboards with a solid reporting engine.
Furthermore, Codefish had developed the service center of Samsung CTC in Lebanon, a project that shares several commonalities with the system that ieng Group were looking to build. This solidified ieng Group’s trust in Codefish’s ability to deliver on their promise.
TowerXchange: Can you explain a little bit about the Codefish system and how this was customised to meet ieng Group’s requirements?
Kamel Semakieh, Managing Partner, Codefish:
Codefish’s System is a cloud based framework, built with Java at its core and embedding the latest software engineering design patterns and best practices. The platform was built to accommodate multiple modules, serving multiple companies and operations, with multiple access levels. This in turn allows our clients to run consolidated reports at group level while ensuring the security and integrity of their data. ieng Group needed to add a managed services module to complement the existing modules (warehouse management, invoicing and HR) to help manage their maintenance operation. We called the full turnkey solution STSM (Smart Telecom Site Management)
The STSM solution targets managed services companies and covers all aspects of telecom site maintenance including:
- NOC management/network performance and SLA breach management
- Preventive maintenance management
- Fuel Management
- Spares management
- Revenue management
- Contract configuration management
- Sites inventory configuration management / asset management
- On the ground maintenance mobile app (Android and IOS)
- Reporting and analytics
STSM provides a simple, effective and low cost solution which does not use the hardware at remote sites. Rather it concentrates on getting information and real time analysis, hence enabling the client to react promptly; for example, the client will be notified of high fuel consumption at a site in order handle the issue immediately and avoid losses.
Benefits of this include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Revenue increase
- OPEX reduction
- Real time notification
- Full visibility over network availability/performance
- Full drill-down from operational, technical, financial and business managerial levels per site/region/network
- SLA enforcement
- Customisation of the portal in accordance with the client’s needs
- Business intelligence - real time focus on P&L of network
- Minimisation of theft and leakage
- Integration with Codefish accounting, warehouse management and invoicing modules
TowerXchange: How long did the process take to integrate this into ieng Group’s operations and what were some of the challenges along the way?
Kamel Semakieh, Managing Partner, Codefish:
There were three phases for STSM. Phase one was the development stage where we built the managed services module. It took us around fifteen months to complete the product and integrate it with existing modules.
Phase two was the implementation of the first three operations, which was the biggest challenge we faced during the full project lifecycle and lasted around six months. Implementing the solution in different operations was very challenging as contracts in Uganda, for example, were very different to contracts in Ghana in terms of maintenance pricing, fuel, spares parts management and SLA configuration. We had to thoroughly analyse more than ten different SLA contracts between ieng Group and its clients in order to generate a contract module that could cater for all different scenarios and business processes across multiple markets. Furthermore, adapting to different cultures and environments was also a tough exercise. Our team physically went on the ground with ieng field representatives to perform maintenance visits in order to fully understand how the process works in different regions.
Once we finished the first three operations, the success and speed of phase three was decisive in our decision to transform STSM into a resalable product. The speed of implementation in each new operation meant that we now have a scalable solution. In fact, some operations took just one week to be fully operational.
TowerXchange: What has been ieng Group’s feedback on the system?
Kamel Semakieh, Managing Partner, Codefish:
To be fully honest, during the implementation of the first three operations, ieng were having mixed emotions over STSM because implementation was taking some time and management could not yet measure the benefits of the solution. However, once the first three operations were done, the remaining operations became very easy to roll out and the benefits were starting to show with the early operations.
Soon, our reputation within the management of each country was so positive that other country heads were so eager to have the solution that they would call me in person to ask me about the timeline of their respective operation. Now, eight months after going live, management have witnessed an increase in revenue by an average of 19%. Theft was significantly reduced and controlled and team leaders were able to considerably optimise their workforce.
The best compliment we ever received though was when I learned that ieng are pitching STSM to their clients. Their clients loved the solution and as a result ieng Group are now adding STSM in their bids to win new contracts.
The best compliment we ever received though was when I learned that ieng are pitching STSM to their clients. Their clients loved the solution and as a result ieng Group are now adding STSM in their bids to win new contracts
TowerXchange: What differentiates Codefish’s solution from others in the market? How does your solution avoid the limitations of other products on the market?
Kamel Semakieh, Managing Partner, Codefish:
I believe there are 5 major factors that could potentially differentiate us from our competition.
1. Our solution was built in collaboration with a client that has thirteen operations. This allowed us to have a generic solution adaptable to different countries, different processes and different cultures and environments.
2. Our pricing model: We understand that this industry is very competitive and it is very easy for a client to easily lose a contract. As such, our strategy is to align our interest with the client’s interest. We do this by charging a minimal one time setup/license fee and then charge per site per month. This way, if our clients are dissatisfied or for some reason lose a contract, they will not be stuck with a large investment. Furthermore, we believe that with our solution, our clients will be able to better respect their SLAs and provide better quality of service to their respective clients, allowing them to increase their site portfolio. Basically we grow with our clients or we lose with them. It’s as close to a partnership as possible.
3. Flexibility: Our aim with every client is of course to offer them best practice for the industry, however we are aware that sometimes clients have strict processes that are working well for them. Hence instead of forcing our clients to adapt to our process, we customise our solution to fit their needs.
4. Customer support: I always tell our client “We are not a software provider, we are a service provider”. Implementing and deploying the software for our client is just the first step in our collaboration. Our aim is for our clients to take full advantage of our solution and as such we assign a dedicated account manager to each of our clients that constantly monitors the team’s performance, ensures users fully utilise and understand STSM and most importantly report anomalies that we find.
5. Mobile App: Our solution is complemented with a mobile application that runs on both Android and IOS. The mobile app helps field representatives such as maintenance technicians and fuel supervisors with their on the ground tasks. This helps automate the process from one end but more importantly allows management to have real time notifications.
TowerXchange: What’s next for Codefish in the telecoms sector?
Kamel Semakieh, Managing Partner, Codefish:
Our short term goal is to establish ourselves in managed services. From a business perspective, we want increase our market share and establish an office most probably in Ghana in order to expand our sales and customer support teams and consequently, cement our presence in Africa. From the technology perspective, we are currently integrating with existing RMS and RMMS suppliers in order for our data to be automatically synched with the site.
Our long term vision is to create an all in one three layer solution that will cater not only to managed services companies but also to tower companies and MNOs. Our managed services module will be complemented with tower asset and capacity management modules. Once these modules are in place, STSM will have a big centralised site database that could generate crucial business intelligence and data mining to network operators.
