: OZIOMA UBABUKOH
Omatsola Barrow
The Acting Chief Enterprise Solutions Officer, MTN Nigeria, Omatsola Barrow, speaks to OZIOMA UBABUKOH about the success of MTN Business and its services to the business class
Your division manages some of the strategic services in the telecoms sector. Can you give us an insight into some of the things you do?
MTN Business is the Enterprise Business Unit of MTN Nigeria and we are focused on delivering technology solutions that enable businesses and the public sector to efficiently optimise their operations and connection to their customers. Our focus markets include Small and Medium Enterprises, large corporates and the public sector.
Our purpose as a business is to enable and inspire growth. We do this by providing innovative and customised solutions that help businesses reach more customers, serve these customers faster and better, and reduce cost, while at the same time maximizing profit.
So whether it is connecting a bank’s head office to all its branches and Automated Teller Machines nationwide through our expansive fibre- optic network, or hosting an oil firm’s critical seismic data in our Tier III data centre or providing a platform for SMEs to access affordable software from the MTN Cloud, to mention just a few, our solutions are designed to enable businesses to serve their customers better and by so doing grow.
How would you describe the level of investment made in the network to make it ready to provide solutions for modern businesses?
MTN has made considerable investment in its network over time and continues to invest in the technology, infrastructure and human resources necessary to deliver innovative technology solutions to the enterprise.
Our data centre is an example. We have a Tier III certified data centre from where we deliver a broad range of platform services as well as colocation, hosting, disaster recovery and cloud services to customers across the different verticals.
In line with our vision to be the choice Information and Communications Technology partner, for geographic and market expansion, we made huge investments in being part of the WACS consortium. This has afforded MTN the opportunity to provide ultra-high speed connectivity and broadband services to locations beyond the shores of Nigeria. In addition, we are able to deliver high-speed broadband through our fibre to the home/office solution to gated and multi-dwelling communities notably Victoria Garden City Estate and 1004 Estate.
These just a few investments have helped position us to serve our business customers better.
What are some of the initiatives you have introduced to help small and medium enterprises function better and more profitably, and how impactful have these initiatives been?
SMEs are very dear to us in MTN and our goal has been singular: to provide the SMEs with technology solutions that are relevant, accessible, affordable and easy to use. Thinking in this manner has allowed us innovate and provide a broad range of SME-focused solutions that SMEs have found very useful.
One of these solutions is the MTN Y’ello Directory. This is a business directory of over 300,000 SMEs in Nigeria. The service offers free listing to SMEs allowing them to be found by prospective buyers. Understanding the plight of SMEs not knowing how to go about getting and maintaining their own websites, we recently upgraded the MTN Y’ello Directory to allow SMEs also host mini sites within the directory as well as build a community for interaction and networking.
This means SMEs can get their businesses on the web free and have their prospective buyers reach them anytime from anywhere and at no cost at all.
One of the other many SME-focused initiatives is MTN Y’ello Biz. This is a micro-insurance service offered in collaboration with Mansard, targeted at shop owners and small office owners. For just N300 a week, a shop owner can enjoy an insurance cover of over N1m. This cover protects the goods in the shop against fire or flood.
Another area we have thought to focus on is the area of software as a service. Time was when a small business owner would have to spend a lot of money if he/she wanted to buy original software. This was accompanied by the complexity of hardware requirements and installation expertise. Today, we are able to provide Accounting, Human Resource, Supply Chain and CRM software to SMEs over the Internet. The SME only needs to subscribe to the software on a monthly basis making it more affordable yet less complex to use.
Working in partnership with the Computer Warehouse Group, we have also built a core banking application platform for micro banking services (MTN XaaS). This is software as a service solution targeted at the Micro finance banks and co-operative societies to help ease the initial CAPEX required to start as a bank.
The microfinance banks provide a huge funding platform for the SMEs. Therefore enhancing their service delivery makes access to funds easier for the micro enterprise and enhances their contribution to the economy.
These are just a few of the many initiatives we have deployed in the SMEs.
How would you define the core drivers of your operations as MTN Business, beyond what MTN is better known for?
Our focus in MTN Business is very clear and that is to enable growth of the enterprise with technology. Our key differentiators as a business are:
(a) Becoming the choice partner for geo /market expansion
(b) Serving the un-served/underserved business market
(c) Becoming a critical agent of economic growth by working with the Government
These key drivers speak to our focus on large enterprises, SMEs and the public sector.
In what ways is MTN Business going to drive the Telco 2.0 agenda for businesses?
In many ways, MTN Business is ahead of the curve in this regard. First, Telco 2.0 speaks to:
(a) Innovating around core service offerings to add value
(b) Use of latent telecoms capabilities to address new market opportunities
For years, we have considered our unique nature as a telco and a springboard for launching into new services that our existing businesses and customers will be happy to have. This has been the thinking around our bundling strategy. Today, we are able to deliver both voice and video over our fibre network thus allowing us offer voice, Internet and video on demand as a bundle offering. There are many more examples of how existing infrastructure is being put to new use for our customers’ benefit. Some of these include our expansion into data centre services, mobile advertising and mobility applications.
There is still a lack of awareness on the benefits of cloud services as well as the mistaken perception that cloud computing is very expensive. How is MTN Business bridging these gaps?
The Cloud is a very interesting phenomenon. Simply put, cloud services relate to services that can be accessed over the Internet at anytime, from anywhere most of which are device agnostic. We understand that the more people understand the benefits the Cloud offers, the more adoption there will be.
This was the reason behind the SME Forum we held in Q4 last year. The forum focused entirely on the Cloud services and how they benefit SMEs in practical use cases. It featured speakers from government, an Ordinary Equipment Manufacturer and an SME. We shall be holding many more of such forums to drive understanding of the service and its many benefits to SMEs.
You have recently announced a partnership with Intarget to provide a robust mobile advertising service for businesses. What value is inherent in this service for business owners?
Mobile advertising is an innovative way brands and businesses can engage more directly and more cost-efficiently with their prospects and customers. Since we launched MTN Mobile Ads a few years ago, we have continued to see increased interest in the service.
To begin with, brands can now complement their traditional advertising with mobile advertising, which gives them more robust, measurable marketing campaigns. This is basically because brands and companies can direct their adverts to a pre-profiled audience giving them a much higher conversion rate. Particularly for SMEs that don’t have the resources to fund lofty campaigns, this service holds the key.
With access to our over 60 million base and the ability to effectively profile and target accordingly, we are able to deliver the service via various channels.
source:PUNCH.
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