Sofrecom, an Orange Group subsidiary, is a consulting and engineering company in the telecommunications sector. Telecom Review spoke to Sofrecom CEO Guillaume Boudin and managing director of Sofrecom Middle East, Elias Saab, about the company's role in reshaping telecom operators' business models to keep up with industry disruption.
What sets Sofrecom apart from other companies in the field?
Four characteristics give Sofrecom a prominent position on the advisory and ITN services market:
- Deep understanding of international markets, and in particular the Middle Eastern - African markets: Thanks to our international anchorage, we have developed a very strong capacity for adaptation and for understanding our customers' diverse ecosystems. We capitalize on 50 years of expertise in the telecommunications sector in order to anticipate their needs, adapt our value proposition to their specific requirements and provide exemplary quality of service.
- Sofrecom's multiple areas of expertise combine observation and anticipation skills, management consultancy and ITN service development: We help operators design and deploy development strategies and can become involved across the entire value chain: from market positioning analysis up to implementing operational strategies, to deploying, as well as maintaining/optimizing infrastructure. Our approach also covers the impact these structural changes will have within organizations and skills: we support change management at all levels, putting people at the heart of that change.
- Belonging to Orange Group is an undeniable asset. We are participating in Orange Group's digital transformation, contributing towards its international development and diversification, and we provide all our customers with its formidable strength in terms of innovation.
- Finally, our Corporate Social Responsibility policy, notably in terms of diversity and social inclusion. Through our human resources strategy, we strive to promote diversity, including integrating disabilities, fostering equal opportunities among employees and ensuring the best possible personal life/career balance. We are working particularly hard in support of women's employment and access to technical professions. Sofrecom is a rich environment, with 2,000 female and male employees from over 30 different nations. In this regard, we are the first Orange Group entity to receive the AFNOR diversity label, and in Morocco, we have been awarded the Professional Equality Certificate.
How is Sofrecom helping the Middle East to get ready for the digital transformation?
Disruptions in the telecom industry requires reshaping operators' business models involving substantial changes in their organizations. Sofrecom partners with the operators in the Middle East to improve their operational performance with innovative approaches and to carve out with and for them the right conditions to succeed their digital transformation. Operators have to adapt their businesses, offers, CRM, organization and conquest strategy.
We help operators to achieve optimal processes management at all levels to improve their organization, reduce costs and increase profits without digital quality of services. We work alongside them to adapt their technical resources to define the best strategy and chose the right partners.
To cope with the explosion of data usage, we assist them in their network design and supervise the rollout of FTTx and mobile (4G, LTE, 5G) networks. We accompany them to have a network sufficiently powerful to support exploding data services and to stimulate their usage. We help them to transform their information system to enable the management of the convergence of networks and to secure their data and infrastructures.
We support them to use digital innovation as a growth driver by digitizing customer relationships and by developing new activities such as mobile financial servicse, B2B strategy and IoT (internet of things) strategy and services.
What are Sofrecom's plans for the region?
Sofrecom is continuing in its mission to build a connected world that generates links by providing advice and operational solutions to its customers (operators, regulators and institutions), helping them benefit from the expertise of its 2,000 consultants and experts, as well as from Orange Group innovation.
We're looking to strengthen our presence in the region, on the one hand by supporting Orange Group and its subsidiaries in Jordan and Egypt, and on the other by continuing to expand our portfolio of customers and countries in the region, and particularly in Gulf countries.
Our completed and ongoing projects in the region are opening up many opportunities. In 2017, Sofrecom opened over a dozen new customer accounts on projects to develop business strategies, as well as creating Mobile Financial Services. And in 2018, we will continue our development by helping operators diversify their value proposition by optimizing their cost structure, while at the same time improving customer experience. Elsewhere, we will be guiding a major player in the region in a three-year FTTH deployment project, enabling it to offer innovative new services to its customers.
