Metacom by CMB Media Group

M E TA C O M

Metacom CEO - RĂŠan van Niekerk

METACOM

Metacom’s ‘Store of the Future’

Concept to Change Retail Forever PRODUCTION: Manelesi Dumasi

When Metacom CEO, Réan van Niekerk began the process of starting the business from scratch in the early 00s, he could have never known that rate at which it would boom. 18 years later, he tells Enterprise Africa that his company is now “mission critical” in the operations of its clients and affects “the earnings ability of their operations.”

Imagine, walking down the high-street into your favourite store. As you approach, the automatic doors slide open, sensing your presence. As you enter, a connected display screen shows you promo material for a product you had been researching earlier in the day. The company’s tech detects your profile, remembering you from the last time you visited when you connected to the in-store Wi-Fi, happy that you recently liked a post on its Facebook page.

You’re thinking about where in the store you need to go as the Manager approaches. “Hello Mrs Smith. Happy Birthday for last week,” he says. “Thanks for coming back to the store – here’s a discount voucher for your next airtime purchase.” How did they know I was coming in for airtime? How did they know it was my birthday last week? ‘Oh well’, you contemplate – ‘it’s a nice gesture’. As you walk to the back of the store, another set of digital display screens play a video advert from one of your favourite brands. You then

receive a WhatsApp message from the store advising you of a daily offer on a product you might be interested in. You head for the discounted item, pick it up, smile with the store assistant before making your purchase and then you leave. As you exit, you get an email receipt and a message of thanks directly to your phone. The next store you walk into also knows you. It knows you have previously purchased a range of eco-friendly cleaning products so instructs the lighting to shift ever so slightly to a faint

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INDUSTRY FOCUS: TECHNOLOGY

shade of green - retailers often employ this colour to attract enviro-minded clients. In fact, this second store is a sister-brand to the first store and knows, thanks to your phone automatically connecting to the on-site public Wi-Fi router, that you are in the mood for buying. There’s a particular product you’re after, but you find it priced higher than you paid last time. Fortunately, while you queue, you receive an SMS from the store with a discount code. This time, as you prepare to leave, you receive a traditional printed receipt but on the reverse is a discount offer for next time you are shopping. The entire process across the two stores is completely personalised but takes just a few seconds to roll out. And these tech ideas are just the tip of the iceberg when you consider what is possible. Who is responsible for the tech innovations in these stores, some of which are happening now and some which are being developed? Perhaps Apple,

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or Amazon, or maybe Facebook? Or is it Google? These are the type of companies with the power and knowhow to create something like this, right? Wrong. While they could conceivably come up with this type of concept, there’s a local player on the ground actually working on it. It’s all thanks to communication technology, and in South Africa, much of that technology is being rolled out by Metacom. In September, Cape Town-based Metacom - specialists in providing high-quality managed Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) services to customers across various industries – hosted the first in a series of workshops titled Metacom Insight. The inaugural event was focused on retail and Metacom’s concept - the Store of the Future, where technology is seamlessly integrated to bring fantastic personalised service for shoppers, valuable insight for retailers, and enhancement of standards across the industry.

Metacom CEO, Réan van Niekerk tells Enterprise Africa that his company’s ideas could be world firsts. “We are certainly putting a tremendous amount of investment into the concept of the Store of the Future,” he says. “We believe in using technology to create a more personalised and customised experience for customers entering shops, and we are investing a substantial amount into R&D to develop these services in the future. It’s a whole host of solutions, some of which are in the market already and we are now developing our own variations, a few of which we believe are brand new.” Metacom is an industry-leader in the development of IT hardware such as routers, and communication networks and infrastructure. By installing worldleading connectivity devices across a store network, the company could quite easily begin to paint a detailed picture of the customer for the retailer while

METACOM

bringing a customised service. “The kinds of things we are talking about is identification through facial recognition or when a customer’s phone tries to connect to the Wi-Fi in the shop,” details van Niekerk. “We want them identified when they walk in and then tracking them in the store with heat mapping – which is already being done. From there, we can then deduce buying patterns and interface directly with the service of the retailer to see the historic buying patterns of the individual.” To date, Metacom has onboarded a number of southern Africa’s leading retailers including the Pep Group of Stores and Lewis Stores, to highlight the calibre of client who entrust their services. “If someone walks into a store on a weekly basis and buys beer, every three months or so, the store manager can receive an alert that the customer has entered the shop and can then approach the customer with a gift voucher for some free beer to say thank

you for being a loyal client. We have so many ideas like this – it’s all about creating a personalised experience for the customer, similar to what you get when you buy online. It’s about taking online into the shop. Department stores have become so big that service has become impersonal and by using technology to seamlessly intertwine the entire experience – look, smell, feel – you can personalise the experience for a customer.” He is critical of stores that have lost the personal touch, citing times when management, staff, customers and community all new each other by name. By utilising technology to its maximum potential, van Niekerk believes this type of personalisation can be regained. “If there are specials in the shop, maybe you could receive a WhatsApp or SMS as you enter, depending on what’s available, so that we ensure you get relevant content. If there are 20 specials, you can’t pump all 20 to a customer’s

phone as it’s just not relevant. If you can finetune and target an individual it will help to increase your revenue thanks to personalisation of the marketing efforts that are already in place.” Currently, Metacom is working on an idea which could see store managers making more effective use of the communications tools available in branch. “We must be the only company in the world that has interactive multimedia routers on our communications equipment which are controlled by a cell phone app,” says van Niekerk. “We have demonstrated that we can download training material to our routers in the evening. The next day, when the store manager closes the store, all the staff can gather and the manager can, through the app on their cell phone, play training material on all the screens in the store. Everything is handled by a Metacom router and the Metacom communications infrastructure.

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INDUSTRY FOCUS: TECHNOLOGY

“Something that was surprisingly easy for us to do, but something which our customers think is invaluable, is allowing managers to make announcements in the store over the PA system from a cell phone. We have developed an app where you can pre-record a message on your phone, listen back to it, re-record it, and when you’re happy, it will play throughout the store, through our router. It’s about taking technology and multimedia services and putting control into a store managers cell phone.” Asked when we could realistically

see ideas like this become mainstream on the high-street, van Niekerk says 2019 will be a big year. “The bulk of everything has been developed and some aspects have been rolled out, like multimedia services which are in operation at Pep stores,” he says. “Most of it will be implemented over the course of the next year. The apps are working, the screens are working, the music is working, the training material is working, the public Wi-Fi hotspots are working; the primary focus for now is on the identification of individuals and how we intelligently

interpret and act on this information.” The collection of personal data has become a rather hot topic in recent months following many malpractice scandals where people’s personal information has been inadequately protected. Information about customers is now used as a currency in some circles, and its value is exactly why Metacom takes security so seriously. Protecting the interests of its clients, and in turn the interests of its client’s clients, is permanently fixed as a company top priority. “All of our communication goes

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INDUSTRY FOCUS: TECHNOLOGY

over encrypted channels, all data is encrypted – the entire company structure is secure,” ensures van Niekerk. “There isn’t a single strategy you can put in place, there are multiple layers of security and barriers that anyone would have to break. We take security incredibly seriously and there are a whole host of world-class measures in place to make sure data is safe. “In 2004, we were the first company to roll our GPRS-based communication for EFT terminals on a national basis. It was a huge success and even back then we were very conscious about protecting our customers networks and communication. It remains, and has always been, a very big issue for us.” A CONNECTED HISTORY How can Metacom contribute to the roll out of a ‘store of the future’ concept? Looking back over its history, this is a company with a truly impressive track record in the IT space. Van Niekerk

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himself has been in the industry for more than 35 years and has been behind a number of successful start-ups. “Before starting Metacom, I was with a software company for four years and things were going very well – we were making money and things were great, but I got bored,” he remembers. “We specialised in software for the corporate market in SA but we didn’t have new product areas that we could all agree on. I like a challenge, I like to create new things, I like to be innovative. I resigned as a Director of that company in 2002 and started Metacom.” He thought long and hard about how to be different and how to offer something which would be valuable to people but was not currently available in the market. “I’ve always had an interest in technology and IT, and I’ve always been involved in networking systems, software, electronic engineering and the entire ICT framework of services.”

He came up with an idea which involved using multiple connected blackboxes to create a large network that could span the country and talk to electronic devices no matter where they sit. Without realising it, Van Niekerk had come up with a precursor to what we know today as the Internet of Things (IoT). “I remember clearly having a vision of these little black boxes everywhere in South Africa, and eventually around the world, that interconnect with each other through unique IP addresses to take care of useful tasks,” he recalls. Today, Metacom has tens of thousands of routers installed across 22 countries around the world, 18 of which are in Africa. In South Africa, the company has routers in every town in the country, and thousands more covering the spaces between towns for Eskom to monitor and manage electricity distribution on the country. Eskom, Pep Stores, Lewis Stores, Old Mutual, Capitec Bank, Spark ATM, and a

METACOM

host of other national and international clients trust Metacom to deliver. Van Niekerk remembers two key moments in the company’s history when he realised Metacom was no longer a start-up but a value-adding, established organisation. “Firstly, we provided the first GPRS enabled SCADA (Supervisory control and data acquisition) communications infrastructure for companies, especially utilities, to manage their remote assets. Around half of Eskom’s electricity distribution control systems runs through our networks. We were the first company in South Africa, possibly the world, to specialise in GPRS-based communication control systems for SCADA. Secondly, a big opportunity at the time was for us to be the first company in South Africa to provide financial transaction processing for EFT terminals and ATMs to connect through our specialised hardware and network communication infrastructure with the banks. We were the first company to do that using GPRS provided by the cell phone networks. Those two things

// I LIKE A CHALLENGE, I LIKE TO CREATE NEW THINGS, I LIKE TO BE INNOVATIVE //

combined gave us a tremendous boost. From there, we had numerous other successes, but our primary driving force right now is a range of routers that are entirely designed, developed and manufactured in-house. We sell them to a variety of customers across a range of industries.” MISSION CRITICAL Metacom’s success could be attributed to any number of factors but van Niekerk highlights two: The company’s large infrastructure, developed over 18 years; and a focus on first-class quality service which results in recurring income. “We are crucial to the very earnings ability of the bulk of our clients,” he says. “The true secret source of Metacom is the fact that we have built a virtual communication infrastructure. We have a virtual network with secure tunnels and encryption etc which runs on any available physical infrastructure at a location where it is required.” He uses Pep Stores as an example. “Pep uses our communication infrastructure for all of their communication requirements across all their branches in Africa. They connect with high-speed connectivity from their head office into our infrastructure and from there, they can communicate with any branch across Africa irrespective of how that branch is connected. It could be fibre, it could be satellite, it could

be DSL or whatever is available for the best price.” A dreaded drop in communication infrastructure is not an option for Metacom. The company recognises the importance of consistent, uninterrupted, quality connectivity, and van Niekerk describes Metacom’s input as ‘mission critical’ for clients. For this reason, there are many back-ups built into the system. “An area where we are particularly strong is providing incredibly reliable automated failover communication systems,” explains the CEO. “We find that most of our customers use dual-GSM connectivity because every product supports four sim cards, two chip SIMS and two plastic SIMS. In Africa, we’ll have primary communication using satellite, DSL or fibre with failover communications through GSM. We have really perfected this process and are now masters of it. Our customers are not even aware of whether primary or back up communication channels are used. We try to have the two links across all of our sites so reliability is extremely high.” The quality and strength of the networks developed by Metacom has resulted in the company looking to bring all of the associated activity inhouse, and this feeds into the Store of the Future concept – if they are already supplying network and communication equipment, it would make sense to also support multimedia and financial transaction processing technology. “Developing secure reliable network connectivity for our clients is in our DNA – that is our core,” says van Niekerk. “Over time, part of our strategy was to build additional services that require a network to work on. In the past, we would provide a network for a client and the client would then get another independent supplier to provide multimedia services. Those services obviously require a network to operate on. When there’s a problem, it can be tricky to solve as no one is sure who’s responsibility it is. We have developed a number of additional services and vertical products that sit

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INDUSTRY FOCUS: TECHNOLOGY

on top of our network infrastructure. Amongst these is a multimedia service where radio, television, streaming or offline play can be carried by our equipment, our hardware, our monitoring services, our network, entirely under our control. “As we speak, we are in the process of installing more than 3000 sites in South Africa with our internet radio streaming services and media screens. We’ve also built our own public Wi-Fi hotspot control mechanisms. This allows customers like Capitec to use our Wi-Fi hotspots in their branches across the country. We provide these additional services for our clients that require a network. We take full responsibility for all connectivity and any related service.” GLOBALLY CONNECTED? The future for this South African success story will involve significant growth in its home market but also new business in Europe. Metacom opened its first office outside of South Africa, in Brussels, Belgium as it looks to gain access to the large markets across 27 European nations.

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“We wish to create opportunities for our people to travel internationally and be exposed to international markets. South Africa still holds a huge number of opportunities for us but I am a big thinker and I want us to expand,” explains van Niekerk. “We started our office in Belgium in April 2017 but it took us a long time to get the administrative aspects of the company established. We are now starting to get traction and we will probably start employing people next year. We have appointed a regional executive in Johannesburg, who opened our office there in September, and we will also start to employ additional people next year too. I just appointed another new regional executive in Durban, so we are planning to build a Durban office as of Jan 1st. “It will take a while, but the office in Belgium is going to do great things in the future. We want to build that office substantially to serve the entire region. We are looking at other opportunities around the world and we are ready to expand when there are good opportunities and good people.” For the past two years, Metacom has

// DEVELOPING SECURE RELIABLE NETWORK CONNECTIVITY FOR OUR CLIENTS IS IN OUR DNA – THAT IS OUR CORE // grown by more than 40% per annum. In 2019, van Niekerk says that the company will likely grow by 50%. “We have been extremely fortunate in that almost all of the products we have ever created have gone into market and are working very well. The recurring income for the company has grown every month for the past 18 years and clearly there is an appetite and a need for our services and we continue to grow substantially every year,” he says. THE METACOM WAY For growing tech companies in Africa, the challenges are vast. Access to finance, access to sizeable markets,

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connectivity and constant change in consumer patterns have been cited as just a handful of significant hurdles faced by expanding businesses, but at Metacom the ethos is very different. A passionate and dedicated employee base, led by entrepreneurial problem solvers, in an industry with a big gap for an experienced player to fill, make for an exciting prospect, for now and the future. “A lot of companies in our industry have been struggling but we are fortunate that we are unique as the only company that designs, manufactures, installs, supports, maintains, and has the entire infrastructure to provide a true turn-key solution,” says van Niekerk. “We have in-house the expertise for the entire communication solution and that means we can so often do things that others cannot because we write and develop the firmware in our network infrastructure. If customers need features or functionality that isn’t available in your off-the-shelf equipment, we can add it.” He talks about ‘The Metacom Way’, a culture that has been woven into the DNA of the business since its inception. The concept is a whole eco-system, present

across Metacom’s entire operation, which involves going above and beyond for the customer, regardless of cost; placing quality customer service at the forefront of everything that is done; and above all, doing things with passion. This, he says, is why he is not set on hiring people with only an extensive technical knowledge – “that can be taught. But what cannot be taught is passion and a can-do attitude. “The bulk of our people have been with the company for many years. The character of a person is more important than the technical ability. We have a very high average IQ (intelligence quotient) in the company so, next year, I will be embarking on a campaign to improve the company’s EQ (emotional quotient). If I can train everybody and improve their EQ, not only will the company perform better, it will be a nicer place to be. I’m not talking about only skills – what is really important for a successful company is mature, together, wise people. You can easily teach and test skills, but how do you get people to work together? Developing EQ is core to the success of any business.” Rolling out the store of the future concept; designing, manufacturing and

installing routers across South Africa; opening new offices in Johannesburg, Durban and Belgium; all while consistently delivering the communication and connectivity infrastructure for major existing clients – perhaps the 85 staff at Metacom are robots, or magic? No, says van Niekerk. “Right now, we are under extreme stress in the company.” Fortunately the stress does not come from a lack of business. “What we have to complete before the end of the year, I have no idea how we will do it. Our challenges come from us continually bringing in so much work. It is difficult, I am stressed and I am working very hard but I enjoy it because I am passionate. As long as we continue to do a good job – and we are absolutely committed to excellent customer service – I believe we will remain partnered with our clients for many years to come.” he concludes.

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ENTERPRISE AFRICA

DECEMBER 2018