EXI: One of the Leading Information Technology Companies in Mozambique

Interview with Marisa Balas, Director of Operations at EXI – Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação

You are essentially a Human Resources company. Everything you do is about brains, so please tell us about your work.

We are a Mozambican company with a track record of over 20 years. Some of those who were there when our company started out still work with us; and yes, we are a ‘brain company’, which means that we depend on the brains of the people who work with us; on their qualities, their expertise, their capacities. This is why we focus on our people.

If you ask our staff why they like working here, I think they will all agree it’s a good working environment. They feel like being part of a big EXI family.

On average, we have always had around 50-60 people in our team and we like it that way. Not too big, not too small.

Could you tell us exactly who these people are, as well as what you do as a company?

We have two main lines of business. One focuses on applications and the infrastructure supporting those applications, for which we rely on software engineers, IT architects and business analysts. All together, they provide solutions to meet our customers’ demands.

We have the local expertise, we have a team, we have the facilities and we have the infrastructure all in place, which means we can respond in a fast and efficient way.

These are either customised applications, or off-the-shelf applications that need to be adapted to the Mozambican market. In this line of business we provide turnkey solutions. You ask us to provide you with something, and we deliver it, from the networking, the servers, the datacentres, through to the applications, as well as the IT services, so as to ensure that these applications are up and running, according to the service level agreement.

Our second line of business is management-oriented, which has to do with how we help our customers enhance and optimise their business processes, define their ICT policy and strategy, together with project and programme management. As such, it focuses on these managerial issues, thereby ensuring that our customers are able to call upon these abilities from among their own staff, which means we also undertake capacity training for our customers.

We currently focus on these two main lines of business. You can’t have one without the other.

So, you’re actually more than a software company, by providing education services, training and strategy consultancy, in seeking to improve a company’s management. It’s like going to the company’s CEO and pointing out where and how things could be improved.

Indeed. If you look at our experience over the past ten years, the Government of Mozambique set out to define its electronic government policy and ICT strategy. EXI was part of the group which designed this, together with the Government. Therefore, out of the Government’s six anchor projects, four of these were applications. Out of those four, three were developed by EXI, so we feel this is a huge responsibility. The implication is that, if these projects are up and running, then the Government will be better able to manage the information it needs to develop the country. As such, our focus over the past ten years has been more on the public sector than on the private sector, although we do have many contracts with the latter too.

Let’s talk about the private sector. You don’t really need to communicate your services to the public sector, but you do when it comes to the private sector.

That’s right, we’re already there when it comes to the public sector. In terms of the private sector, we need companies to become more mature, in order for them to be in a position to make better management decisions. That’s what we hope and seek for. With the latest developments in Mozambique, it is clear that more of these companies are starting to play a huge role and therefore ICT is needed for them to succeed.

That’s clearly something that will take time, but which you can’t change. It’s not in your hands.

Not entirely, but we can help those that are already established to thrive in the future.

What is your assessment of the oil and gas sector? What do you think you could bring to this sector if any oil and gas companies come along and need your services?

All of these companies need IT, in order to produce something, as well as maintain the service level required for their operations to be effective. They need services, in order to focus on their main business and forget about other support services, such as IT, while handing over this responsibility to companies like ours. If you’re in a position where you have to in-source IT people into the country, just to be able to support your company’s systems, it’s extremely expensive and risky. You’re also not empowering the country or the local economy, nor creating a sustainable environment.

In the end, it’s wiser to invest in local companies like ours, in order to ensure that these services are available and meet the standards required by the business. We believe we can meet those standards, since our focus includes training and certifications.

Why should I use a local company? I can use local contacts and agents, but essentially call upon the branch of an international company based here. Is that possible?

It’s possible. I’m not saying that if you’re an international company, you cannot be based in Mozambique. But, remember, you’ll have more difficulties in implementing your services here, especially if you aim to do so across the country.

There are branches of international firms here. However, their resources are essentially based in more mature economies, such as South Africa. For such firms, the existing volume of business does not justify their presence here and they maintain a small team and insource specialists when needed only. This delays some of the response times. And response time is a critical issue when it comes to IT services.

So they don’t operate here?

Yes, they may well do, but they just have a handful of technicians. They don’t have a team in place. It is still not economically viable to have a strong team in the country. In fact some of them subcontract us for certain services.

So you are practically unique in what you have to offer.

We have the local expertise, we have a team, we have the facilities and we have the infrastructure all in place. We don’t need to import and setup any of this. You may enter into a contract with some of these international companies, but then your service time frames will be longer, because they will need to import people to come here and provide those services, if something goes wrong. This is something that a corporation in need for ICT service just cannot afford: to wait long for services to be provided or for an incident or problem to be resolved.

In contrast, we are here, with experts available, which means we can respond in a fast and efficient way.

Could you tell us more about about your involvement with the World Bank and UNICEF?

Well, the projects we develop are normally large projects, and this necessarily means there are always donors involved. And donors need to feel comfortable, so they need to audit your work.

One of the largest projects we developed was for the national citizen civil registration and identification system, which was financed by UNICEF and the World Bank. These institutions required an audit of the entire solution, which was undertaken by a credible company: Ernst & Young. The results were very positive, so we knew we were doing the right thing when the results of this audit came out, confirming that the system we provided was the right one and was operating as required, correctly and with the right framework. We feel very happy about that. In the same line, other projects were also audited by other donors. This enhances the credibility of our company in this arena of donors requiring professional services for the implementation of the aid projects, in the different fields. We have examples of that in the Land project, in which we developed a Land Information Management System, financed by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and audited by an English firm HTPSE.

How do you see the company evolving in the medium term, say in the next two or three years? What would you like to have achieved by that time?

It’s like being a parent. You see your children being born and somehow you prepare them to start walking, then talking. That’s the way we see our projects. We believe that over the past five years, we have been helping our projects to learn how to walk and talk. It is time they now start running. We wish all of these applications start producing data so that the Government can indeed make decisions based on accurate and up to date information. We want to be in a position that we need to simply maintain these solutions, while doing other things to evolve them to other stages of information requirements. These solutions are up and running and they’re producing information the country needs, which is where we want to be in three years’ time.

One of the major challenges we have in Mozambique is that too many solutions are brought into the country and implemented, but then they are simply substituted by new ones after a year, because a new institution or donor enters the scene. This doesn’t produce results.

As such, if we can have a very steady and lasting solution that produces information and allows the country to breathe in, and this information is disseminated in the right way, thus allowing the right decisions to be made based on this information, then I believe we will have reached the place where we want to be – as opposed to changing things around and doing things differently every day. I believe, therefore, that what we need is a ‘stability momentum’, which would then allow us to focus on the new things that need to be done.

You also mentioned that you have the country’s best capabilities in place here, and that people are in fact out to headhunt your employees? This goes to show that you have the expertise.

Among the things EXI does is to maintain partnerships with renowned companies, such as Oracle, Fujitsu and Hitachi. In order for us to become professional partners, we need to certify our technicians, so regardless of the technology brand we engage with, certification is a must. We do certify our technicians, at great expense and effort; which in a sense also makes us a brain factory for the country. It’s not easy to retain these technicians, because the market seeks them out and usually hunts them at EXI. If there’s a need for new technicians, EXI people are sought after, since they are trained, certified and able. This presents us with the challenge of how to retain and keep our people happy, while treating them not as a human resource but as people, as brains and as strategic assets.

Do you need any specify skills, or specific technical expertise, coming from another company or a third party?

Well, in terms of expertise – and I believe this is not just EXI’s case, but equally embodies the country’s needs, as it develops and seeks to be able to produce more – we obviously need good programmers, given our line of business of developing applications.

We have people coming out of university, but we need to train them seriously, in order to enable them to develop good code. We also need good IT engineers, and by ‘good’ I don’t just mean with a diploma, because that seems to be quite easy these days. What we need are people with expertise and experience that have hands on know-how, which we can test and see the results of.

Something else the country needs, as well as EXI specifically, is GIS expertise: people who know how to work with these products and frameworks are pretty important to us.

To sum up, I would say: good programmers, good IT engineers and GIS experts. All of these would help feed our ability to provide solutions.

For more information, please visit: www.exi.co.mz