Exictos: Provider of Consulting Services in IT and Software Solutions

Interview with Joaquim Tobias Dai, Executive Board Director of Exictos (Asseco Group)

Can you describe what makes Exictos distinctive and what are your competitive advantages?

At Exictos, we are actually in a niche market, as a software house and a consultancy company that develops software internally. Our consultancy involves developing products with our own software or that of partners such as SAP, Microsoft or Adobe, in order to meet our clients’ needs.

This is a niche we have secured in Mozambique, given that not many IT companies in the country do what we do.

Why is it a niche? Because you only have around five companies in the world that can develop a software from start to finish and deliver it to a client such as a bank. This is something we do. Of course, we don’t have our development facility here in Mozambique but in Portugal. We are a group and the license is of course issued by the group.

What we have in Mozambique is a company with the capabilities I just mentioned, focusing on Mozambique. Our clients so far are from the financial sector. For instance, we delivered a product to an entity which manages pension funds on behalf of the Central Bank. This was our partner’s software, not our own, but we delivered it. In addition, we have nine banks working with our application software in Mozambique, which means that roughly 50% of the banking market works with our software. This is why it’s a niche, because it’s not easy to work with banks. There is very specific technology involved. A bank cannot collapse or have bump into problems, because otherwise the primary client can’t access his money or may have difficulty completing a transaction over the internet.

We have very good Mozambican technicians working in the country, which has allowed us to pass on lower consultancy rates to our clients. Instead of importing technicians from Portugal to fix a problem, we have them on-site in Mozambique.

This is Exictos. We have been operating in Mozambique since 1997, when we opened the first bank in the country, and we have had an office since 2006. We changed our name from Promosoft to Exictos, and today we are stable in the market.

We struggled to begin with, as every company does, but we managed to establish our presence in Mozambique. We now have very good Mozambican technicians working in the country, which has allowed us to pass on lower consultancy rates to our clients. Instead of importing technicians from Portugal to fix a problem, we have them on-site in Mozambique.

What this means is that we now have around 27 technicians in Mozambique working not only on our technology, but also in terms of management. You need someone who understands the banking business to convey the clients’ needs to the technicians who develop the technology and normally deliver the final product – which has to be as good as the client expects it to be.

Having already established yourself in the banking and insurance sectors, are you now looking to go elsewhere?

Yes, when we started Promosoft in Mozambique, our company was operating solely in the banking sector. When we changed our name to Exictos – which stands for Excellence in IT, Consultancy, Technology and Software – we set out to enlarge our business opportunities, in the countries we cover and the business we have.

In Mozambique, we would like to expand to other markets, such as utilities and the government sector. Our partnership with major software houses, such as SAP and Microsoft enables us to achieve this, in addition to our internal capabilities, such as our in-house technicians who are able to develop the products I mentioned.

We are already trying to work with these other enterprises, and we have approached officials in the government sector and some of the utilities – working with them and in some cases launching tender bids, which we are applying for and trying to get a hold on.

Everyone knows us in the banking sector, however, because they know we deliver. Ever since the first commercial bank opened in the country, our banks have been working with Exictos technology, so we are very well recognised in the financial sector, albeit not among the utilities. Our challenge now is to deliver good products and project a good image to these new markets where we want to achieve more, and we believe we will get there.

We now simply need to stabilise our own products, given that we are creating new departments within the company to be able to cater to this new business. Internally, in Mozambique, we are also finalising training for our technicians, who will be delivering solutions for what we call ‘business outside the banking sector’, as a different market segment we want to develop.

With regards to utilities and governments, the final product would be customized software such as SAP, Adobe, etc., specifically for these sectors?

Yes. The final product must be as good as what you find in a bank. Let’s say we have an energy company. The company’s management must be able to open their laptops and find all the technical information they need, with regards to operations and finances. Businessmen or decision-makers want to be able to look at a computer and analyse the data to see where there are any gaps. They have a balanced scorecard, so the product comes with built-in business intelligence. This allows you to know what you want to achieve and monitor whether you are achieving the goals you have set yourself, on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis.

This is the kind of technology you must have, where an operation taking place anywhere in the country is instantly reflected in your company’s data. You need to be able to analyse this in a way that is user-friendly, and at the same time completely effective and robust, ensuring nobody can violate the software or change the way it was designed to work.

Let’s say someone has to change invoices, payments or workflow documents. These need to benefit from the same level of protection as you would find in a bank, with the same flexibility but in a different business. Although utilities are like banking, we are also dealing with a business with its own complexities, and you need tools enabling you to keep track of the way you are doing business.

You already have your in-house experts, but as you expand, you need to bring more people on board. What kind of people are you really looking for?

Normally, when we hire people, we hire across three different areas: engineering, business and economics. Let me explain. In terms of engineering, we usually look for ICT engineers, because we need IT programmers, analysts and developers. This also depends on the different kinds of technology we use, such as C+, Cobalt or Java. Clients have different products and we also have our own products internally. We need our technicians to be able to deal with the needs a client presents us, which may involve a change, an upgrade or an evolution.

With regards to people coming from an economics or business management background, these are people who are normally there to analyse the market and help us deal with the client directly, from a market point of view. They are much better placed to talk about markets and to analyse them, in terms of what we want to achieve with regards to marketing and economic goals: “How much do you want to sell? What do you need to get to that point?” This has to be someone who can really deal with the person in front of him. If it is a bank, this must be someone who can deal with someone in a bank. If we are talking about a utility, such as electricity or water, this has to be someone who understands the market and can design the concept of what we need to do for a client. The client must feel comfortable talking to that person and letting him know exactly what package he needs. With this in hand, we can go to our in-house team and develop the software, the technology or the consultancy, as required, because we also have in-house consultancy.

For instance, a bank in Mozambique wanted to make use of our application software. They came to us and said that they did not simply want our software, since we started asking them questions they couldn’t adequately answer, and they discovered they had a training shortfall. They asked us to go in as consultants and tell them how they needed to organise themselves. This consultancy is normally undertaken by our people with an economics or business management background, who come to the fore and make the most of such opportunities.

How do you project yourself 2 years from now?

Well, it’s difficult to say, because we are looking to establish ourselves in a new market. We know that revenues in this new market are quite different to those we find in the financial sector, which means it’s difficult to say exactly what we want to achieve. But we are definitely looking at somewhere between $ 10-15 million in revenue per year.

We are a unique company in Mozambique, but we want to be a company of reference in the country when it comes to IT, which we already are today, but we want to do even better. This we can achieve through greater visibility and by being the ‘training house’ we currently are. We are training very good technicians in Mozambique, and when some of them decide to leave the company, this is an asset we are bringing to the market: someone with very good training, not just in terms of technology, but in terms of business, in terms of the ‘company culture’; the way you relate to your colleagues and the way you see your client, not as the client per se, but as someone who needs your work. You don’t think of the client as someone who has to pay your bills or invoices, but someone with a challenge. His challenge is to satisfy his own clients.

As such, we don’t see ourselves as suppliers. We normally tell people we are not a company’s supplier. Instead, we are a business partner, because “you can’t do that without us, and we can’t carry out our business without you”. This is what we want to achieve: being business partners with Mozambique’s largest companies.