Nexsysone: How ONE software interface simplifies the management of network deployments, co-locations and maintenance activities

The Nexsysone software platform has been refined and proven in more than 250 large scale, complex network rollout, integration and maintenance projects worldwide. Originally developed as an internal competitive differentiator for Lemcon Networks, Nexsysone is now available to external customers such as towercos, MNOs and system integrators by LEC Consultancy DMCC out of Dubai, who also provide parallel service offerings. In this interview, Jim Prosser, CEO of LEC Consultancy, shared with TowerXchange in-depth details about Nexsysone’s evolution and capabilities.

TowerXchange: Tell us about the history of Nexsysone in Americas.

Nexsysone has been around since 2001. Our success story began in Sweden in 2001 where Nexsysone (then named LNT) was used to deploy the first ever shared UMTS network in the world for 3GIS (a joint venture between Vodafone, Orange and Hutchinson). In 2003 Nexsysone was deployed in the U.S. for the T-Mobile National UMTS deployment. Subsequently our solution was used to consolidate a number of local operation centers into a National central remote integration center in Dallas.

Our solution provided users with a single point of contact for nationwide integration tracking, rollout management reporting, alarm and fault management with OSS API integration, competence development and workforce management processing. Using best practice innovation gained from our telecom experiences since 1996, we customised our modules to deliver a true telecom focused end-to-end project deployment tracking and reporting platform. All aspects of the typical challenges faced when deploying or maintaining high volume complex networks were addressed by Nexsysone.

Customer acceptance lead-times using intelligent forms and work force task processing were reduced from three months to one day (i.e. sometimes before the technician had left site after a successful integration).

The word soon spread that Nexsysone was changing the way networks were typically deployed and maintained. Within a year after starting operations in the U.S., Nexsysone was deployed in Rio de Janeiro to support twelve countries across Latin America for six operators. Between Dallas and the Brazil-based regional operation center, we managed over 3,000 sites per month with UMTS upgrades, new site builds, core deployments, Edge activations, re-homes, fault management and site co-locations.

TowerXchange: How does Nexsysone assist the tower industry these days?

As the independent towerco model matures, operations become more complex. Nexsysone addresses these complexities.

We’ve listened to the requirements over the years and tailored our solutions to meet them. Previously our solutions exclusively focused on operators and system integrators but with the shift towards site sharing over the years we’ve adapted to meet these changes. A perfect example is in Myanmar where Nexsysone is solely used to deploy and site share infrastructure for two of the three operator networks. Myanmar currently has one of the largest greenfield deployments in Asia and Nexsysone is the exclusive supplier to both operators Ooredoo and MPT.

We tackle the site sharing process from the operator’s perspective and from the towerco’s perspective. Both have their own requirements but Nexsysone empowers both parties to reach that common agreement. We have an integrated RMS system, a tenant request portal (with a site information pack download feature), access management solution, cost control, field tech workforce management system, asset and site project management solution and an analytics reporting engine that assists with data analytics to ultimately improve work process efficiencies whilst reducing deployment and operational costs through visibility of factual data.

TowerXchange: Tell us about Nexsysone’s current offering and footprint.

Nexsysone is a system that has been moulded through twenty years of experience of designing, building and operating mobile networks. We have secured two thirds of the Myanmar market because of the completeness and suitability of our offering. Consistently, in all the deployments I have been involved with over the last twenty years, we’ve found that operators, and now towercos, require a scalable management system managed through a single interface. They need to consolidate documentation, control progresses, manage leases, rental billing and cost control; maintain the network, provide quality assurance, manage their workforce, cost control, provide end-to-end asset management, consolidate RMS data and develop the competence of their resources and subcontractors.

Our offering has five software modules which address all these issues. For us it’s all about synchronising the data and aligning processes between departments and companies into a single interface to manage communication within the projects. Currently our busiest regions are the U.S., Myanmar, the Philippines, UAE and some countries across Africa.

In Myanmar two of the three MNOs (Ooredoo and MPT) use Nexsysone to manage their rollouts. This means it is being used by all the active towercos, system integrators and OEMs in Myanmar. The Myanmar network rollout is a greenfield network rollout with a strong focus on site sharing. In the U.S., Mycom International use our software to manage their extensive Sprint, Verizon and AT&T turnkey rollouts. We’re also in Zimbabwe, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

TowerXchange: What drivers are making your clients make the switch to Nexsysone’s solutions? Is the decision simply financial?

We are telecommunications professionals with software skills. Not the other way around.

We firmly believe that it is the telecom specific knowledge that exudes from Nexsysone that appeals to our customers. It is a robust and dependable solution, with an unrivalled history of industry experience that comes built in. So no, it is not just a financial decision. It is all about understanding our customer needs and adapting the system accordingly. No project is ever the same. We’ve worked on enough to know that!

To understand Nexsysone it is important to understand its history and pedigree. Nexsysone is not new to the telecoms industry. Nexsysone was part of Lemcon Networks until four years ago. Lemcon was a Finnish system integrator operating in forty countries across five continents, which grew with Nokia in the ‘90s and 2000s. When Lemcon’s parent company sold its telecoms business unit, LEC consultancy Dubai under the previous management of Lemcon took full ownership of Nexsysone.

Nexsysone has been at the heart of planning, building, integrating, upgrading and modernising well over 250,000 cell sites since 2001. It was a system my team and I designed and built for our company. We were constantly adapting it to meet the challenges of the dynamic telecoms industry. It is all about understanding our customer needs and adapting the system to meet them. It is a product that helped us manage some of the world’s toughest rollouts and implement game changing rollout management software solutions, which are now common practices in most countries. Having used our solution, towercos come to us with their own requests for additional stand-alone features, or to integrate their existing systems with Nexsysone when purchased by an operator.

Nexsysone allows them to confidentially manage their own projects or unrelated projects. They also have other projects on going and other things happening that doesn’t necessarily need to be shared – meaning they need their own central asset database for example for passive infrastructure or task workforce management solutions.

TowerXchange: How does the relationship between Nexsysone, operator and towerco work?

It works by understanding that Nexsysone precisely is the relationship between the operator and the towerco.

We work together with our customers and their supplier ecosystem so that Nexsysone defines those relationships. Nexsysone binds the objectives and operations of the stakeholders together, and has become a primary single source of real time project information for official project communication and progress measurement.

An experienced rollout manager will tell you that the biggest challenge in every large rollout is aligning all the stakeholders on the same page. In its simplest form, it boils down to inter- and intra-company communication. We understand the conflicts that arise between stakeholders in a rollout. In a towerco scenario we focus on making the agreements between operators and towercos as transparent as possible. Transparency reduces unnecessary communication and improves time to market. Time to market is critical during a new rollout. Harmonising the complex needs of managers, planners, designers, OEMs and contractors, with different priorities in different companies is essential. Providing a single interface to attain efficient interaction is the key. And that is where Nexsysone comes in.

TowerXchange: Tell us more about how you help operators and towercos work together more effectively? How does that stack up against the other options on the market?

We are not scared of customisation. We actually embrace it but since our platform captures the typical requirements, customisation is never a big deal.

We listen and if needed customise Nexsysone to meet our customer’s exact requirements. Whilst the major objective is always the same: build the best network for the lowest cost in the quickest time; the processes to get there are sometimes different. Different countries require different permits and different acquisition procedures for example. Efficient construction methods differ from country to country, so lead times differ for example. Contract and regulatory requirements mandate a different focus and priority. All these issues must be captured within the site management system if the project is to run successfully. We empower the user the ability also to make such changes themselves with a powerful admin application called Admin-one.

Choosing a system to manage your project or network is all about saving money, improving efficiency and obtaining visibility. Once you have made the decision to purchase such a system, it must deliver for you. We believe Nexsysone offers the best value in the market in this regard.

TowerXchange: Which of your applications is most popular? Why do you think that is?

Project-one and Tower-one. However, as more projects move into the operational phase Task-one is gaining rapid momentum.

These are the most popular, because they are the applications needed at the start of the rollout. As time progresses our customers may expand their used modules. Asset-one, Task-one and Staff-one may come into play as their pain point shifts. With our project experience we are able to address these future pain points before they happen by implementing the correct platform and processes from day one. Our project management platform is popular because it focusses on the actual site build programme and cost control. It therefore has a lot more features. Tower-one captures the processes of sharing sites. All the modules are extremely scalable and designed to work together. Light versions have been used by system integrators for simple milestone tracking, documentation control and quality assurance.

The Task-one platform manages the workforce’s daily activities and is becoming very popular. Its attraction is that it helps manage operational teams, and more significantly it measures their performance. It comes with an advanced geo locator to track the location of resources or teams with an associated easy to use ticketing system. Site builds and maintenance tasks are made easy with Task-one. The advanced notification system build across all modules empowers customers to action tasks with ease whilst having visibility into organisational bottlenecks. The mobile apps which are integrated are very popular. They provide field resources, project managers and executives quick access to critical data.