How NEXSYS-ONE is driving operational excellence for telecom infrastructure owners

Most of the NEXSYS-ONE organization has a background in telecoms infrastructure, a fact which has given them unique insight into the operational and administrative challenges infrastructure owners face today, whether that’s complying with international standards or simply coordinating field techs to resolve cell site problems. They’ve built a solution which is designed to work with existing platforms and technologies to deliver maximum efficiency as well as removing complexity from the lives of PMOs, C levels and field teams. We spoke to David Gater, Global Head of Business Development at NEXSYS-ONE, to find out how the solution has evolved and how it’s working for the telecoms industry today. 

TowerXchange: Please introduce NEXSYS-ONE, your history and footprint.

NEXSYS-ONE was initially an internally developed platform for a global systems integrator deploying and operating 350 network technologies across 40 countries since 2001. Today we operate globally and serve multiple channels through towercos, tier one operators, and systems integrators from our HQ in Dubai with presence and subsidiaries in key strategic locations: Myanmar, United Kingdom, The Philippines, USA, Germany, Australia and Iraq.

NEXSYS-ONE is a proven software platform differentiator that enables the rapid deployment and maintenance of mobile network infrastructure across the globe.  The product is a cloud native, configurable “off-the-shelf” platform incorporating industry best practice and functionality enabling support for multiple technologies and applications across a wide variety of uses. We capture the network requirements around quality assurance, project management, tower sharing, IFRS compliant lease management, work force management, procurement and supply chain processing, warehouse and asset management, health and safety, access and RMS solutions, fibre/TRS/RF tracking and risk management.

TowerXchange: You offer several modules, spanning different functions within telecom infrastructure owners’ businesses, can you talk to us about the models, how they work and typically what your customer uptakes are like? 

For the complete 360 operational requirements for building and maintaining todays network infrastructure we offer these modules based on innovative scalable software solutions improving efficiencies and performance whilst eliminating unwanted costs due to lack of visibility or operational process failures. If you use one or all modules they can be tailored to ensure processes throughout the organization and through the platform are interconnected and seamless enabling transparency of synchronisation and synergies across the organisation through enhanced visibility.

Due to our unique history and telecom experience we have open dialog with our clients speaking directly the same language, understanding the underlying issues and being able to tailor our solutions to meet their individual needs and solve complex problems. Our best sellers are by far TOWER-ONE closely followed by TASK-ONE where our customers immediately benefit from our off the shelf functionality.

The key modules of NEXSYSONE consist of: 

TOWER-ONE  Tower-one offers customers a tower sharing solution to centralize all site information into one platform whilst enabling unique techniques to obtain additional tenants per site. The TOWER-ONE project management solution tracks and reports any project to completion.  This module is the most used module of NEXSYS-ONE for tower companies and mobile operators.

TASK-ONE is our award winning comprehensive task management solution that coordinates deployment and maintenance field activities. It features a reliable and accurate interface that processes organization or supplier task work flows processes to completion 

ASSET-ONE tracks assets across all warehouses, vehicles and cell sites by bringing together operations to manage inventory, repairs, spares management and reporting.  It makes asset information available to all involved personnel in the network, engineering, logistics, finance and planning. 

FIBER-ONE with FIBER-ONE you’ll have the visual interface to help you understand and manage your entire Fiber optic network deployment. FIBER-ONE delivers information in a seamless, map-based data format and provides an array of software solutions to help deploy and maintain your fiber network. FIBER-ONE makes it easy to enter, update and understand the connectivity of your network. You’ll be able to quickly establish and insert connections within splice enclosures, patch panels, optical network devices and passive optic network splitters used in the fiber network.  

SITE-ONE enables IoT sensor monitoring of the cell sites to measure and monitor energy usage and fuel consumption, track access and potential theft of cell site equipment. The uniqueness of the NEXSYS-ONE RMS solution is that its connected also with a satellite backhaul for emergencies when the cell networks fail. 

SAFETY-ONE provides customers with the visibility and oversight required to effectively implement their health and safety management systems by driving the ownership and accountability needed to ensure compliance with legislative and corporate responsibilities.

Each module fits a purpose to ensure processes throughout the organization are seamless.  Modules are interconnected to push and receive information to synergise departments. Our customers typically enjoy the visibility and transparency our modules offer. Customers also prefer our scalable solutions to meet their exact requirements.

TowerXchange: Tell us about how your solutions work in different markets. What kind of pressures do you see MENA tower owners coming under and how does that differ from elsewhere in the world? 

Our global experience indicates the majority of tower owners will face the same key challenges in the near future where infrastructure needs to be strengthened and future proofed ahead of 5G combined with some requirement for acceleration of co-location and an industry need to reduce OPEX. Some MENA countries have infrastructure, security and access challenges but, the same fundamental pressures remain around the push for colocation, minimizing site costs, increasing tenant ratios, providing adequate tower services and processing to completion lease contracts with landlords or tenants. Our out of the box solutions meet the many local pressures and requirements for customized features, The IFRS 16 compliant lease Management solution we offer is proving a very popular pressure point eradicator with our clients.

TowerXchange: Talk to us about the benefits of your platform. As well as delivering higher standards in software to support tower management, is there a measurable ROI which comes from your solutions? 

I mentioned earlier that our offering is a cloud based, configurable off-the-shelf platform, enabling multiple technologies and applications across a very wide variety of uses which resonates with our customers, this proven software platform combined with unrivalled industry expertise provides as a differentiator to most deployment and maintenance organizations where the most notable benefits can be noted as: 39% less site visits,  40% improvement in payment lead time, 45% tenant radio improvements, 56% process efficiencies,  78% improvement of implementation quality, 20% reduction in lost assets, 15% reduction in hardware defects and a staggering 35-day turnkey implementation lead time improvement. In 2017 the NEXSYS-ONE module Task-One was awarded as best task management and ticketing system of UAE.

TowerXchange: Can you give any use cases of where your solutions have been implemented and how they have helped your customers with key decision making or meeting critical business objectives?

The financial burdens on a company who operate without detailed visibility into their operational performance can be substantial. In the US, a turf vendor customer required immediate transparency across its operations for a major Tier-one operator with complex deployment processes. With our web service API capabilities, we synchronized their internal financial systems with the operators supply chain platform and deployment management system. NEXSYS-ONE bridged the gap between the systems whilst empowering additional control with advanced features to enable visibility and transparency throughout their organization. Our customer could see immediately in which areas needed focus so we worked together and found areas of improvement where they were failing or losing money and implemented tailored solutions to improve their operations or renegotiate their contract terms when clearly, they were not in their favour.

TowerXchange: Infrastructure will have to change significantly to meet the needs of 5G rollout. Can you talk to us about how NeXsysOne can support the changing shape of infrastructure, and any new solutions you’re working on to develop this? 

We’ve been around in the telecoms sector since the beginning. We’ve gone through the technology life cycles before and we’re truly excited to welcome 5G. The networks will indeed change substantially and so will the user experiences. 5G requires a huge back haul capacity upgrade that by no means should be underestimated. Coordinating such an upgrade requires proven software solutions as FIBER-ONE. Mobile operators have already embraced the challenge and FIBER-ONE is in big demand.   Cell site capacity upgrades and configuration change management requires  proven work force management systems, that are tailored around Telecom implementation processes. Between TOWER-ONE, ASSET-ONE and TASK-ONE, every aspect to upgrade networks to 5G is covered. 

The industry cannot underestimate the volume of work required to upgrade networks through 5G and beyond. The evolution of the systems used in most cases to support the deployment and maintenance of required infrastructure are no longer fit for purpose. Operators, systems integrators, OEMs and towercos will need to make bold decisions and implement new “user” friendly project management solutions with advanced features that seamlessly process the required complexity. 

Our journey as a company has and is enabling and guiding many organisations to consistently and continually implement, maintain and upgrade tens of thousands of network infrastructure through the 2G > 3G > 4G technology evolutions. NEXSYS-ONE delivers on the tough questions being asked from tomorrows networks, whilst preserving the old with increased efficiency. We welcome the challenges the future brings and would encourage interested organisations to get in touch so we can enable effective management of this complexity for them.