Simon Melchior is the Chief Executive Officer of Asseco Nigeria, a subsidiary of the Asseco Group, the leading software company in Central and Eastern Europe and the 5th largest in Europe. In this interview with some Selected Journalist, he speaks on how the Company is driving technology in Nigeria through the promotion of local content and talent development among other salient issues. Excerpts:
May we meet you, Sir?
My name is Simon Melchior. My first name is actually Szymon, but it is pretty hard to pronounce for anyone who’s not Polish, so I prefer to just be called Simon. I was born in Poland but grew up and studied in France. I love both of these countries and have a very strong attachment to them. If you want to be my friend, don’t ask me to choose one over the other, which, for me, is impossible! I’m not half Polish and half French, I’m fully both. I worked in Paris, New York, London where I met my Nigerian wife and then in Monaco, before moving to Lagos together with my family in 2011. I see Lagos as an epicenter of entrepreneurship. This is the longest I’ve stayed and worked anywhere.
When was Asseco Nigeria established in Nigeria and why?
Adefolu Majekodunmi and I started Asseco Nigeria nine years ago, in 2014 precisely, although it feels like yesterday. Time flies! I started working with Asseco in 2013. At the time, they were looking to buy a controlling stake in a Nigerian software company, so they contacted me to help them find some acquisition targets. We identified about 12-15 companies, but either their founders didn’t want to sell a controlling stake or if they did, they wanted a prohibitive premium and then were not interested in staying in the business. So after a while, both Asseco and we decided to create Asseco Nigeria as a start-up. Asseco Group invested $1m in exchange for 51% of the shares in the company and we started developing the business organically.
As to the why Nigeria, well Nigeria is a big and very dynamic market, already quite advanced from an IT perspective (particularly in financial services), but where a lot of automation and digitization is still expected to happen across many sectors, so it was perceived as a good opportunity. All this potential has not fully been realized, but we are working hard at harnessing this potential.
Asseco Nigeria, is a subsidiary of the Asseco Group, the No.1 software company in Central and Eastern Europe and the 5th largest in Europe. The Group operates in 55 countries and has over 30,000 employees worldwide. The Asseco Group is a federation of companies engaged in information technology. Its companies are listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange as well as on the New York NASDAQ. Asseco offers comprehensive, proprietary IT solutions for all sectors of the economy.
What are your products and services as well as areas of focus in Nigeria?
Asseco Group is a federation of IT companies that own more than 200 different proprietary software applications, sometimes competing between each other. From inception, our mandate was to build our own software in Nigeria, but we were also customizing, implementing, integrating and supporting locally Asseco Group’s software solutions.
Over the years, we have focused on those solutions and verticals where we have the most success or competitive advantage. We now have seven business lines: banking, insurance, enterprise, public administration, trust services, cybersecurity and unmanned aerial vehicles. In banking, we focus on omnichannel systems, authentication and customer experience or relationship management solutions. In insurance, we implement our core insurance system, but also our digital front end as well as solvency and International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 17 applications. In enterprise, we have our proprietary Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for large, medium or small corporates.
Public administration covers large e-government projects such as automation of tax collection (fiscalization) to widen the tax net and increase collection of revenue, but also various other government applications. Trust services, cybersecurity and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) are transversal or “horizontal” solutions that we provide to various and different verticals. In trust services, we are the only WebTrust& Adobe Trust List qualified Certification Authority with physical presence in Nigeria issuing digital certificates and digital signatures from Nigeria, employing Nigerian staff to handle this business. In cybersecurity, we provide the full stack of services from IT security audit, vulnerability or penetration tests, cyber threat intelligence to real-time incident handling and response.
Our UAV services are used in Nigeria for mapping & cartography, in precision farming as well as for security and defense. As you can see, we’re keeping quite busy! Joke aside; it is our strategy to have a diversified business so that we don’t depend on one solution or vertical too much. We are also growing the business beyond Nigeria’s borders, particularly in Francophone West Africa.
How accessible is Asseco Nigeria in terms of branch network?
We currently have offices in Lagos, Abuja and Lomé. We used to have a PMO (Project Management Office) in Benin City as well as in Asaba, when we implemented two projects for Edo and Delta States. We are looking forward to expanding our branch network in Nigeria as our business grows. Our mantra is always to be close to our clients so that we can provide them with the best quality service. We believe that being close to our clients is key to providing them a high quality service.
The information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector is a very competitive sector saturated with many players. What is your company doing differently to stand out from other competitors?
First of all, the market dynamics in our seven business lines are different and we have different competitors in each one of them. Secondly and honestly, we don’t look at competition as something bad. On the contrary, competition helps us become better, improving our services and exceeding our customers’ expectations. You see, we don’t do off-the-shelf solutions, we do tailor-made, customized and integrated solutions. In clothing you have pret-a-porter and tailor-made clothes, some tailors focus on one while others on the other and either business can be profitable if you do it well. We focus on quality and tailor-made applications. So we spend a lot of time understanding our customers’ specific business requirements to implement solutions that truly answer their specific needs and give them a competitive edge. We also try to be in more cutting-edge and innovative fields, more “blue ocean” versus “red ocean” so to speak. But sometimes, we also face the herd mentality. Many companies say they want to lead, but for you to lead, you have to innovate and do things differently than your competitors. The truth is that we learn, we adapt and we continuously improve. We are detailed and pragmatic. Our job is to make complex processes simple and seamless for our customers and for our customers’ customers.
Asseco Nigeria has been in the forefront of promoting local content. As the CEO, tell us about your experience?
As I mentioned, from inception, Asseco Nigeria’s mandate was not to just sell Asseco Group’s software but to develop our own intellectual property and service offering. Over the years, we’ve been doing more and more of that. I am very proud to say that we even recently signed a partnership agreement with a Polish Asseco Group company, Asseco Data Systems, where Asseco Nigeria deploys Nigerian software developers that we hire here on their projects, joining their teams and their streams to code for and with them. It’s a fantastic mutual learning experience. There is so much talent in Nigeria, so many great young people, who, when given a small chance, can do wonderful things. In the UAV segment, we are the first company to have wholly and fully mapped Lagos State using drones, to produce an orthophoto map with 2-3cm resolution and accuracy, which is now used by land surveyors and to issue Certificates of Occupancy. We are extremely grateful to Lagos State, the Centre of Excellence, to have given us the chance to be pioneers together. Lagos State believed in us, based on our credentials and they were not afraid to innovate. All the pilots, the engineers, all the personnel that worked on this project were all Nigerians and the skills that they have learnt will continue to be very valuable whatever they do and wherever they do it.
Your Company has been actively involved in talent development in Nigeria among the youths, especially through its drone program. What’s the objective(s) behind this?
To be honest, as a business, we don’t just develop talent for the sake of it. We do it because we need it, because by learning new skills, by being better at what we do, by being certified and recognized, we provide a better service to our customers. Whoever works at Asseco knows that it is not Asseco paying your salary, but our customers who pay our salaries, so we better do a good job serving them! If you want to grow in the company, do a good job and you will grow. It’s very simple. Now beyond that, our purpose is to change Nigeria for the betterusing technology. Everybody in theorganization knows that. We came up with that purpose together, at a strategy retreat a few years ago and we stick to it because it really inspires us. We live it every day. We are passionate about it. We all believe that we can do it. We all see this new Nigeria that is coming. And we want to be part of that story.
In February this year, Asseco Nigeria collaborated with STEAM Up Lagos and organized a drone program for students of WahabFolawiyo Senior High School, Osborne, Ikoyi, what was the outcome of that program?
The idea to do this came from the fact that when we started mapping Lagos State using drones, the main take-off and landing points that Lagos State gave us were schools. So we started operating from these schools and we were so inspired by seeing all these kids watching with such great interest what we were doing. So we reached out to Lagos State to keep training children on drones even after our operations. This drone workshop and show we did at Wahab Folawiyo Senior Secondary School was such a fantastic experience! But the point is not just to do it once, it would be unfair to those kids who were not there or who school elsewhere. So we have partnered with the Lagos State Ministry of Education and particularly with the STEM UP Lagos Programme to have an ongoing program where we give some of our time to coach, mentor and inspire children continuously, at least on a quarterly basis, in different senior secondary schools across the State.
Everybody in the company has to contribute some of their time. And we all do it with pleasure. Because it’s not just an obligation for us to teach the kids, to show opportunities to them and to inspire them, but it is also so much fun and such a wonderful experience. We literally have a blast whenever we do it. We are fully committed to deploying our time and resources to this initiative. It reminds us of our hopes and dreams when we were young. And it also keeps us connected with the future. The children are our future. We will be doing more and more of that.
Another administration has just been inaugurated. As a CEO of a renowned ICT Company, what are your advice and expectations?
I am an entrepreneur. I’m not qualified to give any advice to public office holders. Having said that, I can tell you what I believe in. I believe that there is only one way to lead, which is to lead by example. So we expect our leaders to always put Nigeria first. We also expect our leaders to take tough decisions and to explain them to us. I have to say that I was very impressed at the President’s removal of the fuel subsidies on his first day in office. It’s such a tough decision, we all suffer from it, but I believe it is the right decision for Nigeria. We had a talk in the company with all our colleagues about it. And we said that we will increase everybody’s salaries to support this tough but right decision. We all have to play our part.
Please give us a brief reflection on Asseco Nigeria’s 2022 performance?
Our 2022 first quarter (Q1) performance was pretty bad, because of the elections. Every election, it’s the same thing, it’s like the earth stops spinning and we all wait for the elections to pass. Maybe we should use our drones to do political campaigns or something! I’ll think about it in four years..! Since the elections however, we see things picking up, both in the public and private sector. There is definitely a new dynamic, a new drive. It’s like Nigeria is back in business. We’ve been working hard and our Q2 will be strong. We have an amazing and very motivated team to get the job done.
Any last word?
To all our friends who japa’d: come back guys, it’s happening here and now! We no dey carry last oh! The best is yet to come!