Aligning Growth: Arif Hussain, COO Multinet

Who do you think this is a description of? Name the company that has successfully expanded its long haul DWDM to cover a distance greater than 5,000km across 42 locations spanning Pakistan, using its own fiber to connect 107 cities across Pakistan, and can deliver broadband speeds of up to 100mbps over FTTP? Yes, we’re talking about Multinet.

The fact that Multinet has such a great product is a shock to most people who are looking for premium range of services for the international and local B2B segments. And that’s just it – corporations that need the solutions, are the ones that inadvertently find the service provider.

“Our network enables Multinet to serve the Service Provider segment as well as energize its own nationwide IP/MPLS network which targets the growing domestic enterprise demand,” begins Arif Hussain, Chief Operating Officer of Multinet. And almost anyone you speak to at the company seems  to be drinking the same Kool Aid and chants the same mantra: focus on the enterprise segments and the large corporations. “We worked in the consumer internet space years ago, but all that was before we invested in our own fiber DWDM/SDH network and changed focus to  have deep relationships with a select few clients, rather than no relationships with thousands. That’s just not how it was going to work.”

By virtue of Axiata’s (formerly TM International) partnership in the 20,000 km undersea cable – SMW-4, Multinet is the only private company in Pakistan that offers the greatest diversity for international connectivity services to Pakistan. SMW-4’s multi-gigabit system allows Multinet to offer carriers and enterprises connectivity from speeds of 64K and above. “And there is more. Because we already have the connectivity solutions, we are in a position to diversify what we have to meet the demands of the customer. So if it’s data center solutions, storage solutions or a WAN deployment, we can manage the entire project from start to finish.”

So we’re back to the question. How does a company that has a great product get itself out there? The answer does not lie in creating a massive outdoor campaign and spending millions. It’s not like these companies don’t have budgets for promotion. But if the mass population isn’t their target market, why should companies even be encouraged to flood the arena with their brand name?

Putting It Out There for the Long Run
Multinet is known to the people who need to know about it. “As is traditionally the case with a marketing led organization, you risk overhanging the market and inevitably disappointing customers in terms of expectations and execution. In our case, we have very capable technical and engineering resources in house, and almost at the expense of marketing, didn’t market the company simply because we didn’t feel the product was ready.” Multinet was selling very selectively, principally through word of mouth. “We did corporate branding to some extent, but nothing sustained in terms of market presence and marketing, which is traditionally how you raise the visibility with your customers.”

The portfolio of services that Mutlinet was offering was most certainly led by engineers who had a vision to be able to meet high standards and be in a position to sustain that growth seamlessly. “We took advantage of the fact that we wanted to have a product that was ready for primetime, rather than put something out there, experiment with it and then grow it. That’s not how we work. If you look at the history of technological disappointments, that’s been the story.  Cable operators started doing it, WiMAX guys have done it, DSL never took off as intended, along with the other platforms that seem to create market hype with nothing substantial to back it up.”

Arif also clarifies that the product that he was creating was never meant for mass market consumption. They were targeting a very niche audience and had the luxury to be able to tweak themselves so that they were exactly what the doctor ordered for their audience.

With all the bandwidth  and creative connectivity solu tions that Multinet had in its portfolio, it wanted to remain focused in its approach in tapping the market. “We were watching the market grow in a direction without having an alternative to the long haul side of things.” But things didn’t go quite according to the plan with Moblink laying out its own fiber, Warid getting fiber from Wateen and Ufone being serviced by PTCL itself, that left Multinet looking at only two potential customers. However as luck would have it, because of an economic boom, coupled with Pakistan’s geopolitical position, the number of corporations that needed Multinet’s services were also expanding, and hence, the trickle down effect for the company’s products were trickling into other segments. “It’s a product pull that we have. If the product is good enough and our service to follow up is doing its job, the customers will come to us. We just need to be sure and deliver what will work for them.”

The Premium Product in a Premium Segement
“When you talk about a premium product in the technology segment, you look at the early adopters of the product. So if we were geared up to servicing the telecom segment, the next group of early adopters who we were ready to be served was the large corporations.” It’s all about the value proposition, so despite the fact that the premium product is being pitched to match the needs of the corporate segment right now, there is no reason once the larger expectations are met, that the SME sector won’t naturally benefit from the services.

“At a recent conference, to my horror, company after company got up and spoke about how great their services were and how much work they had done. I was the only one who stood up there and said that in Pakistan, we’re not starved for choices, but we have no quality products. And until we raise our game to meet the quality standards, we won’t progress anywhere. These are world class technologies which have been successful in a lot of countries around the world – there is really no reason why they should create so much dissatisfaction for customers here.”

But is that really the fault of the companies? We as the industry, have always demanded that technologies, be it connectivity or hardware products, be available to us in Pakistan same as they are available to other countries. “Yes, but it is also important to meet benchmarks and minimal quality standards. We’ve been very conscious of that to the extent that we carry out regular feedback surveys with our clients to ask if they have been satisfied with our service. Another question we are also interested in getting the answer to is whether the customer has ever referred us to on to someone else, and we find that more than 70% of clients do.” Referrals are an almost sureshot way to land more business. It’s a testimonial for the company whereby they have established the relationship and the trust, they are happy with the progress and want to spread the wealth of a great find! If one company goes away dissatisfied, they could, very well, end your career too! The rumor mill is a relatively strong one!

The bulk of Arif’s professional experience has been working abroad. The fact that a solution provider must listen to the problems a customer has before aligning a technology product to actually solve the issue, is ingrained in him. “You can’t really call yourself a solutions provider if all you’re doing is churning out a fancy proposal.” The sales and marketing team in the company pitches solutions in a different way. “We don’t get to a customer and give him a slightly tweaked proposal and hope that he won’t notice. We listen to the needs of the customer, and establish a relationship with him to better understand what the longterm issues may also be.”

When he joined Multinet a year ago, one of the first questions he asked his sales team was what their sales process actually was. Once he found the answer, he introduced a whole culture change. “If all the customer is saying is that he needs a 1Mb circuit, the sales guy hasn’t done his job. The questions need to be formulated so the sales team better understand just what the customer wants, but also how he is going to use it. Is the application mission critical? Can it afford any downtime? What reliability or resilience are you looking for? Do you need route diversity? Sure we’re a service organization that has to make a sale, but the sale also has to be qualified. It’s an important distinction to make on the fact that the company we’re selling to, is the business domain expert. We, on the other hand, are the technology experts.”

Birds of a Feather Flock Together?
While Multinet’s potential target market has grown, so has the rest of the industry. Alongside the growth, the market has also achieved a great deal of maturity, which is why a greater number of companies are taking a closer look at collaborative efforts. In terms of playing to the company’s core strengths, has Arif seen that shift take place? “Sure, the market has definitely grown, and yes, we are talking to a lot more companies today to establish affiliations with them in order to work with them to better service their clients. The biggest challenge there, however, remains that we aren’t interested in working the entire market and will continue to play to our strengths. If we find a potential affiliate has expertise in their own domain and can probably offer his clients better functionality through the domain expertise we have to offer, the collaboration will certainly work.”

But like most of the other bigwigs in any market, the IT industry is also somewhat of an old boy’s club, whereby business leaders who have known each other for years, often continue to keep their contacts alive. How does that fit into the fact that you have spent most of your professional career in the United States and may not be part of that club? “I’d imagine there is such a club in every sector in every part of the world. You can hardly be blamed for having a relationship with people. Networking at key events is the way to overcome this and be known for the worth of your company.” Arif has been a speaker at the CIO YearAhead’09 and a participant at the CIO-Vendor Balancing Act round table and says that those have helped to some extent.

“People are a bit more open to interacting with me because of these networking events, so they definitely help. But the networking that takes place here, is definitely different than the networking events which take place in the West.” Most of the senior executives who have been in the mobile industry of Pakistan for example, trace their heritage back to Paktel or Instaphone. “A lot of these executives still maintain their network. I think the network here relies on something more than just a perchance meeting at an event. If you are lucky enough to have something in common with one of the people you meet, there seems to be more of a chance that something will move forward.” So the challenge of locating commonalities coupled with the fact that the majority of the events are done for pure lead generation, require the leads to be available even after the event has ended! Otherwise the opportunity is pretty much wasted.

Broadband Versus Telecom
We’re not just here to talk about how an executive such as Arif, markets his own company. We’re also about figuring out how a company like Multinet is growing the sector. “Telecoms obviously had a lot more hype, and there was a lot more money involved. The amount of Foreign Direct Investment that was generated and the revolution that took place, was a true phenomenon. But you have to understand that the scale the telecom revolution impacted was for the millions, thereby bringing the actual price points down to a more affordable level for everyone. The same has not occurred for Broadband – not in Pakistan, nor elsewhere in the world.”

One of the reasons, explains Arif, broadband is so much more a fabric of the everyday life in the West, is attributed to one thing – their incessant obsession to productivity.

“Everything that can, will be automated so that the human resource can be put to more intelligent application. The culture there is like that. Here? Not so much. We still have the benefit of a large unskilled workforce that can still do what the automation can do, cheaper. It will still be a while before the same happens for broadband. I think it will still take a while before the realization occurs that instead of hiring 5 people for one task, it might be better to hire 1 great person and let a solution, which is seamlessly integrated into the organization, do the job more effectively.”

And like everyone else, Arif concurs that there is a lack of a real dependency on broadband for the consumer class. “Enterprise customers are different. But until there isn’t a real strong business case generated for broadband, it isn’t going to experience as much growth as telecom in that segment. The business case, to quite an extent, has already been established for the corporate segment and the SMEs.”

But at the end of the day, the recipe where a company with a great product, visionary leadership to take its product to its rightful customer, a touch of quality and a lot of service, seems to work. It works for a lot of the leading companies around the world, and certainly works for Multinet.

For more details, you can visit the company online at multinet.com.pk