Nexign Releases the 2020 Annual Report

Nexign (part of ICS Holding), a leading Business Support Systems (BSS) provider, today published its official 2020 annual report. The report shows Nexign’s milestones and key achievements in the previous year, as well as shares the company’s strategic plans for 2021 and further.

‘In 2020, Nexign placed emphasis on the development of several strategic areas, each of which was distinguished by important events. First of all, we made a stake on developing partner relations with  customers. Despite borders closure, we successfully delivered several major projects in Russia and completed a BSS implementation in Uzbekistan’, says Igor Gorkov, Nexign CEO. ‘Nexign also continued its expansion at the global market and bolstered its positions in the emerging countries of the CIS.  The company has invested into its product portfolio development as well. Now Nexign is ready to offer new solutions to support digital transformation of telecom companies, help them accelerate new product launches and improve quality of service. Despite the challenging economic and social environment, I am confident that Nexign has had a fruitful year’.

Customers and implementations

• In March 2020, Nexign completed the Unified Billing project for MegaFon, the pan-Russian operator of digital opportunities. Nexign and MegaFon unified billing systems for all 8 operator’s subsidiarieson a single BSS platform and migrated the entire subscriber base to the new environment. In the course of the project, MegaFon also launched the microservices fabric to accelerate the formation of a partner ecosystem and promptly create new products. This partnership made it possible to reduce TTM (time to market) by up to 5 times as well as improve business efficiency and increase the customer service quality.
• Nexign completed the migration of subscribers to the Network Monetisation Suite for Yota, Russian mobile broadband services provider. After migration to the Nexign solution, Yota reduced the total cost of ownership (TCO) by 10-20% by saving on additional third-party licenses. Use of PCRF function enabled Yota to reduce time to market (TTM) by 20% and increase the fault tolerance by 40%.
• Nexign reported about the successful implementation of IoT platform for Rostelecom and Tele2. The Nexign IoT Platform has enabled integration with the billing systems supporting operations of both companies (including the MVNO project), as well as enabled the operators to launch new competitive M2M solutions.

Strengthening positions in the target markets

• In July 2020, Nexign expanded its international presence to Latin America by opening a subsidiary in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. This initiative will enable Nexign to bolster its market share in strategically important developing markets by offering LATAM customers solutions to drive digital transformation efforts.
• Nexign also strengthened its positions in the CIS market. The 2020 was remarkable for a number of successful projects in the region:
• Nexign completed the Nexign Converged BSS implementation project for Uztelecom. As a result, operator increased its subscriber base by 1.6 million subscribers and reported 10% growth in average revenue per user (ARPU). The TTM (time to market) for new products was reduced from 2 months to just 2 weeks.
• In November 2020, Nexign signed a deal with Ucell. The implementation of Nexign Converged BSS will enable the largest CSP in Uzbekistan to renew its billing system and increase the quality of customer service.

Developing product portfolio

• Nexign introduced the Nexign Instant BSS solution to accelerate the launch of new business for medium-sized telecom operators and MVNOs. The Nexign Instant BSS is a pre-integrated pre-configured solution for prepaid mobile B2C business, which allows customers to achieve business results faster without escalating complexity.
• In October 2020, Nexign announced the acquisition of 99% stake in STORM Technologies - an expert in the area of digital customer experience management. This will enable Nexign to strengthen its product portfolio and help telco operators to build relationships with subscribers more efficiently.
• Nexign started develoing a new product called “Universal Digital Billing”. The company will offer telecom operators and service providers a billing solution based on open source database management systems. This will enable customers to optimize the total cost of ownership of a software product and easily adapt it to changing business needs.

Financial results

• In 2020, the company's revenue amounted to $105 million. The revenue for new projects was $21 million. The lower figures compared to the previous year were caused by a number of factors. In part, the decrease in turnover was an expected consequence of the completion of the the multi-year Unified Billing project for MegaFon. After the successful migration of MegaFon’s subscribers, the operator switched from implementation services to less costly technical support and operations. This move corresponds with the strategy and timeline that were discussed by Nexign’s management at the project kickoff in 2015.
• The pandemic and overall economic uncertainty greatly affected Nexign’s revenues in 2020. Due to transport restrictions Nexign product implementation deadlines increased for the operators in CIS and MEA. This is related both to delays in deliveries of required equipment and to the fact that it is impossible to complete some works remotely.
• Singing of new contracts was postponed due to closed borders. However, at the time of preparing the annual report, Nexign had signed a new contract with Kcell and was negotiating several projects with companies in the CIS and the Middle East. Those deals will enable Nexign to continue growing its business in 2021–2022.

Industry recognition

• In October 2020, Nexign signed TM Forum’s Open API and Open Digital Architecture (ODA) Manifesto. The company will use the principles of open architecture ODA to enrich the process of designing and integrating products and harmonize the IT landscape of existing and potential customers.
• Nexign’s efforts to meet the demands of CSPs worldwide have been acknowledged by the international expert community:
• Nexign has been included in the October 2020 Market Guide for CSP Business Support System Solutions by Gartner, the world's leading research and advisory company.
• Nexign successfully passed the independent SSAE 18 audit conducted by one of the Big4 companies. Following its results, Nexign received a SOC2 report, which indicates reliability and effectiveness of company’s internal controls and proves their compliance with SSAE 18 international standard.
• In 2020, the company joined two leading industry associations, RUSSOFT and SAMENA Telecommunications Council. This will enable Nexign to expand cooperation with other IT and telco companies in Russia, Middle East and Africa.

“For us the year 2020 was a time for investment in brand recognition, product development and customer relations. We believe that completion of postponed projects and negotiations, recent deals and overall economic recovery will enable Nexign to continue its stable growth in 2021 and further. We plan to expand our expertise to other industry sectors apart from telecommunications, strengthen relationships with partners and continue gaining recognition in the Middle Eastern, African and LATAM markets. Keeping up with customer needs, we will also help CSPs with tasks associated with 5G monetisation, automation of processes and digital customer experience,” commented Igor Gorkov, CEO of Nexign.

To read more about Nexign’s key projects and achievements in 2020, please visit the official page of the latest annual report.