Digicel Business targeting the west
Published:Monday | December 23, 2013 | 12:00 AM
Mark Titus, Gleaner Writer
Western Bureau
Digicel Business, the largest supplier of telephony and communications solutions in Jamaica, in a drive to expand its subscriber base in the local information and communications technology (ICT) sector, has stepped up its marketing campaign in western Jamaica to attract more small and medium enterprises (SME) to its raft of services.
"Having already saturated the mobile space and recognising the important role small and medium enterprises must play in our economic growth, we were obligated to create a value bundle that allows them to benefit from the best of technology solutions at a nominal cost, that is affordable to them," said Ative Ennis, head of enterprise solutions, in a recent Gleaner interview. "This is possible with our cloud solutions."
"We have always had a footprint here in western Jamaica with the tremendous growth of our mobile business, and over the last 18 months we have been investing in the ICT space," Ennis continues. "We presently have about eight to 10 per cent of the ICT market in Jamaica, and we have a suite of solutions that is unrivalled, nobody comes remotely close."
cost-effective solutions
Ennis is confident that the business process outsourcing (BPO) and hotel industries will continue to benefit from his firm's cost-effective solutions and is now seeking to attract small businesses in the region that are yet to capitalise on the advent of virtualisation and the massive advances of the Internet.
"We recognise that BPO is a huge part of the growth in ICT, and is an excellent opportunity for us to not just utilise our network (by providing voice services or bandwidth), but it also presents an opportunity for us to provide managed services," said Ennis.
"The call centres bring on the consumed technology based on the customers that they sign, so if we have a solution that can scale in accordance with how they bring on customers, then it is a win-win for everyone."
According to Ennis, the cloud platform solutions enable SMEs to run their business more efficiently, as they are able to afford products that historically only large businesses would have access to.
Cloud storage is done on a virtual platform and eliminates the need for business operators to invest in hardware, software licences, security and related management costs, which is instead offered as free download at each company location.
"Seventy per cent of travellers make a decision on where they stay based on the availability of Wi-Fi, so that sort of data coverage must be available and the hotel chains in this region have been listening," Ennis said.