Wealth & Finance August 2017

Wealth & Finance International 12 The Customer Is King ince 2006, the firm’s mission has been to create seamless mobile interactions between businesses and people. An integral part of the A2P messaging evolution, Infobip is committed to creating solutions that just work. CEO and founder Silvio Kutic reveals something of the firm’s qualities and its unique culture. “We’re operating our platform on a globally-distributed proprietary cloud; possessing the knowledge of telco regulations and best messag- ing practices is the way to build elevated mobile experiences, helping enterprises and mobile operators innovate. In 2016 alone, more than 60 percent of world’s active mobile numbers interacted with Infobip, making it the largest network of its kind and the only full-stack cPaaS globally. “Our unique culture fuels continuous innovation at the platform’s core, allowing full control of security and service quality down to the deepest interaction. We have over 50 worldwide offices, filled with local people who fuel our desire of being truly local, anywhere in the world. Local expertise backed by a global communications platform serves the most demanding industries around the globe, giving our partners enterprise scale with start-up like agility.” Silvio is eager to share his views on how the firm approaches client service. He also reveals the firm’s remarkable global presence and impressive expansion. “As a firm, we pride ourselves on giving clients and end-customers ac- cess to real people providing the industry’s best response times. All the firm’s support engineers are extensively trained and available 24/7/365. Premium support is standard for all our clients. “Infobip is constantly pushing the limits of outreach, both locally and globally, which is a big part of our story. In 2016, the firm’s global expansion through opening country offices to establish local presence continued with new offices opened in Beijing (China), Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Madrid (Spain), Stockholm (Sweden), and Lusaka (Zambia). The office in Jakarta (Indonesia), established in 2015, was inaugurated and has continued expanding throughout 2016. The newly opened offices, as well as existing ones, provide a local perspective and un- derstanding of client requirements, all in favour of a high-end service quality. “In the last 12 months, the firm has seen considerable growth in Brazil and several other LatAm and APAC countries. It has successfully par- ticipated in over 150 relevant industry events and trade shows around the world, the most notable ones being Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona and Shanghai, BARG meetings series by GSMA, and ITW 2017. Infobip has also launched a series of hosted events for large en- terprises, intended for knowledge and insight sharing on the challenge of digital transformation. “Dedicated R&D centres in St. Petersburg (Russia) and Pune (India), opened in 2016, are intended to bring a new dimension to Infobip’s de- velopment assets and harness the potential of Infobip’s strong presence in those respective countries.” Silvio then turns the conversation to focus on the state of the UK finance industry today, including the major challenges it currently faces. “Both the UK and Europe are amid a digital transformation, where companies from ‘traditional’ service industries are looking to bring their operations into the mobile and digital-dominated era where more than ever, the customer is king. “In the financial sector, the emerging mobile-based services, apps and innovative business models have seen a tremendous uptake worldwide, from mobile money originating in Africa, to chat app-based payments and transfer features booming in China and APAC, as well as dedicated P2P services such as Venmo and Zelle. “The uptake and overall availability of such services is perhaps less pronounced in Europe, but as a technologically highly advanced region, Europe is marching relentlessly to next-gen financial solutions. Some of the challenges of banks and financial institutions in UK and Europe are linked to shifting expectations of their customers - they now rely on different channels for different types of communications, but expect and want to be able to reach businesses - and businesses to engage with them - on all of them. “This creates challenges for enterprises that don’t have an omnichan- nel engagement strategy or solution, instead relying on a legacy, siloed approach to customer engagement. However, there now are solutions that bring a unified communications platform capabilities to enterprises, including Infobip’s own OMNI platform, encompassing SMS, voice, push notifications, email and chat apps, enabling the right message to be delivered to the consumer at the right moment and via the right channel.” Infobip is a communications platform, providing various messaging services to enterprise clients - banks, retailers, internet and technology companies all over the globe. The firm also provides A2P SMS-related monetisation and network services to mobile operators. We interviewed the firm’s CEO and founder Silvio Kutic to learn more. S 1707WF05