The company’s Next Gen operating model aims to future proof the business and drive operational excellence, to save cost and better serve clients

It is a given these days that businesses need to innovate, or risk being left behind. As the government is pushing for businesses to adopt the use of digital technology, tower management services provider edotco Group Sdn Bhd aims to do just that.

The company embarked on revamping its operations according to its Next Gen operating principles about three and a half years ago, and aims to become one of the top five tower operators in the next few years.

In an interview with MALAYSIA SME®, edotco’s Director of Group Operations Muniff Kamarudin says the whole reason for embarking on the journey was to drive operational excellence.

“It gives us the ability to satisfy customers. Internally for us, it gives us the capability to be more competitive from the perspective of cost, time and quality in terms of the ability to meet and surpass our service level agreements (SLAs). We are also looking at a 5-10% reduction from a cost per site basis,” he says.

There are four focus areas under the model, namely: real-time efficient operations; advanced analytics; predictive capabilities; and future proofing the company.

Muniff says the goal of real-time efficiencies is to ensure that edotco receives the most accurate and up-to-date information from its tower assets, which is important when driving a business that offers value propositions to its clients.

“Under this first pillar, we have a software called echo which remotely monitors the real-time condition of batteries, rectifiers and gensets (generator sets) to make sure they are working. The other part of echo is the smart padlocks that we have at the access gates to our sites, which gives us traceability. The third part is what we call the operations support system data, which assists us on sites where we don’t have remote monitoring.

“For asset management, we have the software Easi, that helps us automate our rollout process of sites, operations and maintenance checklists and billing,” he explains, adding that 85% of edotco’s revenues are automated and full automation is expected to be reached by year end.

Still falling under the first pillar of real time efficient operations, Muniff says workforce management is one of the areas which still employ manual processes for the most part.

Meanwhile, the company’s second pillar of the Next Gen operating model is about insights it can use to enable its teams and customers to get the best out of the partnership, and will encompass smart process automation, advanced data analytics and applications.

“Part of the smart process automation is what already exists under Easi, but we are also now building software robotic integration into our financial system called Rapid. We are also excited about our advanced data analytics, because after years of building our platforms, we have a lot of data that is now actionable,” he says.

As for applications, currently both echo and Easi each have mobile applications, but there plans to merge them next year, along with the workforce asset management system on one cloud-based platform.

As for its third pillar of predictive capabilities, Muniff revealed that edotco has been collecting data and the trends noticed to try and use it to mitigate against bad weather in countries such as Bangladesh, where storms frequently knock out the power grid.

“This is something that we can only do once our first two pillars are in place, and we plan to begin the process in the fourth quarter this year. This is an area in which we require a partner, but it is something that we have to do. Once we have that data analytics platform in place, this part will become a lot easier,” he says.

The thing that Muniff is most passionate about is the company’s use of drones to try and future-proof its operations. According to him, there are three major uses for drone use within edotco. The first is site surveys as opposed to skylifts; the second is network assessments; and the third is revenue assurance.

360 degrees view of tower taken from drone

Site surveys are typically done by hiring skylifts and utilising human site surveyors to complete jobs such as taking photographs and videos and other measurements such as antenna azimuths (an arc of a horizon measured between a fixed point) and tower height data. With drones, manual human labour can be minimised and efficiencies increased, he pointed out.

Besides this, drones can be used to do network assessment or the inspection of network assets or maintenance assessment such as to find out what is missing, evaluate maintenance issues such as rusted screws, and whether antennas are in their correct positions and azimuths.

Muniff said drones can also be used to verify if the inventory lines up with what is in edotco’s database. This is crucial as edotco needs the right number to ensure that it is accurately billing its customers – hence the term ‘revenue assurance.’

“We are already in the midst of doing this and we plan to carry out 100 cases in 2018 beginning with Malaysia. So far we’ve done about 15% and it should be completed by the end of the year,” he says, adding that edotco is working with a drone operator to this end.

Going green
The other, but equally important, part of the digitisation efforts edotco is undertaking, involves green initiatives that the company has been carrying out in recent years.

edotco Director of Engineering and Technology, Kumari Nalini tells MALAYSIA SME® when edotco was taken out from Axiata, one of her first priorities was to see how best she could optimise the use of the tower assets it owned while reducing its capital expenditures.

“The tower structure design (for telecommunications) drew from the same design structure used for power transmission, so what we did was to relook at the design and change it according to our needs,” she says.

“We were also acquiring land, but we also only built assets according to what we needed. That brought our cost for concrete, steel, fencing and earthworks drastically down so we saved quite a bit of money there. So we were looking at every element of what we were doing,” she says.

The next thing that edotco did was to look at alternative materials to construct its tower assets from. In 2016, the company announced the deployment of a carbon fibre structure in Taman Tasik Prima, Puchong – the first of its kind in Asia.

Carbon fibre structures weigh 70% less than conventional steel structures, and have high rigidity with a tensile strength of more than 10 times that of steel, with structures able to better withstand harsher forces of nature especially high wind conditions. Carbon fibre is also highly resistant to corrosion, which contributes towards lower maintenance costs over the lifespan of the structure. Later that same year, edotco installed its first rooftop carbon-based carbon fibre tower in Bangladesh.

Last year, edotco became the first tower company to use bamboo in the construction of a telecoms tower, which was installed on a rooftop in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Bamboo telecom tower in Bangladesh

The tower was developed in collaboration with Bangladesh University of Engineering (BUET) and focused on the design and viability of bamboo as an alternative material to traditional steel structures in telecommunications.

Nalini explains the idea to build a telco tower from bamboo was sparked after a visit she paid to Bangladesh and noted how bamboo was being employed as support structures for concrete in construction there.

“This made me think that bamboo must be very strong, because wet concrete is very heavy, and the bamboo has to last at least 12 – 14 days while the concrete cures. We had a discussion with BUET after that, but it took us some time to convince them that bamboo would be a good material to use,” she says.

Studies have indicated that untreated bamboo has the ability to bear the weight of concrete while possessing the rigidity and tensile strength to support its own weight, making it an ideal material for telecom structure.

It can also withstand gusts of up to 210km/h, with an expected lifespan of roughly 10 years with proper maintenance. A bamboo tower takes around 12 days to construct, and consumes less energy to manufacture compared to traditional steel towers.

Since the first tower launch in 2017, there have been 11 other bamboo towers launched in Bangladesh, says Nalini.

Currently, research efforts are being carried out in all of edotco’s operating countries, such Malaysia, Bangladesh and Myanmar which have their own native bamboo species, to see which will be best to carry on the company’s initiatives.

As much as edotco will continue to strive to innovate and develop new ways to reduce its carbon footprint, Nalini says it will be impossible to completely be rid of steel.
“All we can do is be less steel dependent as possible and have better efficient structures,” she says.

Looking ahead 
Recent reports state edotco is on the lookout for more tower assets, working on acquisition deals that it aims to complete in the next 12 months.

Its Chief Executive Officer Suresh Sidhu, was reported as saying that he was optimistic that two to three deals could materialise in the company’s existing markets where the sector has developed.

Last month, the company cancelled a US$940 million deal to acquire 13,000 towers from a unit of Pakistan Mobile Communications Ltd as the regulators failed to provide all approvals for the transaction to go through.

The deal was expected to propel the company to the eighth spot among the largest independent tower firms globally.

To date, Muniff says edotco either owns or operates and manages about 27,700 towers in six countries – Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Malaysia. It is also the 12th largest tower company in the world, and is 62.4% owned by Axiata Group Bhd.

However, Muniff stresses that edotco is an independent tower company, not only servicing the Axiata group of companies, but also smaller local and regional operators.

Established in 2012, edotco is the first regional and integrated telecommunications infrastructure services company in Asia, providing end-to-end solutions in the tower services sector from tower leasing, co-locations, build-to-suit, energy, transmission and operations and maintenance (O&M).

Its other shareholders are Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (Diperbadankan) (KWAP), Khazanah Nasional Bhd and Innovation Network Corporation of Japan.

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