Carlos Ferraz : “Motorola enables local companies to broaden their business”

Carlos Ferraz, General Manager of Motorola Solutions for South Africa and Sub Sahara Africa, was recently in Mauritius to strengthen his company’s commercial operations with its local partners. He unveils Motorola’s strategy in the region.

BUSINESSMAG. Motorola has long been a pioneer on the mobile solution market. What are the latest innovations developed by your company?

We continue to innovate across the board in our three main areas of business for enterprises, which is mobile computing, automatic identification and wireless network. The broad concept that we usually apply when we innovate something is that we want to make it smaller, cheaper, faster and better. This is what drives us during the whole process.

Just to highlight some areas we are working on quite significantly will be the e-commerce. We are developing mobile devises that are certified to accept electronic payments and to transmit through wireless networks in a very safe and secure way. This is a very big market for us. On the scanning side, one area that we are actively pursuing is the scanning of radio frequencies. In terms of wireless networks, we are starting to see wireless networks being optimized to carry voice, data and video. And from Motorola’s perspective, voice is very important because it’s a legacy of the company’s history. We are developing products to market which allows users of mobile devices to run voice out of IP over wireless networks. These are areas on which we concentrate. 

BUSINESSMAG. Mauritius is not fully involved in e-commerce yet. How can Motorola help us in developing this new avenue?

E-commerce is a broad subject and surprisingly, Mauritius in fact has a lot of project on e-commerce but probably not in an obvious way that one can think about. For example, in the retail, when we talk about e-commerce you see very big moves to retailers using their stores as distributions hubs or places where they pick orders that are made over the internet for home delivery. This means that when retailers deliver or third party logistics companies that deliver products on the behalf of retailers to people’s homes, they use mobile devices to valid data transactions and in fact accept payments in some cases and also to prove delivery.

Mobile payments are probably the biggest area on which we are working in the African context. In fact, we tend to see more and more people using their mobile devices as tools for almost about everything. Mobile payment is an area which we are actively developing and integrating in our mobile devices.

BUSINESSMAG. Motorola Solutions has been investing massively in the Sub Sahara markets in recent years. What has led your company to adopt this strategy?

We chose to invest in this market simply because of the growth of the African market. Business, as everybody knows, is quite slow in Europe at the moment. It is slightly picking up in North America but Africa is a big growth market actually. There is an enormous consummerisation taking place in these countries. Normally, when this kind of situation happens, we see logistic companies and retailers following and this is exactly the kind of market we look for. This is definitely a high growth market.

BUSINESSMAG. Your company has been present in Africa for 45 years. How has the mobile solution market evolved over the years?

From the African context, the bulkof our business in Africa has been the government sector. We supply two-way radio systems and security wireless networks for public safety agencies like the police and emergency services. This has been a big market for us for many years now. But nowadays, a lot of our growth is now happening in the mobile computing space. As we start to see the democratization of a lot of African countries, there is now the need to provide resilient wireless communications systems for people there.

The adoption of IT is a key government strategy that is driving a lot of growth in our business. We see centers of excellence happening in Nairobi and Kenya. Many IT companies are now investing in the technological development and we see the same in West Africa and in the emerging countries.

BUSINESSMAG. Mobile technologies have change the way we do business. What are the latest trends?

People are now used to mobile devices. It’s a tool, and again in the African context it’s a communication tool, a payment tool, a social networking tool. The African population is getting used to engaging everywhere with mobile phones and we see the same thing happening in business. That is the adoption of mobile devices to deliver a better service to customers at points of transactions, make payments, track parcels and for many other applications.

BUSINESSMAG. The acquisition of Psion by Motorola Solutions has enabled the expansion of Motorola mobile computing portfolio. What other companies would your Motorola Solutions like to buy?

Our acquisition of Psion was a niche acquisition. Although we work across many of the enterprise markets there are certain key markets in which we could improve such as in the area of industrial logistic and supply chain. Psion in fact had an interesting product range, which would enable us to grow in an existing market that we served. We will definitely look at occasions when they present themselves.

BUSINESSMAG. Motorola Solutions is expanding its business operations in Mauritius. How will you achieve this?

Motorola’s operational methodology is to sell its products through formal channel structures. The basis of our investment, not just in Mauritius, but in Africa and in almost all part of the world is to invest in our channel partners, like Westcon. We operate with them, we provide marketing funds, training and certification compliancy to be sure that our products meet the needs of the country. Although you may not see a very definite directing base on the ground level, there is a significant investment that we put in our people. We strongly believe that this help to build up the ecosystem that the country need. We give local businesses and companies the opportunity to broaden their business, to develop better solutions and to do better business basically.