Innovation Unleashed: Mehdi Triki Reveals RoamSmart’s Game-Changing Secrets!

Prepare to be amazed as Mehdi Triki, the visionary VP of Sales and Marketing and Co-founder of RoamSmart, unravels the mysteries behind their revolutionary solution, SteerOp. Our CEO, Jason Bryan, delves deep into a conversation with Mehdi, who unveils a world where Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) seamlessly reduce costs and optimize outbound traffic – thanks to SteerOp, it’s not just a dream, it’s a reality!

Discover the transformative power of RoamSmart, recognized as a top 3 solution in The Innovators 2023, after securing the 4th position in The Innovators 2022 with their RollOp solution. This conversation is your portal to a future where innovation reigns supreme.

Jason Bryan

So it’s a real pleasure to be here with Mehdi from RoamSmart. How are you doing today?

Mehdi Triki

I’m very well, very glad to be with you on this conversation, Jason.

 Jason Bryan

Mehdi, I’m very glad you joined this conversation. One of the first questions I have for you is around RoamSmart itself. Just to give some visibility to the company, can you tell us a little bit more about the background to RoamSmart?

Mehdi Triki

Yeah, sure. So RoamSmart, we started the company, my co-founder and myself in 2012. So the background is that I was working for Roamware which is today Mobileum for 4 years, and there is where I discovered the Roaming business, the exciting roaming environment. Prior to that, I spent 16 years in the telecom business, but more on the fixed and mobile core side with the engineers from Nokia and Ericsson. But then when I joined Roamware, I discovered the roaming challenging environment performing. And my co-founder was actually heading the roaming department for an operator in Tunisia, so he was my costumer at that time. So together we identified, let’s say some niches, needs and challenges in the daily management of the roaming operations. We discovered that these niches were not covered fully, were not getting enough attention from the big players in the roaming business, like the clearing providers, the signalling providers and others. And we thought that this was really an opportunity, and there was a market for it, so we’re really focusing on the daily activity of the roaming teams when it comes to managing and setting up new roaming agreements, maintaining hundreds of roaming contracts, and the documents that they have. So this is where we decided to start the startup to manage that. So the objective is really to focus on this operational efficiency improvement, the automation and everything related to the roaming delivery and the roaming maintenance to manage the roaming requirements.

Jason Bryan

Yeah, for me, it’s an area which hasn’t had a lot of focus in the past but is hugely, hugely important. And you’re right, it’s an area which a lot of the bigger vendors in the industry don’t seem to focus on, but is hugely important to the efficiency of the wholesale roaming teams. And you know, I’ve watched RoamSmart grow over the years, I’ve seen new module upon module you’re getting into the details, you are getting into this niche area in a really good way I would say, to kind of try to identify how you can help, how we can get that efficiency just 5%, 10% better with each of the modules that you do. So, we’ve been watching, and I know that you guys have also featured in a lot of ROCCO Research reports over the years. You have been very good at innovation and customer service. So it’s great to follow you and to find out what you’re doing. We also had a comment from a large operator group that they see you responding to the needs in the market very well. And I think that’s a great endorsement.

So what’s your exact role Mehdi in the company? and what is your background? You said you worked in Roamware which it became Mobileum. So what is your role now in RoamSmart?

Mehdi Triki

Yeah, so I’m focusing on all the customer interfacing activities which means pre-sales and sales. Both of this goes into the contractual part and also it sometimes also falls into the invoice. So I’m the customer interfacing with business entities for RoamSmart. Of course, I’m not alone, I have a team for the product department for the support and other activities. But I’m mainly in contact and trying to build close relationships with our customers. And also this goes in line with what you were saying. We are pretty much focused on listening to the market to the customers to find out what are their pain points in this specific niche of the roaming operations and roaming delivery process. And this helps us also to identify new services. We use to try to put attention to the challenges or the needs that were not covered previously by other solutions from other vendors and to build them into the Unified when it makes sense. Because the vision of course is to have one full platform that we started to do it. It’s our Unified Roaming platform to build apps on top of it and the end of the day to have really one company that almost covers all these challenges and all these activities and this way will bring of course some value to the operators.

Jason Bryan

Yeah, in ROCCO we also recognise that there’s niche areas which are not covered by other suppliers where there is a need, and it requires, entrepreneurs like yourselves like ourselves to kind of jump in and try to fill that need. Now let’s talk a little bit about that in context of innovation because you guys have, as long as I can remember, being associated with doing innovative things, and you were in ROCCO’s The innovators 2022, and also this year you were ranked third in The Innovators 2023. Congratulations! How did it feel after being shortlisted and then presenting in Genesis in front of the Lions?

Mehdi Triki

Yeah, that was a really very exciting and a very challenging experience, throughout, the selection stage and the pitch sessions that we had to do. We’re very happy to be shortlisted for the Genesis final event, because the shortlist was based on the MNOs votes themselves. So having the opportunity to present your solution in front of the Lions and in front of the audience in Lisbon was also a great experience. So this confirms to us the potential and the market interest in our solution and it motivates us to be even more to prepare for the Genesis round so to be there until the last question. So I really enjoyed this full journey. And of course, having the award and being third was a great moment. For me personally, because as you said we were shortlisted for the second year in a row. So last year it was with the RollOp solution, the roll out  optimizer we ranked in the fourth position. But this year we finally managed to get into the top three and get the award so it’s a recognition from the industry and from the Lions. This means a lot to us, to our team is a reward for the hard work and dedication during the last two years.

Jason Bryan

Yeah, it was great to see you get that award. I know the Lions were very impressed by what you had presented, and just for people who don’t know the Lions are a diverse group of senior people from mobile operators who critique each of the solutions in The Innovators which there were quite a few solutions to go through. And they take a lot of notes, they prepare a lot and I think they are a great team in terms of assessing innovation in the market. The point of The Innovators is for the operators to come back and say “this is what we want to see. This is what we want and we hope to see in the industry”. Whatever products and services the vendors are doing, that’s one thing, but actually what are the operators looking for?, what do they need? So this is the kind of way to guide the vendor community and clearly they really loved what you were doing. Can you tell us a little bit more about the particular solution that you presented this year?

Mehdi Triki

Yeah, the solution for this year is called SteerOp (Steering Optimizer). And the purpose is basically to help MNOs to reduce wholesale costs. So you know Jason, operators today are signing and renewing a big amount of discount contracts every year. Mature operators can have several hundreds of contracts that they renegotiate and resign every year. These discount contracts can have, of course, different stack models like from-to rate commitment, general pay, commissions variance and sometimes combinations of few of them. In many of these contracts, also they include commitment on the outbound services. So they need to commit to certain specific amount of traffic or specific amount of operational costs. Also, it gets complicated when it comes to a group to group deal or an operator to group deal. So the challenge for the commercial roaming manager is really to find the optimal distribution of their outbound traffic on all these commitments. And this is really beyond the capability of Excel formulas or other ways to get to that. So SteerOp is basically analysing the deal structures, analysing the commitments that they have on the complexity of this overlapping commitments in several destinations and countries, and suggesting the optimal distribution or the optimal steering configuration based on an advanced mathematical modelling algorithms. Our service allows MNOs at the end of the day to ensure that they will fulfil all their commitments, but at the same time, they reduced the overall wholesale costs to the minimum costs. That’s the main objective. That’s the financial optimization part of the SteerOp solution, but it also includes the kind of workflow and process automation aspects in it. So it also automates the steering configuration request process through a dynamic workflow engine, which also helps the roaming directors to keep track and get full visibility on the historical steering settings for each of the parts. So that’s more or less, it has more features, but the main purpose of SteerOp is really to address the steering dilemma, I would call it, so the way the roaming managers and roaming directors that can solve this dilemma so how they can and how they should distribute their outbound traffic based on all these that they have, all the commitments that they have, which can sometimes also start in different dates. Not all of them start on the first of January to the end of December, so you can have really some other situations. And having the information of this optimal distribution this can lead to save significant costs, which we estimate like minimum of 10% potential cost reduction here and you know, of course better than me, how important this cost reduction is for the roaming directors with the issue that they have with revenues, all of them they need to look at the cost savings.

Jason Bryan

I think the analytical part and the efficiency gains are super welcome and needed in the industry. I think you’re very clear being also involved in IO (Innovative Operators). We know well that 5G is coming, we network slices, and this is going to create a whole new workload for operators. So it’s really essential that they look at any automated solution that can bring efficiency gains. And, and I think also, you know, we’re very aware of these days of AI and the efficiency that it can potentially bring so I think that any analytical tools, which are heading in the direction of allowing us to optimise finances are super welcome. For me, any company that is doing automated solutions looking at how we can make the wholesale roaming process easier is going to help.

Mehdi Triki

Totally, yes, you are right, Jason. So as you said, 5G, network slicing will increase the complexity, because you would have to manage several networks in the same network and we need to manage sub contracts in the same contract. So it would add a lot more complexity, and the need for automation would be even more important.

Jason Bryan

So going back to Genesis and the Visionaries Gala where you received the award for third position, would you recommend taking part in The Innovators?

Mehdi Triki

Oh, yeah, totally yes. There is no doubt that it is a big opportunity. It’s a unique opportunity for vendors who have new solutions or new ideas, which might be already commercially available or even in the development stage. It’s a unique opportunity to present new solutions to the roaming and messaging community and get their feedback and comments. As you said, the Lion are individuals with a lot of experience in the domain, whether it’s roaming or messaging so they can really bring valuable questions or comments. So basically, presenting in front of them is a serious test for market readiness, market validation for new solutions. So as a vendor, you can learn a lot from this competition and you can maybe also detect some gaps or some missing features that you need to add or implement in your solution to make it more market fit, to make it more valuable for it. So I think it’s a very, very important opportunity for any vendor to get some direct feedback from the markets. This is very important.

Jason Bryan

And what would you recommend for potential participants in The Innovators because it’s kind of a long process. It starts usually around November each year then we have the Showcase in February, then you have to wait until May for the Lions. What would you recommend to potential participants?

Mehdi Triki

One of the main challenges in The Innovators from ROCCO is that te participants have limited time to present the solutions. So we have different steps, but in each step you will get like 10 or 12 minutes to do this kind of pitch about your solution. So my recommendation would be to be short and precise to explain the challenge or the pain point very clearly. And also, of course to explain in detail how your solution is solving this. Basically it’s that. It’s also important to share figures in terms of added value or saving for the MNOs who could use that solution. Most importantly, is really to to make it as simple as possible, so that the full audience will remind the stage or the previous selection stages. The full audience can get the benefit of your solution and because you know, you might have people from different parts of the business some of them are more experts in roaming or in messaging. Or some of them are maybe only experts in technical more signalling or more in finances. So it’s important to explain the challenge in the solution in simple words so that everyone can understand it and they can really feel the benefits and the value added from it.

Jason Bryan

I think it’s a really good advice. And I think you’re right, I mean the background to The Innovators has always been pitching to a group of, let’s say, fierce and diverse specialists in the industry, getting them to critique. So it’s not possible to go into a lot of details on each of the solutions, but there’s of course, background and details, videos, a lot of material that the judges and the public can see in each of the solutions.

Mehdi Triki

Yes, I think is what we learnt aswell from our last year participation, so last year we said let’s see where we go with the ROLLOUT Optimizer, later we received the feedback from the Lions we thought “yeah, so these are the questions” in terms I was not able to explain exactly what we are doing this. I think that what we tried to make better this year is really to explain in simple words, this solution SteerOp is not the steering itself that we can think about. Yeah, that’s important.

Jason Bryan

Yeah, I think each year we will take some learnings and of course try to adapt The Innovators to improve it.

Mehdi Triki

Yes.

Jason Bryan

Coming back to RoamSmart and thinking about your company and as I alluded to before, you’ve appeared in our research several times as being an innovative company as listening to the market and I think that’s hugely important and responding accordingly with solutions. As a company would you say you have an innovation culture?

Mehdi Triki

Yes, I can tell you that this was really one of our main objectives when we started the company 10 years back. And I think this is confirmed by the fact that we are shortlisted now two years in a row for The Innovators final stage. So we think that roaming management as such is really being done in the same way since the start of roaming basically. So we see that it’s not evolving in terms of automation or digital transformation. And there is a big room there to do things quicker and easier to reduce errors but also to optimise processes. And that’s why, as I said, since the beginning we are really focus on things which were not addressed previously by other vendors or other solutions. So innovation is really a piece of our DNA. One example or one confirmation of this is that today on our Unified Roaming platform, we have 11 applications. I can tell you that six out of the 11 applications have no competitive solution on the market or very limited competitive solutions. So we are doing things like TADIG automation, like Rollout optimization or Steering optimization where nobody else is addressing. So we always aim really to look at things which are the untouched niche challenges and to address them with new models, with new solution within the the big data at Unified Roaming Platform.

Jason Bryan

Mehdi, thanks very much for explaining the background to RoamSmart. I think it’s clear that you’re doing a great job. But what’s next? What’s in the pipeline for the remainder of 2023, 2024? What can we expect?

Mehdi Triki

Well, we are constantly on the same in the same room. We are looking at different aspects of the business which are still in need of more automation. But we are also looking very seriously at the integration part. So we think that the future of roaming management will be focused on both keywords automation and integration. So there are, of course, a few topics that we are looking at. In the global level we think that each operator, each MNO has the roaming environment, as we call it. So they have different boxes and platforms, whether it’s steering platform, or the data clearing and the financial clearing solutions, fraud management system, you might have business intelligence or discount simulation solutions. So these different boxes are, as of today, working as independent silos. They are all related to roaming but each one of them is addressing or is managing part of the roaming business. But we strongly believe that if we manage to combine or somehow integrate and synthesise these different flows, which can be of different aspects, so you can have some information which has traffic, which has charges, which has tax information or discount agreeements information. In some other sections you have signalling information, you can have fraud information. So there is a big potential here if we can combine, if we can integrate between the systems, that way we can extract some additional insight, some additional intelligence, which can be very valuable for the roaming directors to take right decision, to fill some gaps, and to improve the efficiency and profitability of the business. So we are looking very closely at this. Some use cases of integration and automation where we can really help to decision makers to manage their business more efficiently and to to improve profitability. So there are a few interesting and exciting things in the pipe. So I would just say stay tuned for more innovations from RoamSmart in the coming months.

Jason Bryan

Yeah, I’m quite sure we’re going to see you again next year in The Innovators 2024. Mehdi, it’s been a great pleasure to speak to you. I always find it interesting to learn what you guys are doing. And I do think you’re doing genuinely a very interesting and important work. So thanks very much for joining us in this conversation and for being part of The Innovators 2023.

Mehdi Triki

Thank you Jason, I enjoyed this discussion and I hope to talk soon again.

Jason Bryan

Thanks, Mehdi. Take care and hope to see you soon at another industry event.

Mehdi Triki

Looking forward to it!

Jason Bryan

Bye bye.

If you’re inspired by RoamSmart’s success and have innovative solutions to showcase, don’t miss the chance to participate in The Innovators 2024! To register, write to hq@rocco.group.

Find out more information about The Innovators here