By Emma Okonji
BCX, formerly known as Business Connexion, has stressed the need for businesses to go digital in today’s world of digital economy, insisting that businesses that do not embrace digital technology, would definitely go under like most businesses that were once big with global outlook.
The Managing Director of BCX, Mr. Ayo Adegboye, who gave the advice while formerly announcing the new brand identity of Business Connexion in Lagos recently, said businesses, both small and big must embrace digitalised form of business that would make them innovative and remain in business always.
According to him, most businesses go into extinction after several years of successful business, just because they failed to embrace technology that will make them innovative enough to diversify their line of business.
“We offer digitalised services to all our customers, and we are aware of the importance of merger and acquisition in the 21st Century digital economy, hence we accepted the choice of merger of the services of Business Connexion with that of the enterprise business of Telkom that acquired Business Connexion 18 months ago,” Adegboye said.
The acquisition took place about 18 months ago, but it was officially launched in South Africa last week, where the headquarters of both companies are located. The acquisition was signed on 24th of August 2015, but it was officially announced and celebrated during the launch of the new brand in South Africa last week. The new brand identity and logo which was launched in South Africa last week, will be officially launched in Nigeria this week, precisely March 2, 2017, Adegboye said.
“Telkom is a multinational company and Business Connexion used to be a multinational company also, before Telkom it. So what this means is that both companies are bringing their strengths and expertise together to serve the customers better in more digitalised way that will bring about better customer experience, business efficiency and growth in such a way that technology will drive cost of doing business,” Adegboye said.
Speaking of the strength of both companies before acquisition and the value it will bring to customers, the Chief Financial Officer, BCX, Mrs. Olusike Bamisebi, said: “Before the acquisition, Business Connexion was a major player in the information technology (IT) services delivery space and Telkom saw that strength as a potential strength that could further boost its enterprise solution business, hence Telkom acquired Business Connexion and merged the enterprise solution business of Telkom with that of Business Connexion in order to have a stronger enterprise solution unit of the Telkom business.”
According to her the acquisition has further strengthened both companies to serve their customers better under a single management.
Today BCX is now well over 20 billion Rand in market capitalisation, with over eight thousand employees globally and these are best-in-class employees. So BCX is now the third and latest subsidiary of the Telkom group, Bamisebi said.
According to Adegboye, “With the acquisition, there is now a shift in the business plan and service offerings of BCX, offering an entire new line of business services from Business-to-Business (B2B), to Human-to-Human (H2H), the reason being that we deal entirely with humans in our type of business. The essence is to serve our human customers more than we had ever done in the past.”
