Why small businesses should adopt technology to grow
Sabastian Ilomechine Okocha is the Enterprise Pre-sales Manager at Zeta Web Solutions Limited, a company that provides data and storage services, network solutions, collaboration and web services and applications, technology support services. In this interview with IKECHI NZEAKO, he speaks about his journey in technology space, the challenges and way forward for the Nigerian technology industry. Excerpts
Tell us about some the things you have done in the technology space in the country?
I have been working in the Nigerian technology space for over a decade and currently provide enterprise value solutions for organizations to drive different activities.
I render my services to some of the major technology companies and organizations in the country.
What is your advice for small businesses in terms of adopting ICT?
ICT is for everyone no matter the level of your enterprise, application of technology in a business boosts the business to a level of visibility and profitability for the business owner.
The early addition of technology to drive business is the right thing to do.
One of the ways you can raise the revenue and standard of the business in a projected time is to adopt technology to drive your business.
Some people argue that most of the solutions we use in the country are not suited for this environment, what is your take on that?
I do not agree with this line of argument, for instance, if you want your business to be done in an organised way, there should be no limit to the level of technology you want to adopt.
The idea that the solutions brought into the country are not suitable for the country I do not agree with.
As I said, the solution you adopt in your business is proportional to your quest for growth and expansion. If you want to achieve these things, you will go for solutions that will drive your business towards the height you want to achieve in your business.
What is your assessment of the Nigerian business environment?
We still do business in the traditional way on a large scale, hence we have not been able to correlate economic gains with the volume of technology we have in the country.
I will advise that businesses begin to adopt more digital input to be able to enjoy the current digital economic trend that we have in the world.
We can take a leaf from what is happening to our currency; for decades now we have been talking about digital currency and seamless transactions, cashless policy and the question is if our paper currency volume going up or coming down? I will allow the economists judge, but physically you and I can say the volume of our paper currency has not changed a bit.
We even have more paper currency floating in our environment than before. These can be captured when you take an insight into the operations of POS operators around the country.
Just imagine each POS person having a volume of cash.
We still do business the traditional way, even with the so-called proclamation of technology solutions. If we can adopt technology to drive our businesses and economy, I think that will sit well. This will enable us to engage in the digital economy.
I cited the digital currency, there are other ways we can use technology to achieve better economic gains.
We have been talking about a cashless environment; if we truly adopt the cashless policy, it will go a long way to reduce our current inflation rate, increase digital transactions and also give more value to our country across the border.
Moving from the traditional way of doing business to digital will help us grow our economy.
There are some people who fear that the digital economy will expose their business to risks, what will you say to these kinds of people?
There is risk in everything we do and that is the truth.
As much as there are risks and concerns, there are also technology methods that counter the possibility for fears and risks.
We have the Governance Risk Control (GRC), we have the governance risk and compliance solutions that can help you limit your exposure to risks as long as you adhere to the regulatory compliance.
There are several anti-cyber security solutions that can help to protect your transactions from possible attacks and we have seamless access management solutions that help prevent possible risk that may emanate from users that want to encroach into your data; inside threat. There are other solutions that help to protect your data from people who want to access them illegally.
Data is the new asset, information technology has also presented methods to protect your assets just as the way police are protecting our physical assets.
The fear of using technology and losing should not stop anyone from using technology to do business.
We also have solutions that protect you from risks; the main thing is to adopt the right technology solutions for the right purpose.
What are the challenges in the industry and how do you overcome them?
My experience in the industry, typically we have just been experiencing an evolution and like everything in life, evolution is a period of transition and during a period of transition, it is not always as rosy as you think.
In the case of the industry, we had a case of businessmen coming into the technology space to do business; they are not really technologists but businessmen that came into technology business.
There has always been the issue of accepting the value of technology, because as a business man, what you want is profit not basically value sharing.
We transitioned from that in the industry into the part where we begin to develop technologies that drive businesses in the industry.
Right now we have been able to bridge the gap between the need to make profit and offer value at the same time.
We are now evolving into the next phase, we are typically beginning to see technology being delivered to the end users in the form of value for profit subscriptions. What happens if, whatever we are doing for you, over time, value first, then comes the profit over time.
The industry has gone through different phases of evolution and challenges associated to it are basic because of the transition we have been making. Now you see young experts developing solutions and believing there are projected gains that will come in a period of time.
What pushes us to the market is value and believing that after adaptation the profit will begin to come in.
If a young person comes to you and says he wants to do what you are doing, what advice will you give that person?
Everything we do has to do with our decision to make a choice, if you make such decision, believe me it’s one of the best decisions I have made in my life. Technology is no longer a business, technology has evolved to become a way of life, if you take technology as a career, you will be able to accept technology as a way of life.
