 You're welcome back. Right now we're going to look at, like I promised you, how adoption of technology can help businesses in Nigeria navigate inflation. It seems to be a very interesting topic and we're going to be talking with the country manager of Zohu, Nigeria, and that is KND, or Gundari. Good morning and welcome to the program KND. Good morning, I got you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Okay, let me just share a small story with you. There was a time I was supposed to buy some goods from someone to the tune of just not just a whole 7,000 Naira, that's not just in Nigeria of today. But I asked the person to bring POS so that I can do the transaction with my ATM card and he said his business has not grown enough to deploy that kind of technology, POS machine. So, which means there is still the dragging of feet of people doing businesses in Nigeria trying to deploy technology. Now, is it their affordability? Is it their awareness? What advice is happening? What do you think is the reason behind people not adopting technology as much as they should? Because that's what I think they are not adopting technology as much as they should in Nigeria. What do you think is the problem? Well, thank you very much. So, I think two things, right? People without the notion that technology is very expensive and it's up there for people in enterprise, business, corporate businesses. And secondly, I also feel like maybe their awareness is not there for a lot of businesses to understand how they can actually scale their business using more and more technology like PUS, having an invoicing software to run your business. So, I think it's the perception of most Nigerian businesses that technology is probably for big companies and then the awareness is not even there for businesses to understand that there are some technologies that are affordable for you to use to scale your business. Okay. When you talk about businesses that can use technology, what kind of businesses are you looking at? Is it everything or there are some? I think it's, I mean, I believe with 100% certainty that everybody doing business today, 2023, you'd have a way of incorporating technology into their business. So, it's for everybody. Whether you are selling whatever by the roadside, you are in a big supermarket or you are an enterprise company, you must find a way to incorporate technology into your business. What are some of these technologies that we really need in businesses, no matter how small, no matter how big, that you think Nigeria needs mostly? A couple of them actually. This is the new age for technology. Digital transformation is what is taking over the world right now. And I believe that a lot of businesses, they would need to use the marketing software, the marketing platform to manage their marketing activities. They wouldn't collaborate and productivity tools. And even for your sales to scale, you should have some sort of technology that you are using like a CRM, right, that will nurture your leads to the sales pipeline, give you insight into how your business is performing and you can make informed decisions. So, even limited to that, you have demand results for managing your employees for the productivity as well. So, there are varieties of applications that you can use in your business. You're just mentioning these things and I think you're assuming that we know all of them. So, we need to know them and then what the advantages of these things are to businesses. Okay. So, I'm going to start with the marketing activities, right? So, nowadays, you will see a lot of businesses using Instagram to manage their marketing activities, right? Now, imagine you have like three or four platforms to post your content, to do awareness and create some address for your product. So, you will need this software. So, in my company, we have a social and cultural social rights that you can use to manage all the things. No, imagine you having that as a tip of your finger. You will be able to do that. Now, talking about collaborative tool and productivity tool, right? We have your email. But nowadays, when you have to sit in front of a big computer to write an email, we have maybe spreadsheets, write out what process code that you can actually use and every team member can actually collaborate at the same time on the same document, making it easier for anybody to work from anywhere. I wouldn't have to probably download the same to you or I have to be in the same office to use sharing flash drive and end drive to share documents. We can also do this in virtually anywhere in the world. Apart from that, you also have like the sales management applications also CRM, right? You will be able to manage that as well to directly with the application. You know, if CRM tool is there to help you streamline your sales process, not charge them through the sales pipeline. And at the end of the day, you will be able to make informed decisions. You know where you're spending your money, you know what you need to do, you know your customer statement, then you will be able to make informed decisions using the tools. Okay. When you want to branch off from your normal thing into something that you, something that is unknown, you need some informed decisions. Those are some of the words that you're using informed decisions, very, very critical. So what are some of these things that businesses need to consider? What are the critical factors that businesses need to consider before adopting technology in the first place? Okay. So I will probably mention to a few of them. Number one is what exactly is the pinpoint, right? If you are trying to optimize the way you do your business, your sales department, your marketing efforts, what exactly are you looking to achieve? Then you're not going to the market and look for the particular software that actually fits our purpose. Now you have to consider scalability. You have to consider affordability. Then at the same time, you have to consider user-friendlyness, right? Because if you're using a software that is not affordable, it's going to leap into your budget. If you cannot scale with the software, so which means eventually when your business grows, you will need to move out of that particular platform to another one and user-friendlyness. Now, user-friendlyness is going to be very important factor for adoption of that new technology for your staff and employees. So if it's not friendly, they will not be able to use it and eventually you will waste money using this technology. But how do we guard against this technology becoming bivastic? You know what I mean, bivastic? That's bivast. Our bivast in election, you know the experience that we had. In some places it will work. In convenient places it will not work and all that. So how do we guard against or how do we make sure that this technology doesn't fail us at the critical moment that we need it? Okay, so technology is important, which is why I normally encourage businesses that is trying to adopt new technology to do their research, right? There are a lot of measures you have to put in place. I mean for businesses running that particular software, we've got a lot of enterprise businesses running a software business in those countries. You should do your research properly. As a business owner, you need to know what are the policies? Privacy policies, security policies, business continuity is very important. What happens to my data when I cannot access them? Who is going to be responsible? Who is accountable for that kind of thing? So those are the things you do at the initial stage of trying to look at the market to adopt the technology. What about the risk of all the security involved in it? Because so many people fear that once it has to do with technology, there are people who can hack the system, who can break into your system and do what they should not do. So how do you ensure security when you are adopting this technology? Or when you are advising someone to adopt technology, you have to also give them the confidence that it's secure enough. How confident are you about that? Yes, there are a lot of security measures in place, compliance, that every business owner needs to ask the provider. So if you're looking for a software now, you need to check their compliance level, you need to check their security, they have the certification for those things. And trust me, before any business can get the certification from maybe say ISO, IPA compliance and top-right, you've got to rigorous process and betting before they can issue the certificate. So these are the things you should look out for. Are they certified? Are they compliance with the government, rules and regulations? So that was what helped us to mitigate the effect of maybe cyber breach or attack. So how much of this impact will it have on the economy? Because people are getting by and a lot of people still think that they don't need it because they can't do their transactions or that. So what do you think if this technology is deployed, it will do to the economy of Nigeria as a whole and the individuals? Okay, so I don't really agree with the fact that people sitting down in technology, because even on a daily basis, business owners are using technology without them knowing. Like I mentioned, you have to use your media marketing platform to do your marketing. So at the end of the day, the traditional cost of businesses is increasing on a daily basis. Now imagine the situation whereby you have employees working from home and at the same time your productivity is going to increase. We live in Lagos, we spend hours in traffic and stuff. By the time you get to work, you are tired. But imagine you've been in your house, 8 a.m. you log in, you are able to do a lot of these collaborates with your team members, having a virtual meeting, you can chat, you can send documents easily. Automatically, that will increase your productivity, which in turn is going to lead to increase in revenue and then the economy is going to grow with the addition of technology. Okay, are you talking only to business owners or you're talking also to government? But if you're talking to government as well, in what areas do you think if we have to choose, what areas do you think we should begin with to deploy technology that you think technology is not deployed enough? So, I'm speaking to the business owners as well as the government, because they have to give us an enabling environment for business to scale. And when it comes to recently, there was this new act, the Electronic Apositions Act that was enacted by the federal government, and that was actually a very well-come development, given the fact that we need to now take charge of our data in this country. That was a really good one. And at the same time, I'm going to encourage the government to make policies that will enable people to actually use the technology, bring awareness to the business owners and the market, the small, medium enterprise, give them the enabling environment they can use software to build and scale their business. Okay, I was going to ask that, you know, what kinds of policies do you think the government should make? Specifically, do you have anyone in mind that you think if made by the government, it will make it easier for people to adopt this technology and use it for their benefit, and which also will translate to the national benefit? So, specifically, I'm not going to say a specific instance, but I believe that we are policymakers in this country that when they're making decisions, they should consider small businesses in mind, right? When they are trying to make financial and economic decisions, they should consider that it's going to impact businesses. Also, speaking about the finances and economy of the country, it's very imperative to know that small businesses in this country, they have to contribute to the larger percentage, so IPDP, which means we need to give them incentives, incentivize them, and then do some awareness to bring them to the platform. And also, the government is going to benefit. Imagine using a financial software to manage your finances within the organization. It will be easier for the business to actually probably pay their tax, as much as they have to pay on their return. And at the end of the day, the government is going to make revenue from that authority. Okay. When you talk to large enterprises, big enterprises, you talk about using hybrid work models and all that, and how it's going to help them to save costs as an option to help them save costs and all that. Can you explain more what it means to have a hybrid model? What is it? Is it at all in the first place? Okay, great. So an hybrid module is when you work two days in the office and you work two days at the comfort of your home or anywhere in the world, you repeat, right? Now, currently, we've removed subsidy from the field, right? And everybody's feeling the impact in this country, let me tell you, right? Everybody's feeling the impact that you used to buy at 7,000 is probably now 25,000 or 30,000, you know. Now, because of running the organization, it's also increasing on a daily basis. Now, if you operate the hybrid mode, right, which means maybe you do three days in the office two days at home or two days in the office three days at home, you're going to reduce your operational cost significantly. At the same time, your employee will be able to work at the comfort of their home, so which means they will be happy doing what they are doing. At the same time, they can collaborate better. They have a piece of mind and they don't have to worry about moving and transitioning from one point to another point to get their job done. So I think it's a work of development that any business should actually consider hybrid mode at this point in time. How does that work for things like schools, for instance? Oh, there are learning platforms, actually, because I work in tech, so I can say there are learning platforms that people can actually use. Schools can encourage students probably maybe they can do a test run, right? We have some platforms that you can use, right? Learning platforms are there. Even for businesses too, there's elements, the management system that you can actually incorporate as well to train and retrain your employee, right? There's schools can also adopt the learning platform, maybe so they can go to school a few days that they can probably virtually connect with their classmates. During COVID-19 a lot of schools actually adopted that option, right? And I believe that they can build on that and then continue using it. But that was for private schools mostly because I don't see any public school that will have e-learning platforms the way you're talking at the moment. Because the challenges will be that you will need to have a device that you can do the e-learning. These are people, some of whom come from homes that do not have a phone. And if they do have a phone, one phone, it will be a phone that is not Android even. So these challenges will be posed. And how do you think that the government or whoever's involved can surmount these challenges and do what you're asking that be done? So I think our educational system can also look at a way to incorporate technology in the way we do things. Like you mentioned, private schools, I mean, mostly they want the facilities to be able to adopt the e-learning platform, whereas our public schools, they will need to catch up, right? I would encourage the government to provide their facilities, their amenities to encourage we do public school students to adopt the e-learning platform. So we need to do better in our private public school settings. Okay. Well, you know the advantages, you know everything about technology, at least you know enough that you can advise us. Just let's take a final word from you. Talk to the Nigerians who have not had it in mind to imbibe this culture of using technology for almost everything. Now we see that technology is in the kitchen, technology is even in the bathroom, technology is everywhere, but our people are taking their time, they're still dragging their legs. So just speak to the people of Nigeria, why you think they need to adopt this technology, which will sum up everything that we've been talking on the program now so that we can just wrap up. Yes. So what I would normally advise people is there is no wrong way to study technology, right? Just start small, right? You can start with small application, you can start with anything, you know, just understand your business and see the kind of audience you are trying to appeal to and you can adopt technology. Trust me, you adopt technology is going to make your life a lot, lot easier and your business scalability is going to be guaranteed, right? You will be able to use that to scale, make decisions. At the same time, you will be able to even take costs drastically given the condition of the economy in this country right now. You will be able to save operation, of course, while you adopt this technology to work your business. So consider social media marketing, consider collaborative and productivity tool, consider human resource management applications and all these things combined together is going to be useful for you to scale your business. Okay, thank you so much Kaende for coming on the show this morning to talk to us about technology and the need to adopt it. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much for having me. All right. Okay, that was Kaende Ogundari, Country Manager at Zoho Nigeria talking with us on technology and the need to imbibe the culture of technology. And that is how we are going to wrap up the show today. But before we go, we'll leave you with the words of Robert Iger, CEO of Disney. He said, the heart and soul of a company is creativity and innovation. So that's how we wrap it up and draw the curtain for today. On behalf of my entire team on the breakfast, my name is Nyamgul Agadje saying thanks for being there.