 Business in the 24th Century Over the years, regular business activities has only been predominantly on physical premises in both public and private sectors. This has posed a lot of limitations to business growth because of the attenders' expenses needed to run the day-to-day flow of the event in the premises. Before now, business service delivery depend many on availability of personnel who work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. In the absence of such personnel, the business activities will be stored or delayed in the quest for alternative personnel to fill the gap. There are both a few of many problems identified in the solution provided by the emergence of technology. Business model in the 21st Century has been seen taking advantage of technology to deploy solutions that are accessible, convenient and cost-effective in a sector like FinTechs, logistics as you can see in delivery, transportation, e-commerce among others. The dynamism in the business operations also extends to staff management with the introduction of hybrid working systems which become more prominent after the COVID-19 pandemic heartbreak. This has proven to show that a trick in the previous obtained system is needed to ensure a sustainable business model. The need to promote technological skills has become necessary in the preventing business environment and the success of business will surely depend on how much technology simplification is available going forward. What do you think? Well, I can only speak from my own experience. I am a service provider for children with neurodevelopmental disorders and I know that COVID made us change our mode of working in the sense that we would take on clients and we wouldn't really enforce training for the parents. But during COVID, a lot of children regressed and a lot of parents really suffered emotionally because they were helpless. They couldn't do anything to help their children. So in our industry, our new model was that anybody coming onto our program, parents would be trained, the whole house would be trained. So that in case, God forbid, another COVID or something even worse, those vulnerable children would not suffer. So COVID itself has made us really reflect on what is really important in business. And I think every business was affected in some way or the other whether good or bad. So I think running a business in this 20th century, it really goes beyond an office. I mean, that's my personal opinion. I mean, I totally align with the thoughts of everyone. Before COVID, I remember I was having this conversation with a friend this week. Prior to COVID, in an organization I used to work in, we always were clamoring for a hybrid model, what is now a hybrid model, where we have some days where we could work from home and some days where we could work from the office. And the response we were always getting back then was, you millennials are too lazy. If you are not serious, I expect me to pay you to work from your house. Now we are how many years down the line or months self, not really so many years. So just months down the line and here this is what's obtainable. In fact, before anyone gets a job, I think each time I try to recruit someone, the key selling points has always been, we operate a hybrid model. So you can come to the office sometimes and sometimes work from home. People see it now as a key selling point and that's an advantage. And like you mentioned, technology has actually influenced the way we do it now. So I'm sure a lot of companies over the past two years have had to invest a lot more in technology than they had done in the past. Things like share points, things that are really that makes work easier for us to do has now become the key tools. And like Helen mentioned, it has sort of helped us reflect what really is productivity. It helped us really define what productivity really means. And I have to be sitting at my desk for eight hours a day to be productive or do I have to or it also helps you define the metrics for measuring your staff. So you can really look if you deliver on XYZ, you are productive versus if I see you every single day, you're productive. And you know, I know a lot of people before COVID had taken advantage of that. Oh, I need to be there with my boss, I need to be there with my boss every time. So you're always like in the face of your boss trying to get in favour. Exactly. Now that you're not in the face of your boss, you have to really prove your worth and show what you can really bring to the table. So just like you talk about, you know, productive is collective, right? And then if you want to assess the use of technology after post COVID-19, what do you see the deliverance of work activities? What if you want to rate it before COVID and post COVID, what will you see? Do you mean in terms of the amount of productivity? Productivity exactly, not amount of work, a kind of deliverables that you are actually seeing. So I think for me when COVID started, it was more of because we were still trying to ease into working from a different location. So you had to deliver more and you had a lot of reportings. So you have to report, okay, I did XYZ today and those things actually add to the amount of work you do per day to be honest. So but now that everyone is sort of comfortable and sort of trusts one another, so you know that okay, the workload quote-unquote has sort of been eased out and technology has also helped it because I know that if I am calling you on your phone, you are not picking, I call you on Skype, I call you on Teams, I call you on everything. At least I know you are ready for that. So in a short while, you are accountable for what you do. Yes. Unlike you seek for favor until you do what you have to do. So that means your productivity level is high. Yes. Then probably because the system is actually not prepared for the pandemic and it becomes like a burden at first. And then you begin to thank you. But before you move on, I remember a lot of people having to complain back then or even till now that they work a lot more. Now that they are not complaining, but let's just comment that they work a lot more now that they are home than when they were at the office because all those excesses have been reduced. So I think just before you go on that aspect, we have outline work that you are expected to do. Most companies probably start up who involve technology because start up is very fast to adopt new changes rather than when you look at civil service or private sector. So some of them don't have a clear work time. Do you understand? They build it a long time. So I believe that can be as a result of not having a clear work time. And then you will be able to see what are the metrics you used to judge deliverables. So as time goes on, you see your employer to do reconciliation for example, at a point you do operational work alongside with your reconciliation. Because if you can, since you understand the reconciliation, you are best to interact with the best of available. I think that could answer that. I think for me, Zoom has now released. I work on the mainland and now realistically any meeting that I have on the island, I try to make it by Zoom because of the transportation involved, the manpower and everything. And also some of my meetings, I get very upset, you know, and you can see it during the meeting and I'm upset and then I'm getting very agitated. But when I'm on Zoom, I can hide, I can camouflage a lot of my, you know, when they say, yes, you wear your hat on your sleeve so to speak. So with the Zoom meeting, I can hide a lot of my emotional output and that really helps me to sustain my business more. If I go into a meeting and we're always having head-on conflicts, they're going to wonder, this woman, but it's because I'm like, you're doing so much wrong, how can you not see it? So I think technology has actually helped, well, me personally, to hold my emotions so that I'm not, so it's like if I get upset now, the camera can move to the next person and they don't see it and I can have time to, you know, continue. But in the face-to-face meeting, it's not the case. So I think technology has done a lot personally for my own company because even with our trainings, we can now train more people across Nigeria through our training Zoom or Google training classrooms than we could ever do before. So we're training thousands of teachers, thousands of parents on special education before we had to physically go there. So I think where I'm coming from, yes, it has done a lot. So I think just to heart to it, considering like Legos as, for example, everybody wants to watch to meet up 9 o'clock, the resumption time, you know, the heavy traffic and stuff like that. You see people leaving home as early as 4 a.m., 5 a.m., just to meet up 9 a.m., you know. But post COVID has shown that you can actually come in by 11 a.m. where the traffic is. So the two hours, three hours can be productive doing something reasonable. So by the time you're done, within one hour, you are at the office if need be. And I think why the hybrid is very important is basically because you see culture. You need to understand the culture of the company that you are working with. And you can actually notice there are some things that will be missing if you're doing everything online. So when you are there physically, you can actually learn some culture, some attitude. Just like you said, you know, you talk about the emotional aspect of it probably in the negative parts that might affect. And sometimes the emotional part of it is necessary to be the culture in the positive aspect when you have a physical interaction. And that's when you see bonding get together and what have you just to have understanding how you react and stuff like that. Not just to walk, walk, walk, walk, you understand. And again, I believe you should also be looking at in your own solution, just like you talk about people watching cartoons and stuff like that. So if you have recorded solutions for your services technology, you can actually have like plus TV here in it as a program or section and you can actually reach out to more audience using technology. So it is a proven fact that technology is a way to go in this century. So and we should also look into universities like you mentioned also strike the other time. I just love, you know, I just look at it from different perspective. Aside of government, even the so-called also are a problem themselves. You understand. Because the issue is you see the lecture north that they are using. Is a lecture north is 1989 camp and Paul. You see somebody who is innovative, who is innovative in idea. He wants to bring in innovations to solve problems because investing actually is meant to solve problems. It's a research place. But you see people I kind of throwing you out because a few you are a threat. So everybody says because immediately you are adopted into the system. You give them a wake up call and they don't want to move an inch out of it. So that is what technology does. You know it push you to actually reach your potential and also reach the audience with what you have. But it still goes back to the fact that you can't give what you don't have. So if you are not doing continuous educational performance, you can't bring in more than what you know. So these are some of the things that technology can do by reaching more people. Exactly. So you can see the effect of technology like in education. We have some start-up like edifice trying to do more training. We have some delivery like you have Gigi and what have you with your help. You can actually request for a delivery service. You have Jumia e-commerce with technology. Like we are talking about Nigerian as a whole. I don't care if you are Yibo, if you are Yoruba, if you are Oda and Uber. My own is to use the technology to get to the destination. I think that is it. Openness is early. Stay with us after the break.