By Merit Ibe
Amid prevailing economic hardship in Nigeria, a leading technology expert and Chief Executive Officer of Thamani Consulting, Olubunmi Abegunde, has urged Nigerian firms to embrace digital transformation to become resilient and thrive, stressing that only those who are open to technology and digitization will be able to navigate the economic challenges.
Abegunde noted that organizations must undertake digital transformation to improve efficiency and productivity allowing more time for market focusing activities, while reducing operational costs, adding that this in turn, improves market competitiveness.
He said the Nigerian economy faces many uncertainties and dynamics with the resulting impact on profit erosion, which putting an organisation at cross roads.
However, Abegunde’s view is that, while the increasing hardship in the economy may have several negative impacts, it also gives advantages to the businesses that are ready to embrace technology and digitisation.
“Through the application of digital technologies, companies can bring their operational efficiency to another level, increase revenue growth, and have more room to navigate the harsh economic conditions.
“By going digital, the improvements in operational efficiency and cost savings are passed on to customers. The customer experience is better, the customer feels satisfied and loyalty goes up,” said Abegunde.
“With improved digitization and collaboration in Information Technology, companies can now utilise procurement automation tools that provide access to a global network of “pre-qualified” suppliers, thereby improving access to quality vendors, products and services at more competitive pricing. “
Abegunde added that, “for organisations in the Oil and Gas and Manufacturing industries that are heavy on getting corrective and preventive Asset Maintenance to optimal levels, IT tools exist, that, ‘on the go’, allow the creation and management of work permits, view and plan work orders, manage personnel & contractors and record status updates on the shopfloor, which are visible on Dashboards at the Head Office. This helps quicker decision making, improved assets up time, reduction of unplanned maintenance costs, while improving production capacity.”
The technology guru further highlighted that, another critical aspect organisations often ignore is digitized knowledge management, as knowledge generated by organisations is often lost to staff movement and staff turnover. This often leads to rework, untracked productivity losses and sometimes costly mistakes leading to poor quality outputs.
“Every company needs to pay attention to this, and ensure they implement a central knowledge repository, together with the policies and business processes to guide how such knowledge should be stored, retained and retrieved within the organisation. Such tools are already provided as a bundle with MS office. Most organisations however don’t know how to harness this benefit to enable them save companies tons of money spent on personnel Re-Training and “Cost of Poor Quality”.
The technology guru further asserted that modern digital revolution equips organizations with capabilities required to take advantage of salient inefficiencies which are now addressed by newer technology than what was previously available.
Lastly, Olubunmi Abegunde maintains that a business must be ahead of time by treating digitization as a strategic element of its overall business strategy, which in turn will lead to new opportunities for growth and expansion.
Thamani Consulting provides solutions that solve business problems across multiple disciplines and industries, with footprints in the Oil & Gas, Telecoms, Manufacturing, Financial Services, and the Public Sector.