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Tag: Kehinde Ogundare

  • Unleashing Nigeria’s business potential: The cloud as a catalyst for growth

    Unleashing Nigeria’s business potential: The cloud as a catalyst for growth

    By Kehinde Ogundare

    Nigeria’s entrepreneurial spirit is undeniable. Amidst a dynamic and competitive market, businesses are brimming with potential, poised to become regional and even global powerhouses. However, realising this potential requires navigating a challenging landscape—one marked by limited IT resources, complex operational hurdles, and the inertia of traditional business practices. For Nigerian businesses, the path to sustainable growth lies in digital transformation, with cloud-based technologies serving as a key enabler.

    With a burgeoning middle class and a tech-savvy population, Nigeria offers fertile ground for innovation and expansion. Yet, many businesses remain tethered to manual processes, limiting their ability to scale and compete effectively. This is where cloud technology and comprehensive digital toolsets become indispensable.

    The need for digital transformation

    Traditional growth models lack the agility needed to keep pace with an evolving market. Manual processes lead to inefficiencies, limited data insights hinder informed decision-making, and restricted IT resources stifle innovation. To overcome these hurdles, businesses must adopt digital tools that streamline operations, automate workflows, and provide actionable insights.

    Digital transformation isn’t about adopting technology for its own sake—it’s about scaling efficiently. In today’s digital economy, scaling is critical for businesses seeking to expand their market reach, remain competitive, and meet evolving customer demands. Digital tools enable businesses to amplify their impact, drive revenue growth, and optimise costs, ensuring long-term sustainability.

    The power of cloud-based solutions

    Cloud-based platforms eliminate the need for costly infrastructure investments, offering businesses access to cutting-edge technology on a flexible, scalable basis. By automating repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows, and enhancing productivity, these platforms free up valuable resources, allowing businesses to focus on strategy and customer engagement.

    An integrated SaaS platform offers a unified ecosystem to manage all facets of a business. By providing a centralised suite of applications, it automates workflows, reduces manual data entry, and improves team collaboration. Businesses can reduce operational costs and accelerate decision-making, ultimately enabling faster expansion into new markets.

    With Zoho software, the emphasis is on contextual intelligence, leveraging AI to provide genuine customer value. In a market where customer experience is paramount, Zoho’s AI-powered insights enable businesses to personalise interactions, anticipate needs, and strengthen customer relationships. Zoho’s unwavering commitment to customer privacy also ensures that businesses can leverage data responsibly, fostering trust and long-term loyalty.

    A holistic approach to business growth

    Zoho’s philosophy of optimising the entire technology stack—from hardware to software—ensures seamless integration and optimal performance. This holistic approach translates into better technology for Nigerian businesses, enabling them to focus on their core competencies without being weighed down by technical complexities.

    For Nigerian businesses, digital transformation is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. By embracing cloud-based technology, they can overcome traditional growth barriers, scale efficiently, and unlock their full potential.

    The future of Nigerian business is digital. By adopting the cloud, businesses can transform challenges into opportunities, paving the way for sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

    Kehinde Ogundare is the Country Head, Zoho Nigeria

  • Why your business needs unified data analytics for growth and success

    Why your business needs unified data analytics for growth and success

    By Kehinde Ogundare

    Most business leaders will agree that data analytics is a strategic necessity today. Without access to comprehensive data and effective ways to interpret it, organisational decision-makers may find themselves relying solely on intuition while navigating unfamiliar roads in the dark. Gut-based decisions can occasionally lead to success, however, those wins are often more coincidental than  a reflection of true strategic insight.

    More than 90% of the businesses derive benefits from data analytics strategies

    A robust data analytics solution enables businesses to transform raw data into organised, actionable insights across numerous functions. They can span CX—helping personalise interactions based on an analysis of individual preferences and behaviours, growth strategies—allowing teams to identify distinct customer segments basis emerging deal patterns, post-sales support—enabling quick response times by analysing ticket allocation systems and discerning gaps, and so on. It’s no surprise, then, that nearly 92% of organisations reported measurable value from their data and analytics investments in 2023.

    Unfortunately, many organisations fail to derive full value from their data analytics strategies. One of the reasons for that is analytics systems not having a full view of what’s happening across the company owing to data silos.

    Information silos can affect the quality of data insights

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    There are numerous reasons why an organisation can end up with fragmented or siloed data, but a key factor is the existence of different tech platforms across various departments. Use of disparate tools for different functions can lead to decentralised management of data. For instance, while the sales team might know how many units of a product a customer has purchased, they may have no visibility into how quickly the customer pays their invoices or how many interactions they’ve had with marketing and communication collateral before making a purchase.     

    There are other data issues that businesses face too. Among them is poor data quality. This can be caused by manual data collection practices that often yield inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and redundancies. Poor data quality forces businesses to spend a lot of time and resources on cleaning up, which further prolongs the analysis process. The best approach to solve these issues is to digitalise and unify data sources with the right tech platform that interconnects all departments.

    The right software matters

    Fortunately, with the right software, achieving a unified view of data becomes much simpler. Effective data analytics software will bring disparate data points together and make analysis easier. To do this effectively, the software should provide native integrations with a diverse array of data sources, including local files, feeds, databases, and business applications.

    Beyond that kind of integration and unified view, what should organisations look for in business analytics software? 

    First, it should be accessible to all users—whether they are business users, data analysts, data engineers, or BI specialists—ensuring ease of use and value for everyone. The software should also offer pipeline builders, be compatible with other forms of software, support streaming analytics, deliver real-time insights, and provide unified metrics.

    In addition,the software must evolve with a business’ changing data analytics needs. This means supporting features like generative AI analytics, predictive AI, and machine learning capabilities. The ability to trigger actions based on alerts and pipelines, connect to niche business apps, and integrate multiple BI and data analytics tools will further enhance its benefits.

    Ultimately, the software should demonstrate clear value by reducing manual effort and streamlining processes, handling large datasets efficiently, and delivering cost and time savings.

    The data’s there; now bring it together

    Given the clear benefits that good data analytics software offers businesses, embracing it should be a no-brainer. Most organisations already sit on a treasure trove of data; it’s simply not being put to effective use. A unified data analytics software can change that by bringing together disparate data points and providing a consolidated view with actionable insights. Implemented correctly, those insights can supercharge a business’s growth trajectory.

    Kehinde Ogundare is the Country Head, Zoho Nigeria.