Tag: Vodacom

The Managing Director, Vodacom Business Nigeria, Lanre Kolade, has advised business owners to take advantage of the era of Internet of Things (IoT) to grow their businesses, minimise cost, maximise profit and reap other benefits.

Kolade, old techpreneurs and captains of tech firms at NigeriaCom 2017 forum organised by Informa Telecoms Group, that IoT has become one of the world’s fastest growing technologies, said across all industries, IoT solutions have been adopted to provide a host of different benefits from increased return on investment (RoI) to developing stronger relationships with customers with far reaching benefits.

According to him, telcos  are facing a period of flat growth for core services and significant decline in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

This drastic change, he said, threatens the survival of the telecoms industry as substantial declines in user spending on voice and text services have caused a significant dip in revenue.

He said IoT has delivered a big growth opportunity for the industry due to the volume of connections expected and experts have projected that the market will have a global reach.  Kolade advised telcos to adapt to the changing times and source other revenue streams to replace what is being lost in the continuing revolution of communications.

“IoT offers significant growth potential and the opportunity to take a role in new vertical markets, such as automotive, healthcare and smart cities. As these sectors seek to adopt more IoT services, the opportunities that exist are vast. Whether you are a hardware manufacturer or connectivity reseller.

“Adding IoT solutions to your portfolio will open up new revenue streams from selling hardware, software and connectivity services, to a broad range of value-added services, such as consulting, integration and support.  Telcos will have to look at the IoT as a potential revenue generator to offset the declining revenues from core services,” he said.

According to him, by 2020, more than seven billion people and businesses, and over 30 billion devices, will be connected to the internet. “The question is no longer about the adoption of IoT, but rather its application to drive business success,” he argued, adding that Vodacom’s IoT solutions support wireless payment devices and e-readers, energy usage and smart metering, chilling cabinets, remote asset monitoring systems and community health management solutions.

Vodacom recently partnered Kaduna State government to launch a mobile technology-based healthcare programme tagged: “SMS for Life 2.0”, which aims to increase the availability of essential medication by monitoring drug stock levels and improving the delivery of healthcare for citizens via access public health services.

Vodacom is the technology partner for the initiative, which is a public-private partnership (PPP) with Novartis and the Kaduna State Ministry of Health. Vodacom has concluded the training and deployment of SMS for Life 2.0 in Kaduna, with over 250 facilities, using the platform to date. The initiative is planned to be implemented in all the 36 states of the federation.

Tech firm, Vodacom Business Nigeria, has decried the huge gap between male and female in the information communication technology (ICT) across the country. It described the development as challenging, adding that more needed to be done by stakeholders in the industry to redress the imbalance.

Its Senior Product Manager, Mrs. Funke Atanda, said gender equality remained a daunting challenge which every stakeholder in the ICT ecosystem must come together to address.

“Gender equality remains a challenge, particularly in the ICT sector, and so we realise that we should do more to bridge the disparity between male and female in this sector. By supporting ICT skill acquisition for girls, bringing females into our organisations to learn about new technologies and helping them further develop their ideas, we are able to encourage more girls to choose courses and careers in ICT. This will help increase the number of women in the ICT sector in the near future,” she said during a one-day ICT field trip the firm organised for female students from Baptist Girls Academy, Lagos.

The forum was designed to motivate girls to choose future careers in ICT

The firm said it was concerned by the gap between women and men in the ICT. Specifically, the firm referred to statistics provided by Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which showed that the ratio of Nigerian female workers to men in ICT was 3.3:1 in 2012; organised.

According to the NBS, the share of Nigerian females in the ICT workforce rose steadily from 19.02 per cent in 2010 to 22.96 per cent in 2012, with 78,757 Nigerian females employed in the sector at that time. With companies such as Vodacom which are actively accelerating gender equality in the workplace, it is expected that the number of females in the ICT sector must have grown substantially between 2012 and now.

She said when it comes to gender equality in the workplace, Vodacom leads as currently, 43 per cent of Vodacom’s workforce is female. Last year, promotions of female employees rose by nine per cent, while 17 per cent of the executive workforce is female. Vodacom’s working policies also allow women more flexibility around maternity leave and returning to work.

Atanda said:  “Vodacom will continue to support and advocate for gender equality for women in and through ICT; this will strengthen their stance in the sector while continuing to improve lives of all around the world.”

However, with the decline in the number of female candidates admitted into Engineering, Technology and ICT faculties between 2014 and 2015, it is important that more companies join in the promotion of females in ICT education in the country.

According the NBS, of the 564 candidates admitted into the Faculty of Engineering in Lagos State, in 2014, only 129 were female. The numbers declined in 2015 with only 84 females admitted of the 414 candidates admitted into the faculty of engineering in Lagos State. By providing donations, training and support to ICT driven programmes.

The advent of the internet will mark the end of classrooms where a teacher sits at the front and students sit facing him, technology firm, Vodacom Business Nigeria has said.

It said in the future, classrooms will no longer be described as rooms within a school, where students are taught, but rather any space where learning takes place.

According to Vodacom, today, assignments are completed online and uploaded through classroom portals; posting of grades and results are also done online. However, in the near future, group projects will be completed through collaborative software and students will use cloud storage instead of flash drives or paper to store their work, it added.

Teachers, parents, students and administrators will communicate through social media platforms designed specifically for education or for a school. All this will be made possible through the power of the Internet.

Speaking in Lagos during the Total School Support Exhibition (TOSSE), its Senior Manager, Product Portfolio, Funke Atanda, said the fear about abuse of the internet by learners was real, adding that the firm has already packaged a programme designed for schools with unwanted websites filtered.

“Teachers need to embrace the internet and they need to be computer literate because laptops and other educational technology will eliminate the use of paper. As the Internet and computers become more accessible and cheaper; instead of teachers copying handouts and exams to give to students, they will be pushed online to students,” she said.

She added that the role of the teacher will change from instructor to guide, maintaining that the responsibility now lies with teachers to become tech savvy and ready for not only the future classrooms but future learners.

According to Atanda, not only will the instruction methods change in classrooms of the future but the classroom layout will too. Students will sit side by-side and not behind or in-front of each other; a more appropriate design for students to collaborate and not compete with one another. Classwork and assignments will also be based on shared efforts and not individual efforts, resulting in an environment where students will innovate, criticise, challenge the status quo, code and invent new technologies that improve learning and living.

Vodacom Business Nigeria has been at the forefront of creating reliable and affordable connectivity solution for corporates and schools. Vodacom has now gone a step further to create EduLink Wireless Internet Services that gives schools across Nigeria access to fast, reliable and cost-effective Internet. This solution offers access to curriculum content from primary school to local and international qualifications preparations such as SSCE, UMTE and A-Levels. Educators are now well placed to reach more students and improve learning ability using content and curriculum available online even where books are scarce.

The Managing Director, Vodacom Business Nigeria, Mr. Lanre Kolade, has said   available skills do not tally with  jobs as the world migrates to Internet of Things (IoTs).

Lanre, who spoke on: IoT, the Unmissable Opportunity, in Lagos, said 83 per cent of CEOs believe that IoT would give them competitive edge, adding that it would also promote efficiency.

He said: “The jobs of the next century are not here now.” He explained that in Africa, the opportunities in using the massive data available to the mobile operators (MNOs) are almost limitless, adding that such data could be used to sell personalised services to customers.

Meanwhile, Vodacom added more awards to its list of accolades, winning The IoT Focused Company and Enterprise Solutions Provider of the Year Awards at the 2017 Beacon of ICT (BoICT) Awards.

While receiving the awards,  Kolade said: “We are proud of our achievements over the years and are grateful to all our customers who have come to realise the benefits of using our solutions. These awards recognise the leadership position we have established in delivering enterprise-grade total communications solutions in the industry. We will continue to take the lead in leveraging technology to drive businesses growth which will in turn accelerate economic development in Nigeria.”

The award follows the successful partnership recently established between Vodacom and Kaduna State government to launch an ICT for development initiative. The project supports mass service delivery in healthcare and education in Kaduna State through the deployment of mobile-based solutions to promote greater efficiency in each sector.

Internet of Things (IoTs) has can transform business operations and maximise efficiency across all sectors of Nigeria’s economy, Vodacom has said.

Executive Head of Department, IoT, Vodacom Business Africa, Tony Smallwood, who spoke in Lagos at the weekend during the NigeriaCom ICT Leaders Forum, said IoTs transforms the way businesses operate and increase returns on investment (RoI) because of the efficiency that comes with it.

He said: “IoTs drives digital transformation, helping businesses to remain relevant in today’s digital world. Overall, 63 per cent of adopters say they have seen significant RoI from adopting IoTs.”

Smallwood, whose keynote address was on understanding IoTs applications in strengthening digital business in Nigeria, said by 2020, more than seven billion people and businesses, and over 30 billion devices, will be connected to the internet.

He said the question was no longer about the adoption of IoTs but rather its application to drive business success. “We have an ecosystem of partners who specialise in specific aspects of IoT integration, who have deep knowledge in their respective industries. In collaboration with our partners we are able to easily integrate an entire value chain for our customers, small or big,” Smallwood said.

From fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), to finance, energy and utilities, manufacturing, agriculture and health, there is no industry that has not been impacted by the potential of the IoTs, he added.

IoT solutions securely provide a view of critical systems, keeping businesses in control and reducing costs across all operations. Linking almost any type of remote machine or devices to critical information systems and collating real-time data can help to increase visibility throughout the supply chain, Smallwood said, adding that Vodacom’s IoT solutions support wireless payment devices and e-readers, energy usage and smart metering, chilling cabinets, goods and remote asset monitoring systems and community health management solutions.