Technology Consulting

One tension we feel on our consulting desk is striking a balance between being timely and timeless. In our operations, we seek both timeliness and timelessness. Our solutions are geared towards an unparalleled time to market at the same time trusted over ageless period. This is our unique edge. We are strongly footed in theory through our numerous academic and business researches. We also are experienced in practice bringing to bear over 20 years of industry knowledge and experience in the field of Information Technology and Business management.

 

Areas of Expertise

Our skills cover a range of specialized areas of ICT and business consulting. We are confident in the following areas and we will not accept brief in areas where we do not have skills or competitive advantage.

 

1. Information Systems and Business Strategy Consulting

Strategy as we know it is the art of defining a destination or goal and marshaling the best way to achieve the desired. Consequently, we see business strategy as a conscious analysis of an organization’s current state, a description of the desired state and an evaluation of the roadmap to bridge the gap. In today’s information centric world, information systems (a series of systems – often computerized designed to collect, process and output valued added information to enhance decision making) play key roles in business. Competitive advantages have been conferred on organizations simply by the use of strategic information systems and these advantages have been shown to impact bottom line (profit, ROA, and other metrics of measuring organizational performance). The real challenge is how to uniquely interplay these information systems (IS) in such a manner to support the business goals and objectives. This challenge of alignment, congruence or fit is the major headache of IT and business managers alike. This is the area where our Consulting expertise comes in to deploy our unique skills to ensure that you derive investment benefits in IT. We have proven techniques and instruments to derive optimum (align) form of using IT in business.

Huge investments in IT without a commensurate impact on business performance are one of the many challenges facing manufacturing companies’ world over. Given the myriads of problems facing companies in Nigeria, the concern of investment justification in IT seems escalated and is currently manifesting in reversals of some management decisions taken in the hype of IT era. From our experience in consulting for manufacturing companies in Nigeria, information technology applications have been introduced in some manufacturing companies, but mostly in an uncoordinated way without long-term integration plans.  It is also believed that in these companies where ICT have been introduced, individual departments introduced computers and purchased/developed software to support their own departmental operations. This fragmented approach perhaps divided the company into small and almost autonomous enterprises, each with the goal to deploy ICT to make their departments and its associated activities work more efficiently.  It soon become clear that the smooth transfer of information among platforms and across functions in the organization was difficult, if at all possible.

Our consulting exercise will enable you plan your investments in IT and ensure successful implementation in order to deliver your business objectives. We are confident that you will not regret giving us the challenge of advising and planning your information systems acquisition and use.

 

2. Business Process Analysis and Design

A business process is a set of linked steps or activities that taken together result in a specific business outcome, either internal or external to the organization. Documenting a business processes involves describing what is done, why it is done, how it is done, who (or what system) does it, as well as how well it is done. Business Process Management (BPM) works by modeling the end-to-end process, diagramming the sequential flow of activities and information, along with the rules, people and technology.

Business processes underlie all organizational efforts, and the effectiveness with which they are carried out contributes directly to critical business goals such as improved customer retention, lower lending costs, faster loan disbursement and more accurate data analysis. BPM is a fast, agile process in which business units (operations, finance, accounting, internal audit, human resources) and IT work together using tools that enable them to arrive at solutions. These processes enable the organization to improve and adapt today and more importantly BPM creates a necessary framework for the future whereby the organization and its people can rapidly adapt to new challenges.

BPM is a methodology allowing effective management and optimization of processes, helping to identify the sensitive points and duplications in a business process. The result of its use is a reduction in costs, limitation of losses, and an increase in work productivity, turnover and customer satisfaction.

Our Consulting business has conducted several business process analysis and design/redesign for several microfinance organizations in Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Philippines, Uganda, Ghana etc. We have also trained several microfinance executives in BPM across these countries.

 

3.  Information Systems Implementation & Support

We have helped many small to medium microfinance organizations to select and implement microfinance applications as well as Core Banking System for large microfinance organizations. The process involves gathering organizational objectives, information needs and the way business is conducted in the organization. These are used to develop a requirement document detailing the features and processes required from the business applications.

This requirement document will be used to generate a Request For Proposal (RFP) for vendor pre-qualification and selection. Further to selection of the appropriate vendor, we have implemented many Core Banking Systems in microfinance institutions and banks. We used a structured implementation methodology according to the Project Management Institute (PMI) framework. The use of these project management tools and techniques have led to delivering the working MIS for these institutions on time, within budget and at minimal risk to the business.

 

4. Training and Manpower Development

One of the major competences we have on our Consulting desk is conducting a training need assessment and delivering content in the most efficient way to bridge the skill gap. We use a structured tool after conducting a 360-degree information gathering exercise to ascertain an organization’s training needs as well as deliver skill gap matrix for approval by management of the microfinance institution. Once approved, we go further to develop content and source seasoned industry practitioners to deliver the contents.

We have conducted training in many countries in Africa and Asia for microfinance in the following areas: