Monday 18 July 2011

Nigeria, your business and the social media buzz

Nigeria, your business and the social media buzz
As at March 2011, The internet world stats puts the number of Nigerian facebook users at almost 3 million (2,991,200), and in a country with an estimated 44 million internet users, a facebook penetration rate of 1.9%, an ever increasing number of bloggers, twitter users, many professionals joining LinkedIn and the enthusiasm of the Nigerian social media about Google+, Nigerian marketers cannot ignore this sector for much longer.
At the moment we have a few Nigerian entrepreneurs advertising their products on facebook, but mostly these are small & young entrepreneurs who are active on facebook personally, very few Nigerian businesses really make use of social media, a visit to many facebook or twitter pages for Nigerian business shows no recent activities and few connections.
Social media and your business
Many Nigerian professionals still view social media as an individual thing, and a sort of playground, however I have found social media to be a place for interaction, and when businesses start to view it this way they start to see a need for an integrated campaign tailored towards a select set of people within the social media circle. Here are a few pointers for business owners looking to take advantage of Nigeria’s social media space below:
1.       Define your aims and objectives
There is a danger of joining the social media buzz and getting missing in the crowd, many businesses have joined social media without any clear terms on achievements and ways of measuring success. Be sure to have a clearly mapped out plan to put out your message and measure the success of your campaigns.
2.       Define your audience/targets
The social media world is so diverse; you meet all sorts of individuals and businesses there. It is important to define your target audience before you embark on the social media journey. It is important to define WHO, WHY and WHERE.
a.       Who do we want to network with?
b.      Why have we decided to network with these people?
c.       Where are these people? Are they on facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ etc?
3.       Interact with your targets
Interaction is key, when you get your targets you need to interact with them so as to keep them coming back.
a.       Entice your targets with an idea of what you have to offer – First impressions last the longest, so make sure you have a clear message to deliver on first visit, and clear idea of what you have to tell them.
b.      Have your ears to the ground – Social media users are usually very outspoken, listen, respond and engage them.
c.       Build custom applications – If you have a business that involves apps, build custom applications to suit your audience and whatever devices they use, an example is the SDL Free Translation facebook app - https://www.facebook.com/FreeTranslationApp.
d.      Practice what you preach – You want your targets to interact with you on facebook? There is a high likelihood many of your employees are on facebook already, let them join in the party, build a facebook group for your company where your employees can interact with each other, chances are many of them are already connected.
4.       Empower your company to do the job – Do not assume that anybody can be social media marketer, invest in employing someone with the necessary skills, or organise trainings for your current employees who have been selected to do the job
5.       Deal with legal and executive loopholes – Make sure to have your company’s legal team in the loop, and don’t forget the executives, they might just kick against all your hardwork, but if you have done most of the good work I have mentioned above and pitch it to them with clearly defined strategies, chances are that the executive will be willing to give you the green light.
In conclusion, I believe joining the social media world or not should not be complicated business, a simple analysis of your business processes and long term strategy is enough for you to make this decision. It is either good for you or not, the decision is yours, but there is certainly a large market out there to be poached.
Written by Ifeoluwa Adebayo

Saturday 16 July 2011

The Cloud Revolution – An Opportunity for Africa

The Cloud Revolution – An Opportunity for Africa

Cloud computing basically means doing less with your computer and doing more in the cloud – on the internet. Organisations are jumping on the cloud train at a very fast rate. The cloud is moving in diverse ways, from cloud based apps like Google docs to Software as a Service (SaaS) applications like Sales Force.

Why Africa must embrace Cloud Computing:

·         Development of the private sector
Information technology has been a major factor in the growth of small firms in developing countries. However, most companies are impeded in their adoption of information technology to boost their work due to many reasons. Issues such as cost of hardware and software and lack of local availability of technology are some factors. If Africa wants to increase the acceleration of its growth, the private sector must embrace cloud computing the way mobile phones have been embraced.

Melissa Leon writes in her blog (
http://extendedvillage.com/cloud-computing-africa) about how they help local leaders in Kenya use the cloud for improved efficiency and to safe guard against loss of data.

 

·         Current infrastructure – Mobile Cloud Computing
Looking at the current infrastructure for internet access in Africa, mobile platforms seem to be the preferred means available for online activities. As at 2008, the International Telecommunication Union stated that Africa had over 300 million mobile subscribers and as at 2009 David Smith of the Guardian predicted a rise of 550% in mobile users across Africa in 5 years. In Africa, the number of mobile users far outnumbers the number of internet users, therefore any business looking to go into the mobile cloud stands at an advantage as it will be easier to increase internet usage by providing needed services on mobile platforms which your clients are already used to.

As the internet revolution sweeps across Africa, the mobile cloud will likely be the first to kick off. It seems Kenya is taking the lead with companies like RedCloud Technologies coming up with solutions to improve the M-PESA money transfer mobile application so that micro-finance institutions can connect to M-PESA to deliver financial services simply and cheaply without queuing in the bank, using mobile money transfer.

Mobile banking and mobile money transfer are also becoming increasingly popular in Nigeria, with financial institutions delivering mobile applications to aid customers carry out transactions.

Will the mobile device be an important tool in the growth of cloud computing for Africa? It certainly will.

Online Security Infrastructure:
One major problem facing Africa in terms of computing and internet usage generally, is that of infrastructure. Without the required infrastructure, growth is impeded, when growth is impeded security becomes irrelevant as there is nothing to secure. This is why a company like Paypal will not do business with Nigerian based payment merchants. While we see companies like Pesapal (
https://www.pesapal.com/home/about) in Kenya, East Africa and CashU (https://www.cashu.com/) in North Africa making massive inroads into the online payment industry, we find companies such as Etranzact (http://www.etranzact.com) in Nigeria, West Africa still not able to fully take control of the vast opportunities available to them.

The right infrastructure to make good and fast internet access affordable is necessary for cloud computing to take off fully in Africa. The mobile companies seem to be ahead in providing this service.

It is interesting to know that African Governments are beginning to pick an interest in this. The Rwandan Government recently hosted the 12th Forum on Telecommunication/ICT Regulation and Partnership in Africa in June 2011. We need more of such interests and activities from Governments in Africa.

Trust and Credibility:
The International Community has not fully embraced opportunities in cloud computing in Africa due to the fact there is very little trust base. A lot of people might argue against this point, but if you look at the number of companies ready to work with Kenya, with M-Pesa being initially sponsored by the UK-based Department for International Development (DFID) compared to those ready to work with countries always in the news for the bad reasons, then you will understand that IT services, including cloud computing has taken off much faster in places like Kenya due to a better trust base.
Multinational companies still prefer to open their computing centres in places like South Africa with a better trust base. IBM opened Africa’s first major cloud computing centre in South Africa in 2008.

Bigger African countries with huge potentials for profit must step up their game with government policies that provide conducive environments for companies to have enough faith in, to invest.
Secondly, local companies must seek cooperation with multinationals with proven track records, this gives them a voice and adds credibility to their services.

Conclusion:
Gartner, an IT research and advisory firm,  forecasts that by 2012 industrialized utility and cloud-based services will account for at least 50 percent of the new demand for managed IT infrastructure services. The opportunity for African businesses and locals to fully join this cloud world is likely based on the widespread use of mobile and tablet devices on the continent. Businesses will do well to focus on mobile cloud options in the interim, to enable them reach a wider audience and therefore have more impact. This is an opportunity for Africa, we do not have to wait for the infrastructure which we lack, we can simple harness the potentials of the mobile cloud, and get almost all the advantages of cloud computing.

Written by Ifeoluwa Adebayo

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Ecommerce – Nigerian goldmine?

Ecommerce – Nigerian goldmine?
Electronic commerce, normally called ecommerce, is the buying and selling of goods and services over electronic systems such as the internet.

Oluniyi Ajao in his blog post titled ‘E-commerce in Nigeria: We’re back to the stone age!’ pointed some of the major factors militating against the take-off of ecommerce in Nigeria, internet fraud, poor security by card issuers and e-commerce website owners, poor communication between card issuers and card owners, he rounded up by saying “The Interswitch system needs to be thoroughly revamped. The system must necessarily come with advanced security features

As a developing economy, the importance of e-commerce to the growth of Nigeria’s economy cannot be over emphasized. As more Nigerians use the internet, we will see more ecommerce activities pop up. Many countries such as Thailand, China, the US and Britain have continuously focused on the internet as a major aspect for growth and development, Research News Daily in an article titled “How e-Commerce is transforming Britain’s Economy”  analysed Google’s ecommerce research report which put the UK’s ecommerce to be in excess of £100bn a year, the research also found that the internet accounts for 7.2% of Britain’s GDP, meaning that If the internet was a separate economic sector it would be the UK’s fifth largest producer of income.

Internet Usage
The Goldman Sachs 7th Annual Consumer Behaviour survey conducted in 2009 found that global e-commerce spending increased by 2% and number of buyers increased by 12%, mobile e-commerce was found to be an area of opportunity, as shopping was found to be one of the most important factors for site selection, ranking 4th in terms of priority with almost 50% of respondents saying they will like an experience similar to what obtains on their pc on mobile especially with two ecommerce giants, eBay and Amazon.

Nigerians have increasingly embraced the use of the internet, even the president now has a facebook fan page, Nigerian youths which make up a large percentage of the population have increasingly embraced the internet, this trend is mainly due to the availability of the internet via mobile devices. The Internet World Stats (http://www.internetworldstats.com/) estimates that as at December 2009 Nigeria had 23,982,200 internet users , about 16.1% of the population of about 149,229,090 (Census Bureau population stats).

However, the use of home broadband internet is still not fully embraced as most options are expensive, slow and unreliable, most people prefer to stick to their mobile devices since it offers mobility, it is cheap and it is comparatively reliable. Nevertheless, the acceptability of e-commerce is Nigeria is still very low. Most people lack the trust in the security of online applications, and there is even a dearth of options, very few platforms available for you to shop, as most Nigerian cards are not acceptable for shopping on international websites due to fear of fraud, I have even seen products for sale on eBay that clearly state ‘I WILL NOT SHIP TO NIGERIA SO DO NOT ASK’.

It is important to point out though, that significant consolidation has occurred in Nigeria’s Internet and broadband sector, the second international submarine fibre-optic cable (Glo-1), launched in 2009 broke the monopoly of Nitel’s SAT-3/WASC cable and is revolutionising the market. This might see use of home broadband internet increase rapidly in the very near future.

The role of government
The speed, the quality, the reliability and the cost of the internet are very important factors that can either enhance or obstruct progress of ecommerce. The Nigerian government should take more responsibility in providing necessary infrastructure for the proper enablement of internet technologies in Nigeria.

The American government, for example, “aims at the provision of on-line services to the majority of American households not only through desktop computers connecting to the Internet but also through devices such as television, cellular phones and portable digital assistants” (US Department of Commerce,1998), the government realises that ecommerce is essential to the growth of its economy.

Nigerian SMEs and Ecommerce
China SMEs E-Commerce Development Report (2009) indicated that in 2009, Chinese SME’s newly increased value from e-commerce accounted for 1.5 percent of China GDP, raking in up to 1.99 trillion Yuan, a comparative growth rate of about 20 percent, creating over 1.3 million new employments in 2008. In a nation like Nigeria with over 150million people, the opportunities are immense, so why are SMEs not embracing ecommerce? Could it be because:
  1. There are no strong SMEs – We currently do not have the brand awareness big enough for the SMEs, there is no single Nigerian supermarket with a national identity and recognition.
  2. Diversity of products - There is no Nigerian products store with the diversity of products strong enough to pull through a strong ecommerce presence, it could even be one product, but with enough diversity and market base to pull customers.
  3. Good mobile internet platforms – Even Amazon and eBay are still struggling to get it right when it comes to presenting good user experience for customers on mobile platforms.
  4. Trust – Users do not trust the security of the systems enough to put in their card details online there are still many sceptics.
However, taking the case of the airline industry as a pointer, you can argue that given the platform and availability, Nigerians will quickly embrace ecommerce, as many people now buy their local flight tickets online instead of going to join long queues at airports and ticketing offices.

What do Nigerian customers want in order to embrace ecommerce? Nothing out of the ordinary, consistent, reliable, and easy-to-use internet service, secure platforms to carry out ecommerce activities, good ecommerce applications that give good user experience, ease of use and ease of product  selection. With the speed at which Nigerians have embraced mobile devices like blackberries, ipads, and iphones, I see a huge market, untapped, and virgin, who will be bold enough to take it?

The way forward?
  1. The government needs to get more involved in the growth of the internet in Nigeria, no amount invested is too much, the opportunities are immense and almost unlimited.
  2. The SMEs need to take the bold step and start venturing into this almost barren land, there are loads of opportunities to take advantage of, and I bet the first few who take the bold steps will reap bountifully.
  3. Awareness must be increased, telecommunications companies can take the front row in this regard, pushing out information to users, working in partnership with ecommerce website owners and the government to form partnerships.
  4. SMEs should start outsourcing some of their services to ecommerce providers, stores like shoprite, park n shop, and game can outsource their online sales to companies like PerrySolution (http://www.buydirectfromusa.com/)who currently give their customers the opportunity to buy from USA and ship to Nigeria.
  5. International cooperation with bigger ecommerce giants in Europe and America.
  6. The banks need to step up their game, and provide secure and efficient means for funds transfer, an awareness campaign to increase confidence in card online usage should also be aggressively embarked on.

Written by Ifeoluwa Adebayo

References:
Small Medium Developing E-Commerce Pulled GDP Growth of China -  http://www.pressabout.com/small-medium-developing-e-commerce-38716/