‘SMEs can leverage cloud services to cut costs, expand customer base’
The micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are critical pillars of any 21st Century economy. They are the biggest employers of labour, key contributors to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and sustainers of large enterprises.
Nigeria, which is Africa’s biggest economy, has 37 million MSMEs, contributing 47 percent to the GDP and employing over 50 percent of 174 million Nigerians.
This category of business is, however, crimped by lack of innovation, which is preventing them from taking advantage of local and international opportunities. Findings show that the major reason for missing out on opportunities to cut costs, expand customer base and export skills is the inability to understand and migrate to cloud-based services. This is posing a serious threat to these MSMEs, which need to innovate or die, given the enormous pressure facing Nigerian businesses emanating from stiff competition, inflation, tax drive, and rising costs.
This is where Oracle’s cloud-based services come into play. The Wikipedia defines cloud computing as the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.
“Considering what has been happening in Nigeria in the last one year, it is probably one of the most difficult times for companies,” said Adebayo Sanni, country managing director for Oracle, who oversees Nigeria’s affairs.
“A lot of companies today are searching for answers such as ‘How do I sell my market faster? How do I reduce my costs?’ The competition now is not what we have seen traditionally. The competition has actually been a Konga. Executives are facing enormous pressure to use technology to innovate. When you talk of innovation, you talk about agility and speed to market,” Sanni said.
“They also need to tighten budgets. Nigeria is predominantly an SME economy. Oracle solutions, which are used by the best companies in the world, allow companies to reach the market. Two, it allows SMEs to innovate and pay as they use, unlike before when they had to make a major investment in infrastructure,” he said.
Oracle offers a comprehensive and fully integrated stack of cloud applications, platform services, and engineered systems. Oracle has offices in Abuja and Lagos, with combined staff strength of 120. While the Lagos office takes charge of the business sector or what is called the Enterprise Commercial Sector, Abuja’s takes care of the public or government sector. Oracle offers cloud-based services to businesses in the areas of Software-as-a Service, Platform-as-a Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service.
“We will continue to ensure we extend these services to SMEs by offering them specific cloud-based solutions, thereby allowing them to move fast into the market. We will continue to ensure we invest in entrepreneurs that will, in turn, change how we do business in Nigeria,” Nigeria’s head of Oracle said.
According to him, the services are not just limited to SMEs, as they also extend to large enterprises such as large-scale manufacturers, banks, telecom companies, as well as key players in the public and private sectors. To buttress this point, Oracle has provided cloud-based services to 23 out of 24 banks, telcos, and key players in manufacturing, oil &gas and other sectors.
The company has remained unshaken amid competition, recording positive top- and bottom-lines in Africa’s biggest economy so far. Its cloud-based solutions have offered customers options to cut costs and gain visibility.
The company is not just in Nigeria to make sales, but is also in the country to contribute to economic growth and technology transfer.
In Lagos State it has created a skills roadmap, which focuses on capacity building programmes, broken down into four segments. More than 100 graduates gained vital skills through Oracle-Lagos State Workforce Development Programme in 2015. There is equally an ongoing partnership that trains Lagos State staff on employee readiness, using Oracle’s five e-business modules. The service provider has likewise trained over 50 staff from different higher institutions in Lagos. The company recently partnered with Computer Warehouse in training Nigerian developers on cloud services, and engineering, among others.
“Our primary focus is to look at using technology to help government in reducing wastes. These are technologies that allow government to diversify in oil & gas, into making sure we have proper accountability in terms of taxation and generating revenue,” Sanni told Start-Up Digest.
He said Oracle is interested in extending healthcare to millions of Nigerians, adding that it is desirous to continue supporting university graduates to gain computer skills so that they can become entrepreneurs who export the skills to neighbouring African countries.
“There is no diversification that will not require technology as a platform to transform it. This is where Oracle comes in, to make sure we provide the technology platform. We see skills gap as an opportunity, whereas other companies see it as a problem. We need to train the next generation of people with skills to support the services Oracle is putting in place,” he further said.
According to him, cloud services are affordable, enabling SMEs to compete with large enterprises, while exporting skills to earn scarce foreign exchange.
“What we are doing is to make sure these services are affordable, based on Pay-as-You-Consume. You use the services, you generate revenue and you pay. The question a small business needs to ask is, ‘Do I need to compete with an existing player?”
“Our vision is to continuously drive these skills through Oracle University. We need to begin to take these skills to Ivory Coast, Ghana, Gambia, Mali and other parts of Africa to gain foreign revenue and strengthen our economy,” he stated.
He urged governments at all levels to put policies in place that will enable local players to collaborate with and compete effectively with international players. He said policies should not discourage investments but must encourage competition that will enable local players to export skills.
ODINAKA ANUDU