‘Knowledge, not natural resources, key to economic growth’

About a week ago, we launched four of our software solutions into the market. We call them our flagship solutions because we actually have over twenty five solutions that we have engineered in the last six to seven years but because we did not want to flood the market with too much information at the same time which would cause information overload, we decided to come out with four different flagship which are the main ones. The first one is called FINULTIMATE and it is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that can be used in any organisation to run your finance, your assets, your human resource and others. So, the ERP solution basically connects the entire organisation together. ATB Techsoft is the first to build such gigantic solution in the country, not just for the local market in Nigeria but our vision is to push it out there for the global market. The other solution launched in the market is the ULTISURE, which is an insurance underwriting system. We developed this software solution when we realised that one of the most difficult sector to build an application for is the insurance sector. We have seen a lot of insurance companies that buy one application today because it is foreign and a year or two years later, they junk it because it is not meeting their needs and they have to start the process again. So we looked at all the challenges faced in the sector and over the years, we have engineered a system that would not only cater for the special need of the Nigerian market but for the global market as well. We engineered this system that every insurance company can use to automate and run their business in such a way that their go to market time is reduced. Think for example, if an insurance company wants to start selling a product, maybe a life product, 90 percent of insurance software out there would need maybe six to seven months trying to build the product on their software, but our with our own software we do not have to re- engineer the software when a new product comes out, you can simply build the product on top of our ERP solution and within three to five days, an insurance company can begin to sell its products.

Many organisations including the government are still depending heavily on foreign software. It is 100 percent correct that the market is shrinking because of lack of support. We have a major problem trying to push out products into the country, just like every other product in every other sector. Nigerians including government agencies do not have any kind of acceptance for local products for several reasons. The first reason is that we believe that foreign products are of higher quality but in software it is different because the same information that the kid in Silicon Valley in the United States of America has is the same information that another kid who is a software engineer in Nigeria has. There is absolutely no difference, so the whole issue of companies and individuals preferring to buy foreign software is more of myopic thinking which is wrong, because software is not like you are producing a car, where you can claim that we do not have the materials available. If you are a good software engineer, you can start developing a solution from the comfort of your own room and design very good software. On the other hand, a lot of our software developers do not design software for the long run because they just want to make quick money. They engineer their software in a way that this software is developed probably because I have an uncle in a company that is the director of IT or an uncle that is a minister of science and technology and they need software and I was given the contract to develop one. So it is not designed with a mindset of something that has come to stay but in ATB Techsoft it is different, in the sense that we developed this entire suite of software solutions over seven years. We did not develop it because we are trying to survive, we developed it because we want to play in the big market and create solutions to basic problems in any organisation. Our software is built for Nigeria but it is of international grade and all we need from the market is opportunity to see what we are doing and not only ATB, but there are a lot of developers doing fantastic things in technology. We have come of age in the country and it is high time that Nigerians and the government began to look at what people can do internally. Software that can be created locally should be encouraged. In America, as big as their economy is, they spend less than $100 million importing software and they make much more than $500 billion exporting software while in Nigeria, with our small economy, we spend as much as $2billion importing software and that must change. There is no software that we have seen; in fact 90 percent of software that we import into this country already exists. They have been designed and built and they are working in this country. We have built software that can compete with other global giants and we have even built software that is first in the market. We have compared our software with ones built by very big IT companies worldwide and we have seen that in some cases, we have even surpassed what they have built. You can take for example, when some of these people start selling their solutions outside of their country, say, a company that has built a fantastic solution from America begins to sell its products outside, they start selling a software that is of very low quality at first, but their own people embrace the software, but it and then they can get revenue to improve the software. Nigerians need not to wait until we build a Rolls Royce before we start to patronise local software, because when most of these foreign software that we buy come to Nigeria, they are usually of low quality and not of good quality.

Like I said, we started designing and developing the software almost a decade ago, and they became market ready in the last quarter of 2016. We decided to introduce them into the market. We have introduced the software by way of demonstration to the largest HMO in Nigeria if not in Africa. We have introduced to leaders in every sector including insurance, education, financial sector, manufacturing, agriculture and we are in several phases of transaction and we hope to see some of these transactions producing results this month or in the month of February. We know that this year, we are going to push or software out into usage. We have a lot of push back from people especially because it is not foreign software but the reason is never that the software is not up to standard. We have had a lot of demonstrations and never have we heard that the software is not good enough. They have always said the software is good but what can you do that is different? How many people have used it?, we don’t know the name, we are scared of defects, those are the type of comments we get, but we would break that ice .

In Nigeria, we have huge competition but I can tell you that 95 percent of our software competitors are foreign. We hardly have local competition. So how do we intend to break the ice? Well, the method we are taking is first to surpass whatever solution or offering that the foreign competitors are providing. The second is to offer our products at a very creative price point that is we are going to bring the prices way down that it will be very attractive to our customers. With our software, there will be no need to source for foreign exchange as they would all be paid for in Naira.

I must tell you this. If Nigerians including government begin to buy from Nigerian software providers, in less than two years, we would have an industry that would internally generate over $1billion annually and that alone would spiral into other African countries then to other countries all over the world. We should be making in another decade, much more than we are making on crude right now in terms of foreign revenue. We have an industry that can grow into a $100billion industry in about a decade if we first embrace our solutions, because there is so much money in technology, 20-30 times much more than what we make now on oil and we still spend ridiculous amounts of money importing software solutions. Nigerian companies, especially banks pay for Indian banking applications. Finacle for example was an Indian banking application before it was bought over by Oracle for billions of dollars. So imagine if those banks, manufacturing firms, schools, hospitals and the rest, start to buy Nigerian software, these software developing companies will get enough revenue to improve and be bold enough to start exporting these software and before you know it, in another decade, there will be much more money that we can make from exporting our software than even any other natural resource. It is knowledge economy that matters today, natural resources do not make any country rich. We can continue to make noise and say we have gold, we have oil, but it does not make any country rich, the world has moved beyond that and it is the knowledge economy that matters. A lot of jobs would be created on a monthly basis if we embrace Nigerian solutions, especially software. There are a lot of young guys who have high mental capacity to be employed to design software; there are a lot of entrepreneurs who have realised that we are in a world of technology. Technology is going to drive every sector and the good thing about it is that we do not need to import anything because the raw materials we need are our brains. Today, we know how much Facebook is worth, this was something that was developed by a teenager at the time, but it must first be embraced locally then it will be accepted internationally.

The regulators can surely do more because they are not doing enough right now. Technology is largely unregulated in this country, although too much regulation has its own disadvantage but regulation in terms of importation of software. We have the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP), whose role is to regulate importation of technical skills such as software but is NOTAP aware of what is going on internally? Are they aware that most of these products that they are approving for companies to go and buy abroad are available in Nigeria? So the regulators including National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) need to look inwards themselves. They need to organise quarterly workshops and conferences where people and companies can come and showcase technology that has been developed internally, so that when companies go to the regulators to ask for permission to purchase specific solutions from America, NOTAP can tell them that 10 companies already have that software in Nigeria, why not patronize the local software companies. The same way Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is putting hammer on importation, they should put a hammer on importation of some basic software solutions in Nigeria. We have companies who have build HR software that has lasted the last 10-15 years in this country. So, 15 years after we have built HR software on our own, of which I know about four different local ones and we are still importing HR software, that is why the industry is not growing and the software companies are not big.

It is true that a lot of software developers in the past have made the mistake of not taking their time to develop software and test them properly before pushing them out into the market. Engineering software is not what should be done just within one week. It requires a lot of study, research, test and all that. But most times, when people complain about software being below standard in Nigeria, they are not using local software. We know companies and government agencies that have been trying to repair their foreign software for the past two to three years. When it comes to foreign software, they have the patience, they even give excuses. When the likes of Microsoft software (Windows) came in the early 90s, they were not of the highest quality, but we didn’t abandon it, we kept using it and they kept improving and updating and we kept paying for it. iPhone 4 is not the same as iPhone 7, But we didn’t junk the iPhone 4, we bought it and used it until now when they have improved on so many aspects of the phone and they would keep improving if we keep patronizing. Same should be for locally developed software solutions in Nigeria. If a company has spent a lot of human resources to build a solution and you find a few errors, and you want them to ensure that these errors are resolved so that the economy would be better for it, but when a Nigerian company comes into your organisation and they give you a solution, 90 percent of customers are looking for fault because their mindset is that it would not work, so the moment they find a fault, they junk it, but if they buy a foreign software and you find such fault, they would even spend money to bring the consultant to come and fix it. We know people who have spent billions trying to install foreign software but they have not been able to install this thing till today and they have the patience, so how do we justify that?

Like I said, we developed twenty different solutions for various sectors including business intelligence, real estate, loan management and so many others, so it is safe to say we have covered almost every sector of the economy by developing very good software solutions to meet their needs. All our solutions are cloud ready, which means that they can work from the internet; you don’t have to install them locally. We have designed a solution that we are partnering with a technology distribution company to put in our retail management solution for every shop for as low as N10, 000- N20, 000 a month, such that we would be able to help the shop, whether big or small to manage its, inventory, accounts, HR and sales right from one source. This would make their business more predictable thereby increasing their revenue, because when you have visibility in your business and you can predict it, then your bottom line is to expand. So, we have covered a lot of the basics.

For our retail management solution for example, what we have planned to take it into the market is what we have already started by organizing media parleys, then we have our sales representatives who have hit the road, going to different companies to tell them about the solution. Because our solutions are cloud based, they are subscription based, so a company does not need to spend millions buying upfront, you just need to pay in bits and get the services you pay for. However, some companies want to own the software as an asset and then pay only for support in case they have support needs, so we have both options available and that cuts across all our solutions including ULTISURE, FINULTIMATE, EDUWARE and ULTIFLUX.

 EDUWARE for example, is a solution that is very good for secondary school and tertiary systems where from one computer system; you are able to manage the entire life cycle of your business as a school. So, from admissions, student record, library, learning to administration, covering finance, HR, payroll, asset management, CRM and the likes, we have the solution across, such that the school would see from one view, everything that is happening in the institution. So, from admitting a student to graduating that student, every record is kept in cloud and we are the only company in this country that has such a solution. FINULTIMATE automates the entire business operations in a company. Take for example, the business of manufacturing, where you start from gathering raw material, to production, to finished products and to sales. Our software is able to manage that entire line. Then when you start selling, we manage the whole process of the supply chain and your customer relations management, because the solution has a 360 degree view of your customers, where you can know every single thing a customer has ever bought from you and every request they have ever made. A company cannot exist without people, so there is human resource management solution. From their staffers, to their permanent staff, interns, shift workers, appraisal procedure, employment procedure, promotion procedure and disengagement procedure and all the things that happen from employment to retirement. The FINULTIMATE is unique software that handles accounts, transactions and finance of any company. In insurance too, there are things that are specific to them such as underwriting systems, billing, contracting and all those things, depending on the type of insurance policy, we have the ULTISURE software which manages them. ULTIFLUX is one system that I am very proud of. It is a system that any organisation can use. There are some processes in some organisations that are unique and specific to them and this software was engineered for any business to be able to, within a very short time, set up a work flow to automate the particular process within their organisation, thereby converting their company to a paperless company.