06032018 - Charge any Fulani man with AK-47 to court—BUHARI

36 —Vanguard, TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2018
Sage solutions help
companies stay y agile
The growing enterprise software market has entered an era
of boom. The unprecedented development has been attributed
to the convergence of significant events in the marketplace.
The constantly evolving enterprise software market now cuts
across an assortment of commercial off-the-shelf products
ranging from corporate databases to Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) solutions and from Cloud-enabled
productivity tools to mission-critical vertical applications. For
decades, these enterprise software products have been the
catalyst to increased workplace productivity. The products
have also largely simplified an array of business tasks through
groundbreaking technologies from easy-to-use accounting
packages to powerful middleware and from cyber security
tools to indispensable spreadsheets. Sage Group, one of the
world’s largest suppliers of enterprise software products has
continually pushed the frontier of enterprise software market
since David Goldman, Paul Muller and Graham Wylie
founded the company in 1981 to build estimating and
accounting software to automate routine business
transactions. In accelerating further adoption of enterprise
resource planning soft wares, (ERPS) Pieter Bensch, the
executive in charge of Sage Africa operations, finds that old
school enterprise resource planning has a mixed reputation
in the market. In the aftermath, his strategy is to show clients
how monolithic enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions
have given way to new-age business management solutions
that are architected for an era of mobile, cloud, and big data
technologies. He is keen to drive home the point that these
next-generation platforms are designed to support modern
ways of working.
What do you hear from
decision-making
executives that forms the basis
of your strategy at Sage?
Business builders and
entrepreneurs tell us they didn’t
go into business to manage
admin and red tape, which is
where automation makes a
difference. Our vision is to make
tasks such as payroll and
accounting administration
invisible by 2020 so that they can
focus on business strategy,
workplace satisfaction, customer
satisfaction, and other areas of
their business that give them a
competitive advantage.
To what extent are companies
working with Sage to accelerate
value creation through
technologies?
Many companies are choosing
our next-generation enterprise
and accounting business
management solutions to help
them stay agile and grow faster.
Our platforms help them run their
businesses better, with a cohesive,
enterprise-class solution to
manage all core business
processes— from purchasing to
manufacturing, inventory
management, sales, customer
service and financials—locally
and internationally. Sage
solutions also accelerate
collaboration and reporting, and
deliver real-time insight into
costs and operational
performance. They are simple to
manage, and highly configurable
to adapt to customers’ unique
processes, roles and preferences.
Can you tell us about a
compelling use case using your
ERPS?
Since its establishment in 2001,
Fouani Nigeria Limited has
experienced phenomenal
growth and it’s not hard to see
why. As the sole distributor of LG
products in the country, Fouani
is on the cutting-edge of
electronics; assembling,
distributing and providing aftersales
support for LG branded
appliances ranging from air
conditioners, to refrigerators and
TVs. Today, with 40 retail outlets,
Fouani’s reach extends across
Nigeria—including Lagos,
Abuja and Port Harcourt—and
throughout Africa too, via
subsidiaries in Liberia, Gambia
and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo. With such incredible
growth, however, Fouani
Marketing Director, Mohammed
H. Fouani, often found the
organisation struggling to keep
up with the demands associated
with running a large, end-to-end
business across multiple sites.
This issue was further
compounded through the use of
different software solutions and
diverse managerial styles
(designed to cater to Nigeria’s
eclectic population) at Fouani’s
many retail branches. The result:
a business with no defined
processes to consolidate and
track data, or manage business
operations.
How have you adapted your
software applications to the
technologically underdeveloped
markets like Nigeria, for
example?
Product localisation is a priority
for Sage. We have tailored our
software to cater for local tax and
labour regulations in more than
62 countries in Africa and the
Middle East. We have
customised our solutions to meet
the specific needs of the Nigerian
business environment, including
comprehensive support for VAT,
PIETER BENSCHI
Executive Vice-President, Africa &
Middle East, Sage Group
payroll and other Nigerian laws
and regulations. Four years ago,
Sage opened an office in Nigeria
to get closer to our customers. We
are also investing heavily in our
network of local partners, which
assists us in the delivery of our
solutions to end-users. We take
feedback from our field
experiences and from our
partners to improve our products
for the local market. The benefits
of Sage in the Nigerian market
are numerous. Firstly, our
solutions are easy to implement.
Secondly, we tailor our solutions
to the legislation of Nigeria and
so our customers are legally
compliant. Thirdly, our solutions
are adapted to different industries
in Nigeria, with a vast number
Our platforms
help companies to
run their
businesses better,
with a cohesive,
enterprise-class
solution to manage
all core business
processes
of tools with personalised user
experiences. Finally, our
solutions do not require
customers to make expensive IT
infrastructure investments.
How do youencourage local
participation in software
engineering?
Our local office in Nigeria is led
and staffed by Nigerians. We
continue to invest in our network
of business partners and their
skills. We are also focusing on
building professional services
and a development team that
works on localisation of our
solutions for the Nigerian market.
Our partners have written addons
and third-party solutions that
support the value delivery to end
users. We are helping more
Nigerian companies to acquire
the skills they need to consult on
complex projects and develop
add-on solutions that plug
directly into Sage. We also
welcome third-party developers
into our tech-hubs or
development team to improve
our offerings. In addition, we
work with industry associations
and professional bodies on skills
transfer and development
programmes. For example, we
have signed a partnership
agreement with the Association
of Chartered Certified
Accountants (ACCA) in Nigeria.
This partnership will see our
organisations work together to
provide training and skills
development opportunities to
finance and accounting
professionals in Nigeria. We will
also promote each other’s brands
to - and share information with -
our respective communities.
Which products are your
biggest market movers?
Over 90 per cent of businesses
fall into the Small & Medium
Business segment, so that is
where we focus much of our
effort. Sage has solutions for all
categories of organisations from
start-ups to Small & Medium
Businesses as well as large
enterprises. Our success in
Nigeria is attributable to the fact
that our solutions address every
tier of the market, from a small
trader to a large gas & oil
company. Each solution is
performing well in the market.
Sage Accounting, for example, is
perfect for start-up businesses
(food sellers, online traders,
technicians, artisans) who need
basic online bookkeeping. In
2017, we released an entry level
cloud solution for the start-up and
small businesses in Nigeria,
called Sage One Accounting &
Payroll. This solution was built
by accountants for nonaccountants.
It affords end users
the opportunity to run their
business from the palm of their
hands, while allowing them to
concentrate on their core
competency.
In your opinion, what are the
greatest obstacles to the
introduction of ERPS?
Legacy systems: To create a
solid foundation for digital
processes and systems,
companies need to modernise
their core business applications
and automate their business
processes - yet they fear the costs
and time involved in Enterprise
Management solution
implementation. New
deployment methodologies and
cloud solutions, however, can
accelerate the implementation of
a new business system.
Lack of skills: There is a lack
of software skills and talent in
Africa, across areas such as cybersecurity,
cloud computing,
enterprise applications and data
science. Many organisations’ IT
departments have a strong base
of legacy IT skills, yet struggle
to find and retain professionals
with the next generation of digital
skills. Addressing this demands
that companies think about
which skills they will access
through outsourcing partners,
which ones they’ll develop inhouse,
and how they’ll manage
issues like skills transfer with
external vendors.
Is Sage focused on a particular
industry?
Our solutions are tailored for
nearly any industry. Sage
Enterprise Management
solution for example, has builtin
functionality for process
manufacturing, distribution and
services tasks, adjusts to
accommodate any company’s
unique rules and processes.
How do you characterize the
current stage in ERPS adoption
in Africa?
A growing focus on promoting
sound corporate governance and
enforcing regulatory compliance
from the Nigerian government,
paired with growing foreign
investor interest in the country,
is driving interest in enterprise
management solutions/
applications in Nigeria. Nigeria
is becoming an increasingly
important player on the global
economic stage, and one
consequence of that is we are
seeing a much bigger focus on
compliance. Government
understands that a stable
regulatory compliance
framework is essential to
attracting business investment
and growing the economy, and
there is also a concerted focus on
growing the tax base.The
consequence for enterprises is
that they need to pay more
attention than ever to getting
their reporting standards,
governance, and risk
management up to international
requirements. This is one factor
behind the rapid growth in
demand for IT solutions in
Nigeria, across all sectors of
business.
How do you view the
connection between strategy and
corporate culture?
The world is changing at a
rapid speed as new regulations
come into play, customer
expectations change and global
competition grows. Addressing
this challenge demands close
alignment between strategy and
culture as organisations put in
place digital solutions to improve
their agility and competitiveness.
The hard part is not transforming
processes through technology,
but transforming the organisation
and its culture. The future will
belong to the organisations who
are better at embedding the
technology in business processes
to drive radical improvements,
and who do this not just once,
but over and over again. This can
only be achieved by sponsorship
and leadership from the C-suite
level, along with change
management, training and
focusing on recruiting the right
people.