Business Made Easy

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10 Tech Products
Enabling Growth for SMEs
Technological intervention is increasingly making
business easier and enabling SMEs’ growth
By Deji Atoyebi
Look around and you’ll find that
no business is an island in itself.
In today’s digital world, the beauty
of entrepreneurship is established
in the manner by which businesses
build products that mostly work interdependently
or are stacked on top of
one another in a cascade-like fashion.
Simply put, regardless of what you’re
building, it’s inevitable that you’ll have
to rely on existing products to pull
through.
Fortunately, there has never been a
better time to build a business than
now. Not only has the surge of venture
capital firms and angel networks made
for easier access to capital, it has also
also helped encourage the widespread
entrepreneurial bug which has in turn
spoiled us with high-end technology
that serves as infrastructure for building
and running businesses. In this article,
I’ll touch on 10 products that have
made life a whole lot easier for businesses
and their owners.
1. KOBO 360:
Assume that you’re building an internet
product in which you’ll require customers
to pay for goods and services. The
chances are high that you won’t need
to build your own payment infrastructure
from the ground up, as there are
already a number of third-party payment
gateways to help with this. What
these gateways do for payments is
what Kobo360 does for logistics.
Kobo360 is a Nigerian startup that
helps businesses with logistics infrastructure.
This provision encourages
such businesses to focus more on
strengthening their own unique value
propositions. The separation of concerns
makes a lot of sense in a continent
that’s known to grapple with logistics
challenges.
Kobo360 (the product) is used by
over 1500 businesses and has started
expanding across Africa, after the
business garnered $1.2 million preseed
funding. Not only is the product
growing in popularity, but it has also
helped to show how focusing on and
improving an aspect of a value chain
can cause disruption.
2. ZOOM:
Zoom is currently a glaring example of
a disruptive product. Even though the
idea behind it is, on the surface, anything
but novel, it is in fact, preceded
by (and currently competing with) a
number of video chat and conferencing
products like itself.
From the perspective of users however,
Zoom has become the holy grail of video
communication because of its resilience
under pressure. It is reported that
the product doesn’t lag with increased
usage and is probably the best of its
kind - a “feat” which Zoom’s executives
owe to the company’s penchant for
placing users first and their initial aim
to build the best product in the market.
Zoom is seamlessly helping business
people in Nigeria to communicate
more effectively. With Zoom, entrepreneurs
need not worry about challenges
in remotely communicating with investors
or employees, all at once.
3. TRELLO
Trello has become a household name
among not just project managers but
also business owners in general. A cutting-edge
project management software,
it is known to afford teams the
opportunity to create and maintain an
orderly workflow.
Noteworthy is the fact that Trello allows
people to separate concerns
using “Boards” and to track task progression
within a period of time. It also
comes in handy in enhancing communication
between teams. Using one of
its components called “Cards,” managers
can create tasks and assign them
to individual team members while also
setting deadlines, listing requirements
and other relevant information.
4. GIGA LAYER
Giga Layer prides itself as a hosting
provider for Africa. Although not the
first of its kind, it has been able to attract
good press from some big names
and has under its belt, an enviable
user base comprising over 6,000 business
spanning Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya,
South-Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.
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