“Young entrepreneurs should maximize e-commerce potentials”...PMM Boss

A communications and enterprise solutions advocate, Mr. Ejiofor Agada has enjoined business owners and young entrepreneurs to take advantage of opportunities that is on the abundant on the e-commerce platform, to create a huge market base for any business they can think of Mr. Agada, who is the chief executive officer of PMM Integrated (the IT solutions advocacy firm of premier business and market communications firm, Private Media Mart Limited), made these views known at the recently concluded Actors Guild of Nigeria, Lagos chapter’s capacity building workshop in Lagos.

In his presentation delivered at the event, he noted that the trending thing in business at the moment is E-commerce and any intelligent business that wants to stay alive in this era must be actively alive on the internet. He stated that with e-commerce, anything can be sold online. And enjoined the participants to explore this option.

According to Agada, “The advent of e-commerce has changed the face of buying and selling because I could be in my room and with my phone I can make purchases of anything I need, which means, I can only do businesses with those that are on the e- commerce platform and not just a company that has a website. This is where businesses are headed at the moment.”

He made reference to Tilda Kart 1.0, an online shop management tool that is designed to help businesses sell on the internet.  The Tilda Kart he said is designed to make it possible and yet cheaper for prospective businesses to become like the big online shops, but with less cost more reliable features like the ability of the solution to generate invoices, receipts and quotation. Another unique feature of the tool is its high search engine performance. And the fact that to implement this solution costs less than 80% of most e-commerce platforms.

Justifying the choice of Mr. Agada as a resource person, the Chairman of AGN Lagos chapter Don Pedro Aganbi, said that it is imperative that young and upcoming actors and actresses should look beyond the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry and explore other avenues to create wealth, “so that the dance continues even when the music stops”, he concluded.

Blackberry to solve dual-SIM constraint with latest acquisition

BlackBerry Ltd. has bought Movirtu Ltd., which makes a virtual SIM card that allows mobile customers to have more than one phone number on a single device as the bedraggled mobile giant continues to build on its plan to target business users.

As BlackBerry’s share of the smartphone market has diminished, CEO John Chen has refocused the Waterloo, Ontario - Canada-based company to develop services for businesses and governments. The Movirtu technology lets employees who use one phone for work and home switch easily between business and personal profiles with billing clearly separated, BlackBerry said in a statement recently.

BlackBerry plans to start offering the phone-splitting software to customers early next year, with iOS, Windows and Android versions. Though the strategy will definelty enhance the flexibility and cost-cutting measures of Blackberry device users, it may not have much impact on Android and Windows phone users in Nigeria, most of which have devices with physical double SIM capabilities already.

Though no terms of the deal has been released, it's worthy of note that Movirtu was founded in 2008 in London,  and is run by CEO Carsten Brinkschulte and has 22 employees.

In a blog posting recently, Brinkschulte said working with BlackBerry gives his company direct connections to hundreds of mobile operators around the world. "Leveraging these existing connections would be the best way to offer quick and reliable deployment of the Movirtu Virtual SIM solution with minimal effort for the operator. Additionally, BlackBerry will help bring the solution to market through their wide network of mobile operators," Brinkschulte said.

BlackBerry's first new handheld devices to be released under Chen's leadership, an old-style BlackBerry dubbed the Classic and a new format called the Passport, are expected this month. The company is planning invitation-only events on Sept. 24 in Toronto, London and Dubai, but hasn't provided details. Chen said in August that BlackBerry had completed reductions to its workforce that began three years earlier and that it was preparing for modest hiring and small acquisitions.​

This acquisition is coming on the heels of the company's recently celebrated altercation with Apple on the vulnerability of the iCloud hacked recently.

BlackBerry might be struggling to regain its footing in the mobile market right now, but it still has a few strengths that outshine some rivals in key areas. And according to BlackBerry, one of those strengths is the BBM cross-platform messaging app, which apparently tops Apple’s popular iMessage service in a number of ways.

Now, in a new post on BlackBerry’s blog, the company has listed five ways that its BBM product is better than iMessage, and they all focus on BBM’s ability to avoid the huge number of spam attacks that are currently plaguing iPhone and iPad users.

“We all hate spam, whether in our e-mail inbox, or, even more jarringly, when it comes as a mobile message,” BlackBerry’s Jeff Gadway wrote on the company’s blog. “Yet according to an article in WIRED, ‘Apple’s iMessage is being taken over by spammers’ and Cupertino is ‘moving slowly’ to help out ‘beleaguered users.'”

Signal Alliance partners with Cisco for Customer Care Service Solution

Adanma Onuegbu, CEO Signal Alliance

As part of efforts in keeping its leadership strides in quality service delivery to its numerous customers in various sectors of the economy, Systems Integration and Solutions Provider Signal Alliance Limited, recently announced the introduction of the Cisco Smart Care Services, a services solution platform that fosters proactive infrastructure support services for customers.

During an industry presentation to announce this, Mr. Kingsley Nnamchi, Signal Alliances’ Presales Manager described the Cisco Smart Care Service as a unique, proactive services platform that allows Cisco products and solutions customers to take advantage of Cisco’s database of networking expertise, methodologies, technical tools, best practices and service infrastructure to create new, personalized and proactive support services for their networks.

According to Kingsley Nnamchi of Signal Alliance, Smart Care Service provides the capabilities needed to offer the network-level insight, proactive maintenance, and proactive network support services that customers require. He continued, “Imagine – as a network administrator with your usual tight work schedules - a situation where you are already aware of a network fault well before it occurs! Imagine a scenario where you know about the latest updates/patches needed for your sensitive security equipment that protect your infrastructure and services from unauthorized access and attacks. Clearly, this is a tool that takes the goal of achieving maximum infrastructure and services uptime to a whole new level. Smart Care services is miles ahead of the well-known SmartNet services, combining so many of the other Cisco products and services support modules to provide a robust, well-rounded total infrastructure backup for the enterprise business. From the onset of subscribing for the Cisco Smart Care service, the enterprise customer begins to grow and differentiate their businesses in the commercial marketplace.

With Cisco Smart Care Service, Signal Alliance can provide their customers with capabilities such as remote monitoring and repair of Cisco devices and software applications, proactive health checks and periodic assessments of Cisco Network of Data communications, Voice, Wireless and Security Technologies to identify potential issues, need for IOS updates, technical support for all Cisco hardware and software in the network with a single network-wide maintenance contract, new technologies and applications over time, Disaster Recovery services to back up the customer’s active devices. Furthermore, another uniqueness of the solution is in the high Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity capacity regardless of power fluctuations or outage. It is important to note here that this service positions a business much more for Business Continuity than just Disaster Recovery.

Mr. Nnamchi explained that “As we look at changes in the market by setting proactive services as the baseline experience, we always look at defining new and smarter service experiences as leaders in the industry, using the Cisco Customer Care Service as a perfect ground for driving proactive service capabilities which provides trusted visibility into customers business network’s health”. He went further to say that “this model shift will drive new levels of experience/lifetime value and accelerate the business’ ability to compete based on value rather than cost”.

The Smart Care Service that Signal Alliance is bringing into the market is targeted at specific customers. These include businesses that place high value on secure and highly available network, businesses whose network is critical to its operations, and businesses with minimal IT staff working with limited networking expertise.

Being an active player in the IT industry for 2 decades, Signal Alliance Limited is the natural Partner to choose in this regard due to the depth of our competencies, alliances with industry giants and ability to deliver across the value chain. Signal Alliance is a renowned Cisco Premier Partner for almost two decades.

Considering Online Stores? Tilda Systems and PMM unveil low-cost E-commerce solution - Tilda Kart

With the market style taking another dimension and going the e-commerce route as a means of getting visibility for their products in a much larger scale,
Tilda Systems in Partnership with its West African representatives PMM Integrated Ventures (the technology advocacy firm of Private Media Mart Limited), has unveiled another software solution to ease the pain of merchants that wish to gain wider markets for their products on the internet. The unique e-commerce software solution Tilda Kart, is an online shop management and e-commerce solution designed to give the Small enterprise businesses the global visibility that would translate into productivity and profit maximization without draining their resources.

In a statement released from their location in Lagos recently, the PMM Integrated Ventures head of business development, Mr Obinna Ibeawuchi said that the Tilda Kart 1.0 system is actually a complete online shop manager which gives the user the most effective and efficient platform for business. “Customers can go online to a particular merchant from anywhere around the world, buy and pay online for any goods on offer”.

According to him, the uniqueness of this platform lies in its functionality of automatically generating reports, invoices and quotations for the various transactions. It also has the best of viral marketing functionality through its fully optimized search engine options (SEO). In addition to that, he said, “the integration of online payment platform is world class as it can take all the recognised pay cards and also work on all the currency of the countries where the software is accepted. The user’s freedom to review all products on the platform without interference with automated discount system, which means you just input your percentage rate and it computes same on all highlighted products” he said.

“We have looked at all the e-commerce sites domiciled in the Nigeria and discovered that most of them are dysfunctional and others have implementation prices that are way out of reach for the common businessman, continued Mr. Ibeawuchi, “and most of these sites either don’t go beyond the home page of the site or don’t even have the access to the functionalities of a genuine e-commerce site”. He added that another handicap noticed in most e-commerce systems is the fact that the providers here in Nigeria and some parts of Africa have some very expensive platforms. “These are what we considered before going into these project with the mind-set of reaching the affording powers of the mid-stream players in the commercial circle. Therefore, we can gladly say that we have provided a platform that is as effective and more efficient than most of the other ecommerce platforms, yet is 80% less the cost of what is available in the market today” he concluded.

Lending his voice the chairman of Tilda Systems, Mr Tomy Brown said, “Africa has the potential of creating the largest market activities using the e-commerce solution especially with the Nigerian population. Our presence in Nigeria and our interaction with PMM Ventures give us the insight as to aspiration and yearning of the average businessman using technology based platform like the Tilda Kart 1.0., and these keep us moving and providing such technology solutions to soothe their needs”.

The Tilda Kart 1.0 the company says will deliver unequalled profit maximization for user of the solution, as the company in turn will provide the adequate technical and publicity support, ensuring the continuity of the customer’s business.  

The Agriculture sector to thrive using the ERP solution

As part of concerted efforts in making IT prevalent in virtually every sector of the Nigerian economy, Signal Alliance one of the leading IT companies in Nigeria recently came up with proposition for an Agro-based  ERP solution. This was contained in a white paper which it recently published on Agriculture Titled “ERP for Agriculture Sector: transforming big data into big value in the agriculture sector.

The ERP solution is to provide an integrated real-time view of core business processes, using common databases maintained by a database management system in the Agriculture sector. The SAP myAgri and Microsoft Dynamic AX ERPs are the solutions that are in effect designed to carry out definite activities beneficial to the Agriculture sector. MyAgri which operates on SAP business intelligence is designed to create automated control of field and production operational activities reducing costs in their resources management. Improve flow of products through the processing plants, allowing for much better interaction. The Microsoft Dynamic AX Microsoft Dynamics AX, is designed to build a unified business infrastructure that facilitates an unimpeded flow of information.  

According to Signal Alliance’ SAP consultant, Charles Esumeh “In Agribusiness, there are strong tendencies towards increasing the role of IT in creating positive value, decreasing costs and ensuring high quality food products to final recipients. At the same time, the number of regulations concerning the food market is on the increase, including those associated with the necessity to ensure the identification of the origin of ingredients and semi-products in food supplied to the market. Information and data is an essential ingredient in agricultural development programs but Nigerian farmers seldom feel the impact of agricultural innovations either because they have no access to such vital information or because it is poorly disseminated”.

He highlighted some the challenges the local sector is faced with at the moment as lack of awareness, marketing process and technology challenges.

 With the Agric ERP integration the sector, would cut across many platforms, bridging the gap between the producers and the final consumers. For instance, using a SAP ERP Software running on a smart phone, a local buyer of cashew nuts is able to record single buying transactions. Each bag of cashew nuts is labelled with a barcode. By scanning the bar code on the bags of cashew nuts, the system can track every bag. The phone collects the data and sends it directly to the farmers’ cooperative. The cooperative controls the daily pricing for cashew nuts and this information is also sent to all buyers’ smart phones

Some notable features of this proposed ERP is that it is suited for small, medium and large farms with facility to manage to manage multiple farms at multiple locations. It will also improve farm producer’s operational efficiency and profit. Agriculture ERP is designed also to help optimize resources, maintain quality and improve staff performance levels.

Production, post production and sales, marketing and accounting also is considered on the ERP solution.

The Agric ERP can keep track of planting - cultivation - harvesting – Production - marketing history of multiple farmers and farm produce. Land information with scanned photographs and documents can be stored. This Agric ERP maintains farmer database to aid the Management in taking critical key decisions based on data available in terms of irrigation, crop cultivation practices, pest and nutrient management, marketing of crops harvested, etc.

The implementation of ERP in agriculture business enterprises is a requirement resulting from the progress of information technology, BIG DATA and economic globalization. This is a method of not only improving the business processes in the agriculture industry but also a source of obtaining competitive advantage on the market, which leads to an improved financial situation of the industry. Analysis shows that there is significant internal variation within the scope of the food production sector with reference to the scope of IT system use in management of agricultural produce. However, without doubt the agriculture industry is a field in which the implementation, range and pace of ERP system implementation will be increasing.

Due to the influence of ERP systems in obtaining a competitive advantage of enterprises, their implementation is highly recommended for the agriculture sector. Countries are now moving from the small subsistence farming to the industrialized and mechanized form of farming to meet growing population demands. However, attention should be paid to the appropriate adjustment of systems to the needs of the enterprise; depending on its size (less complicated and cheaper systems can support the development of micro and small enterprises).

The benefit of the system will enable farmers to avoid long paper works involved in the supply chain process. It will also increase the revenue of low-end Farmer that deals on seed plants.

In conclusion, the role of technology in all sectors of industries is becoming increasingly relevant. The Agriculture Industry is no different from any other industry. ERP systems implemented in various organizations have not only improved business processes overall but boosted revenue of that organization. Developed countries have recognized the importance of a modernized agriculture industry and have leveraged on technologies like The ERP to gain comparative advantage in the industry and generate massive income revenue for the country.

IDC Launches East Africa CIO Summit in Nairobi...parades Region's Leading Social Network of CIOs

Celebrating its 50th year of delivering leadership in global IT advisory services, IDC has launched the inaugural installment of its East Africa CIO Summit at the InterContinental Hotel Nairobi. The event opened with a keynote speech delivered by the Kenya ICT Authority and addressing the largest gathering of CIOs, IT thought leaders, and vendors in East Africa. With delegates drawn from across Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania, the Summit explored the pivotal role of the CIO in the new business world of technology transformation.

"The strategic place of CIOs cannot be overemphasized as ICT increasingly emerges as a driver of business and egovernment services," said Mr. Victor Kyalo, acting CEO of the Kenya ICT Authority, in his opening address. "The Kenya ICT Authority recognizes this new reality, and through its ICT Masterplan has identified the development of high-end ICT skills as a key growth proponent. It goes without saying that we believe thought-leadership forums such as this one here today can only add to the development of our collective ICT knowledge as a country."

The Summit also saw the formal launch of IDC's Technology Advisory Council for East Africa, whose fundamental aim is to enable a new wave of IT development across the region. The Council's members will draw on their rich experience to assist upcoming IT talent through mentoring sessions, while they will also head key development programs that recognize breakthrough performances in the field of IT. The founding members of the IDC Technology Advisory Council include esteemed IT leaders from various industries such as government, banking and finance, aviation, education, and telecommunications. Membership is strictly by invitation only and is restricted to senior IT representatives of the region's foremost end-user organizations.

"As IDC celebrates its 50th year of providing international markets with groundbreaking IT analysis, we are profoundly excited to kick start the Technology Advisory Council for East Africa," says Onesmus Mbogo, country manager for IDC East Africa. "The Council will provide a far-reaching source of thought leadership on issues relating to strategic planning, research and development, and technology innovation."

The day's proceedings got underway with an in-depth assessment of the ways in which this new era of transformation is likely to impact the East African IT landscape over the coming years. This was followed by an eclectic mix of insightful presentations and informative panel discussions on everything from cutting-edge information security and telecommunications strategies to CIO best practices and ICT predictions for East Africa.

"The last five years have seen the emergence of a new era in computing," says Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC's group vice president and regional managing director for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. "We call this new era the 3rd Platform. Harnessing the power of key technology pillars such as Big Data, mobile, cloud, and social media, this unstoppable force is transforming entire industries and empowering customers in new ways. It is also driving a fundamental evolution of the CIO's role in the organization, the tasks and responsibilities of the IT department, and the skill sets required by CIOs and their IT staff, and events such as today's play a key role in getting that message across."

The delegates in attendance represented a variety of industry sectors, including banking and financial services, government, oil and gas, construction and real estate, utilities, and healthcare. Senior IDC analysts from across the globe were available for private one-to-one meetings throughout the course of the Summit, offering strategic advice on the most pressing business and technology concerns facing the region's CIOs today. The event came to a close with a lavish dinner and evening of entertainment hosted for the CIOs and IDC's technology partners.

To make sure the very latest technology developments were covered at the East Africa CIO Summit 2014, IDC partnered with some of the world's foremost ICT vendors, including the Kenya ICT Authority as the Public Sector Partner; EMC as Summit Partner; FVC and Polycom as Platinum Partners; Oracle, FireEye, and Kaspersky as Gold Partners; Commvault, Global Knowledge and HCL as Silver Partners; Datagroup and Entrust as Exhibition Partners; and Business Connexion as Gala Dinner Partner.

‘Expect New Things’…Adanma Onuegbu, new Signal Alliance CEO

As part of efforts in maintaining its giant strides as one of the leading IT integration companies in the country, Signal Alliance recently announced Mrs. Adanma Onuegbu as its new CEO. The development which came up in the last quarter of 2013 and made official in 2014, was necessitated by the elevation of the former CEO Mr Collins Onuegbu, as the new Executive Vice Chairman of Signal Alliance Group.

Addressing newsmen in her first media interactive session, Mrs Onuegbu said there was the need to keep the public updated on the activities of the company and her determination to take the company to the next level. She said part of her new job will be to complement the work done in the company so far and to seek out new areas of opportunities that will be of benefit to the company.  

On her top priority, Mrs Onuegbu said, “We’ll aim to improve on the service delivery of Signal Alliance toward its numerous customers with renewed vigour ensure customer satisfaction, which is the biggest challenge most companies in the sector are facing at the moment. “Another area we’ll be focusing on is the area of data security, because of the shift to big data, there is the need to position the company to favourably compete with big players in the industry with regards to cloud computing which is where most organisations are moving into at this time”. She added that the company will be engaged in re-engineering as partners with OEMs such as SAP Microsoft, CA technologies, and Cisco.

Mrs. Onuegbu is presently the only woman CEO in the IT services and integration industry, which she says it is rather a challenge than honour as she will be expected to achieve more and carve a niche for herself in the industry. She is a graduate of Agro-economics and has risen through the ranks in Signal Alliance from inception. In addition to several industry recognitions and trainings garnered over the years, Mrs. Onuegbu is also known to have engineered most of the high-end IT solutions in key sectors of the economy.

These key solutions had also won various local and international awards for Signal Alliance over the years. “I actually see what this company has achieved over the years as a challenge and opportunity to doing more and surpass what the company has been known for” she said.

Signal Alliance is an end to end Information Technology company with specialization in systems integration and has a rank of highly skilled and certified consultants with industry experience cutting across all the sectors of the economy, with core competencies in Business Optimization services, Service Management, Networks & Monitoring, Cloud Computing and Business solutions.