Experts have stressed the need for businesses to understand the economic climate of the areas they operate in as well as leverage technology in order to foster improvements in core business processes and create the required flow for market acquisition.
The experts who gathered at a breakfast meeting organised by SPNS Consulting in Lagos recently also emphasized the need for businesses to have structures to enable them run a consistent race.
The breakfast meeting had the theme ‘Managing business rules for business profitability within a challenging economy’, with ‘The benefits and restrictive capacity of business rules and its effects on developing and driving a process innovation-based organisation’ as a sub-theme.
Tunji Oyebanji, CEO, Mobil Oil Nigeria and chairman of the event, while encouraging participating businesses to map out strategies to survive Nigeria’s challenging economic climate, said Nigeria has human capital that can be put to good use. He added that technology is a great enabler, saying, “It is the simple answer to many things.”
Debo Adebayo, CEO, SPNS Consulting, in his presentation charged organisations to understand the economic climate and its effect on businesses, conduct product analysis on a regular basis to gauge product performance against similar brands, and also work on observing and making decisions based on economic and behavioural shifts with special focus on policies, whether internal or external.
“When you meet customers’ needs their own way, you become the preferred,” he said.
Lere Baale, CEO, Business School Netherlands, Nigeria, who led discussants at the panel session, captured people’s perception of the recession in the acronym VUCAR, saying while some see it as a time of “volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity and risk”, others see it as a time to add “value, uniqueness, creativity, adaptability and rewards”.
Baale also pointed out four key factors in the alignment of strategy, structure and system in running a successful business to include good quality product, good marketing process to recruit customers, and operations, stressing that once the business attains a high level of demand, operations must expand and also there is a need to design a loyalty scheme.
Organisations, he said, need to work as a team and understand the clarity of any country in which they operate because no two countries are the same.
Hakeem Adeniji-Adele, director, public sector business, Microsoft Nigeria, decried that Nigeria was currently ranked 169 among 190 economies in the ease of doing business index ranking, even lower than countries with minimal resources at their disposal. He urged government and organisations to automate because businesses succeed when there are reputable outcomes.
Other speakers at the event – including Olufemi Awoyemi, founder/CEO Proshare Nigeria Limited, and Charles Ugwu, director, professional development, CIPM Nigeria – lent their voices to the discourse.
Highlight of the event was the presentation of the Business Process and Performance Review Magazine, a bi-monthly publication of SPNS Consulting, by the chairman of the occasion, Tunji Oyebanji.
MABEL DIMMA
