Innovation Starts At The Shop Floor

Story 1:

In 2008, Seamfix introduced a school management system called SchoolOnline.

The purpose was for secondary schools to use it to control their end-to-end processes, from enrollment to graduation.

It solved a clear problem and followed a successful model in other countries.

Back then, internet access in Nigeria was not ideal and data speeds were poor, so a key feature had to be built in - the capability for offline data entry.

Later on, we teamed up with some banks to introduce the solution to hundreds of schools across the country banking with them.

One day while returning from a demonstration at a school in the South-South region, Paul the bank manager drew my partner's attention to schools with dilapidated buildings and broken roofs.

He said, “Take a careful look at them. These are the schools you want to run SchoolOnline. Without a roof, good buildings, electricity, or security, why do you think their main priority would be computers and software?”

It was that day that we realized the reality of 90% of the market at that time.

SchoolOnline was a great product which was ahead of its time, as over the years infrastructure has improved greatly in the country.

As a bootstrapped company with no external funding, we had no resources or patience to continue, resulting in the eventual death of SchoolOnline.

We had invested many months into creating, yet not enough time on the shop-floor to comprehend the dynamics of the market.

Story 2:

On the other hand, we had begun to explore the biometrics identity market with a new product.

We began offering the product for SIM Registration with the telecommunications companies in Nigeria.

And the offline feature we inherited from SchoolOnline became a major differentiating factor.

A lot of the competing products from foreign companies weren't designed for the African environment.

Given that they had come from parts of the world with great connectivity, their products worked with this assumption.

Biosmart was designed with the terrain in mind. We spent months in the field with the agents learning and improving the product.

We made sure the field agents  could log in, start and finish a transaction even with no internet access.

Our engines for gathering biometric data and analyzing it could operate offline on the agent device, without having to rely on a connection to the backend server.

Whenever connectivity was restored, the solution automatically pushed the data without any action from the agent.

A decade ago, this was quite innovative.

We supported low-cost mobile devices so agents could easily carry them into remote areas, rather than waiting for customers to come to them in their offices.

These helped us quickly become the go-to Enrollment solution provider in the country and now in Africa.

 Bottomline:

Living in reality is the message today, not an ideal or fantasy world.

Leaders can easily become disconnected from their team and customers.

But there's no replacement for spending time with them.

You have the chance to gain a firsthand understanding of their struggles and discover the potential for development.

You can identify the core weaknesses and create innovative solutions.

You gain a better understanding of how things really work, not based on what's ideal, but on reality.

Then you can figure out how to upgrade your business processes and make your team and clients delighted.

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

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