Business leaders urged to embrace ‘Digital’ transformation

Business leaders need a paradigm-shift in their business model to take advantage of modern technology, Solomon Adiyiah, Chief Executive Officer, eSolutions Consulting has said.

“Unfortunately our businesses don’t grow. There is a need to emphasise on ‘digital’ in business strategy formulation. We need to explore how people, government and businesses work, interact and prosper in an era of digital transformation,” he said.

Speaking at a media interaction under the topic; “Digital Transformation. The Future of Business” and was aimed at sharing experiences in the IT industry - meant to promote the ethos of value-based business and technology consulting in the country, Mr. Adiyiah explained that “The public sector, which is heavily dependent and generally overburdened, is convoluted with manual processes. This impedes data collection and reporting methods, and has invariably led to poor service provision, corruption and fraud.

“Ghana is seriously lagging in the use of information technology to provide government services, and this issue has been exacerbated by the lack of appropriate technical skills and a robust network infrastructure,” he said.

Mr. Adiyiah said: “The country is competing with other African countries for foreign investment, and administrative functions must enable foreign companies to operate efficiently and effectively.

These expectations, he said must drive political action to speed-up electronic government initiatives in the country. Digital opportunities are transforming industries and their influence is only expected to increase and that there’s the need to make strategic choices to be part of the digital revolution.

He explained that the organisational digital strategy consist of key internal and external components that require critical; consideration in delivering the next level of business performance.

Enterprise architecture, he said when fully embraced will has enormous advantages targetted at helping to grow businesses in the country, adding that having an enterprise architecture model in an organisation will improve adaptability to changing demands and market conditions, elimination of inefficient and redundant processes, optimisation in the use of organisational assets, and minimisation of employee turnover.

“Enterprise architecture solutions are built on belief that the key to success for any organisation is an efficient, well-executed operating model with broader operational governance strategy.”

He emphasised that eSolutions Consulting works to understand each client’s specific goals and constraints and create a tailor-made programme that meets their objectives and fits with their organisational culture.

These include identifying opportunities to realise quick savings - perhaps by taking over the management of the existing IT environment right away. This optimised IT environment will cost less to operate and maintain, and will enable the organisation to concentrate on its core business.

“Drawing on our experience, we believe we can help organisations improve on their operations through best-practices,” Adiyiah remarked.

Explaining about the company’s award winning IT solution platform christened ‘Smart Workplace’, Mr. Gabriel Dela, Senior Consultant at eSolutions said the products has been developed to reduce the time spent by employees searching for information and provides a single access point to all resources an employee needs for daily tasks and to work efficiently.

The IT solutions is built on Microsoft platforms, seeks to reduce cost and increase employee efficiency and productivity by providing common access to company information among employees.

It is targetted at providing employees with a highly efficient work environment characterised by convenient self-service access enterprise search, document management, project monitoring, and business processing among others.

“Smart Workplace product is the best IT solution designed to help office staff have life easier at the workplace, and it can be linked to things like projects, cases, pictures,” he said. “It is an attractive and extensive concept.

“Most organisations in today’s business world are faced with daunting challenges in delivering business information to virtual organisations anytime, anywhere and on any device -- hence the Smart Workplace platform.

“Employees have great difficulty in locating corporate information on administration, policies, procedures, shared documents, news calendar, and contact details of fellow employees.” He revealed that most employees spend about 50 percent of their time on internal administrative functions and collaborating with colleagues to accomplish tasks, and this cutting-edge IT platform has come to address these organisational challenges.

Mr. Dela explained that Smart Workplace is aimed at addressing challenges associated with a virtual office and that eSolution is poised to offer cutting-edge IT consulting services to help solve organisational challenges by reducing the use of paper to increase revenue due to improved employee responsiveness to the Smart Workplace platform.

“One does not need to operate in particular building to be productive; it gives a complete platform to every employee to work effectively outside the office or even when travelling abroad.

“With the Smart Workplace platform, one’s level of productivity and work space is not tied to a particular office computer; users can gain access to company files and document on the go. “Smart Workplace seeks to address information visibility, give a smart working environment, and as well reduce operational cost drastically by avoiding paperwork,” he said.

Mr. Dela emphasised that with the Smart Workplace platform employers and managers get value for money, since all company information is put onto single platform for efficient use by employees to increase productivity.

eSolution’s current clientele base includes leading companies and key public sector institutions-- Volta River Authority, Ministry of Finance, Ghana Statistical Service, AngloGold Ashanti, Ghana Health Service, SSNIT, University of Ghana, British Council, National Development Planning Commission, Petroleum Commission, GRIDCo, GCB Bank, Fidelity Bank, Ghana Standard Authority, Ghana Free Zones Board, MTN and Unique Insurance

eSolutions Consulting is a consultancy company with service offerings and solutions specifically developed to meet the challenges facing organisations operating in Ghana and Africa as a whole.

Its consultants developed the Ghana Government Enterprise Architecture framework, which focused on a technology blueprint for the computerisation of the public sector.