By Adekunle Adekoya

TOP information technology firm, Signal Alliance is going into partnership with SAP on Enterprise Assets Management. The partnership was announced last week in Lagos at a briefing held by representatives of both firms.

Erabor Okogun, Chief Corporate Adviser and Richard Irikefe, Sales Consultant, represented Signal Allince while Kelechi Nwosu, Ecosystem & Channels Lead and Ayokanmi Ayuba, Partner Account Manager, represented SAP West Africa.

Speaking on the partnership, Erabor Okogun noted that his firm, Signal Alliance is partnering with SAP because “we have to apply the latest technology for the dividend of democracy to be seen in the country. We have an event that would hold in Abuja and the event is for the public sector and it is on Enterprise Asset Management.

“We consider that topic because there are two things that make things happen. One is human resources. It is when you properly deploy what you have and the people you have that you can talk about development. Nigerians don’t have the right attitude toward public property.  We can’t get to where we want to be if we don’t manage our assets in Nigeria.

Also speaking on the partnership, Ayokanmi Ayuba of SAP said “we are only as successful as our platforms. We find it very critical to partner with Signal Alliance in order to drive our vision and it is very important to partner with organizations that will help us achieve this vision, most importantly partners like Signal Alliance.

Richard Irikefe elaborated on the ramifications of the partnership, especially as it concerns Enterprise Assets Management as a solution. Saying our governments — federal, state and local need help, Irikefe said that Enterprise Assets Management “helps in terms of identifying, tracking, cataloguing and generally deriving value in all the numerous assets government has in the country.

In a recent research work we found out that we are going to need about US$ 350 billion investment in terms of infrastructural development which will bring Nigeria to the forefront in the commity of nations. That is a huge amount of money the government have to spend between this year and 2020 because the government has a mission of putting Nigeria among the top 20 economies of the world by 2020.

If the government has to spend US$ 350 billion to achieve that, and they are not properly maintained, it will cost even more to replace them.  If you spend five dollars to acquire an asset, you may not need more than one dollar to maintain it, but if you do not, you will need four dollars to replace it. So, if government has spent US$350 to acquire assets that are not well maintained, it may have to spend US$ 255 billion to address the question of maintenance of infrastructure in terms of the bridges the rails and stuff like that.

If government could spend such huge amount we have a solution by which the assets can be used maximally so that it won’t cost so much money to replace them. You can get more value out of them, so that the life span can be elongated. For instance, the airport here or Third Mainland Bridge. It will cost a lot more to build the Third Mainland Bridge today than when it was built. So that is what enterprise asset management of publish sector is all about.

It is about ensuring we get maximum value from these assets. There is no point building a new bridge or airport and after six or seven months it worn down. It is about penny wise and not pound foolish. In other words it is better to spend money to maintain our assets than to look for money borrow to build another asset. That is the bottom line of what enterprise management wants to deliver to the Federal Republic of Nigeria. So we are working to push it to the psyche of the government so that Nigeria as a whole will benefit from the assets we have all over.