By Prince Osuagwu

Leading Technology Company, Cisco, recently released a study indicating that 75% of businesses worldwide will be digitized by 2020. However, only 30% of such businesses will ultimately be successful. Further insight on the study lays emphasis on the future of Internet of Everything (IoE) in Africa, raising fears against the rise of cyber-crime.

Mr. Dare Ogunlade

At the recently concluded Cisco One Africa partner frum in Limpopo, South Africa, Hi-Tech confronted the company’s GM, for Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Mr. Dare Ogunlade who gave more insights to the issues and more.

Recent Cisco reports stated that 75% of businesses will be digitized by 2020. Does that include African businesses or countries, and if so, what is the percentage?

Yes, it was a global statistics although I have not seen that broken down figure regionally, but there definitely could be an interesting discussion on whether it could be more in Africa or less because arguably there is a great deal of potential for upside across many African countries if they do digitize, whether it’s a small business or in the public sector. We do not have the data point here at the moment but there is every reason to believe that the statistics does apply to Africa. Another statistics that we should not lose sight of is that about 30% of those businesses will fail and only 30% will succeed.

Is it worth it to digitize if at least 30% of those who digitalize will fail?

Well, you either do nothing and go out of business or you try to reinvent yourself, find out new revenue streams, try to disrupt yourself and maybe move into other markets and up your chances of succeeding and growing. It is pretty sure in our opinion that if companies do not do anything then the future will not look bright.

What does it actually mean when a business is fully digitized?

Defining digitization all depends on the vertical an industry is in. When a bank is fully digitized, it means that customers can access the bank and its products anywhere through any channel, whether it is through a smartphone or home broadband or whether it is actually having the customers go into the bank.  For a retail bank, having access to the bank 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and being able to access products or insurance claims. It is actually being able to do everything in a virtual world.

There are two opportunities really, one is the re-invention which is finding new opportunities that can exist without technology and the second is digitizing your business and streamlining that. One is about efficiency and the other is about growth opportunities.

One thing that caught my attention is the fact that we need to change the conversation, focusing on business rather than technology. Could it be that the uncertainty of disruption underneath innovation across the board is now part of why customers are now seeking business alliances? 

Business leaders understand that without our strategy they are going to be disrupted so the good news is that there is an opportunity for us to go and have those different types of conversations. A lot of the customers do recognize Cisco as industry leaders and thought leaders in that area so there is no shortage of opportunity to have the conversation. We cannot begin to have that conversation without being prepared; we need to understand what the opportunities are, what we are seeing in different parts of the world in the same industry.

There was an alarming report recently that Nigeria dropped in the network readiness ranking. With the position of Nigeria in Africa as one of the fastest growing economies, how do you think we can ever conveniently adjust to the era of IoE if we keep dropping in the ranking?

Can we just keep in mind that when we talk about the ranking of a country, it’s basically talking about relative ranking to other countries? Nigeria has made progress under the previous government but there are other countries progressing faster, which is the key point of the networking index. The statistics is at least 18 months but we remember the statistics had 35% growth in ICT, which at the time was five percent to six percent of the GDP growing at 3.5% a year. There is a huge amount of growth going on in Nigeria, most of it is around the basic mobile subscriptions, mainly voice, some data and there is still so much work to do and we are anxiously waiting to see what the new government has in store.

What services is Cisco rendering the Nigerian Government?

In Cisco, we do not do business directly in Nigeria. 100% of our business in Nigeria are through partners and we have solutions that cut across collaboration in the public sector, cloud in public sector. We have solutions we are rendering to both the public and private sectors but again that is working through our partners.

What is Cisco doing to close the skills gap across Africa?

The networking academies is a global program we introduced back in 1998 to address the global skills gap. Africa does not stand alone in terms of having a shortage of skills gap around ICT, it is a global challenge. We brought the academy into Africa about 10 years ago and in the last 10 years we have built 810 academies across 47 countries and we have had over 250,000 students come through the academies of which 32% are female. The students, study anything from the basic ICT skills training up to Cisco certified industry recognized trainings, which take weeks to months to conclude. One of the new curriculums we will be bringing in the coming months is the IoE curriculum although it may not be rolled out in all 810 academies immediately because a lot of it is going to be based on demand. There is no other organization that has this type of capabilities across Africa.

Technology is evolving constantly and innovation is key to staying ahead. How much attention does Cisco pay to R&D in terms of annual budget?

The percentage of what we spend on R&D is above the benchmark compared to all of our competitors. Its 12% of annual revenue and this equates to about $5.8billion and ultimately if you were to look across the competitors in similar industries and also diverse industries in technology you will be hard pressed to find companies that are investing 12% of their annual revenue back in R&D every year, We have a number of strategic partners that we obviously go into the market with and we have bought 181 companies, taking their technologies and integrating them into our own portfolio.