World over, entrepreneurs are the drivers of economic growth of any nation, and Nigeria is no different as the government, through SME support and financing schemes and microfinance policies, provide the needed support to help achieve this goal.

Mrs. Olayinka David-West, faculty member, Lagos Business School

Entrepreneurship is essential for the growth and development of Nigerian economy, which has been dominated by government and large corporations. This is because it creates jobs, spreads wealth, expands opportunities, and promotes social inclusion and mobility.

For Africa to grow its economies and be counted among the league of developed nations, small business owners must embrace information technology to help grow their businesses and drive the economy.

However, and sadly too, most entrepreneurs still use old economy methods, ignorant of the fact that to perform at their best, they should use IT and communications technologies more effectively in their lives and businesses.

Mrs. Olayinka David-West, faculty member of the Lagos Business School and an academic director at the Entrepreneurial Development Services (EDS) of the Pan African University, teaches small business owners about technology.

According to her, technology is very important for small business owners because there comes a stage of every business where there is always the need to show that you are better and can operate more efficiently than your competition and yourself, especially as this would help drive down cost of operation and doing business.
“For small businesses, this is more imperative because they don’t have the luxury of larger organizations in terms of manpower and resources, so they have to optimize what they have to ensure that they are also competitive in the market place.

“Technology gives small businesses advantages such as enabling them to get their products to the market on time and also be as attractive as or more attractive than larger businesses. However, this is also dependent on the availability of knowledge and resources to use and operate the technology.”

But considering the cost of such soft wares that are essential to the growth of small businesses and the low level of literacy of some business owners, the chances of getting them to use technology are very slim.

David-West is of the opinion that there is a need to take a business to a different level, insisting that once you understand your business and you can define your business growth and direction, then it would be easier for them to select which technology can help you get there.

“With regard to the cost, when you have a vision for your business, it never comes free; however, the cost would now be justified knowing that it is towards a goal that you set for yourself. Technology typically is over sold because people do not really have a plan of how they are going to use it to build their business.

“Technology itself is really nothing, but when it is driven or employed towards achieving a business objective, then you will see the immediate impact and the relevance.

“I’ll advice small business not to start with buying technology, but should try to understand what they want to do with their businesses first then decide if there is a technology that can help them.

But if there is no technology that can help, I guess the business has not grown or evolved to a state where it needs technology, making it pointless to buy technology at that point in time.”

True that technology helps drive businesses, but not all business needs technology. David-West is of the view that acquiring technology depends on the nature of the business as it would help stimulate ideas for people and you don’t end up buying it for buying sake.

“Buying technology, like every other thing, depends on the nature of the business. For instance, some businesses don’t have computers to type business letters or to communicate with customers, and ensuring that your letter are better than those produce by a type writer is one of the things that stand you.

“How to format a business letter, include your logos on your business letters such that you might not even need to print letter headed papers any more but generate it when needed are some of the benefits of using technology.

“Even to show pictures of your products and services is something we take for granted. At business meetings, you can actually show what you do, especially for caterers. This is because you can’t take a food sample to a customer, but you can show what you’ve done and this gives people an idea of your capabilities.”

Unfortunately, Nigerians tend to always overbuy technology either out of ignorance or to show off. We have generally come to believe that the more expensive technology is, the better it is, which is true, especially looking at our personal devices like handsets and computers.

When we overbuy, the challenge is to ensure that we over utilize what we have bought, making knowledge important because we have to subject ourselves to learning how to do the basics and rudiments.

If we fail to learn the basics, chances are that we may not use 10 per cent of what we have bought. This can be said of people who use blackberry devices just for making calls and sending text messages. So you wonder why buy such a device when a simple Nokia 3310 can meet same objectives.

On how an entrepreneur would know what software to buy without over buying or underutilizing such, this EDS academic director says the onus is on owners to learn the new features and the possibilities of what the technology can do to help drive their businesses.

“This is the same with soft wares as there are some that do everything from different ranges for the small businesses to the larger enterprises. We sometimes benchmark ourselves against other people or competing companies that have bought something, forgetting that technology isn’t very intelligent as it’ll need a human to punch the button.

“If the person doesn’t know how to press the buttons, though you have acquired a nice asset, but in terms of value of the return it brings to your business, you have not achieved anything. So, it is not only about what you spend, but investing enough time and resources into the learning process because it does take time.”

Statistics has it that 170,000 graduates are yearly injected into the labour market with most of them preferring white collar jobs, probably because they dread the old economy methods of running businesses or lack business intelligence.

Nigerian entrepreneurs take the advantages that technology offers and drive our economy because though we have the opportunities of presenting ourselves, but one of the thing technology have been able to do for us today is the ability to communicate more effectively.

Using technology to drive a business depends on the nature and type of the business and the people in the business. But having simple and basic technology to run our daily operations is a necessity not luxury.

David-West opines that one of the simplest technologies is Microsoft Office and there are many things we can do with Microsoft office that we probably don’t need additional software.

“For driving internal operations, a small business might want to know how much is being spent on a certain item or phone bills, fuel, etc because sometimes, they don’t get to see these numbers monthly and when they do, they can’t really compare to know if they are increasing or not.”

Small business owners must not be afraid of technology but rather choose to see it as a tool in helping them meet their objectives. They should equally empower themselves in the knowledge of technology.

Nigerian must create and empower a network of future business owners who drive their businesses with technology so as to foster the growth of entrepreneurship as a tool for job and wealth creation.