IT CHALLENGES FACED BY BUSINESSES IN AFRICA

IT CHALLENGES FACED BY BUSINESSES IN AFRICA

One is often perplexed when an organisation talks about business processes & change. Company executives begin to squirm in their seats, as they know that this will be the long haul to the promised land, probably leading to nowhere and sacrificing some along the way. Executives immediately believe that new IT systems are required to lead the way forward, i.e. – Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), etc. Many companies from first world countries with years of experience have failed miserably to enhance the power of IT. This is due to lack of understanding/covering the basics, before implementing an “IT system” to improve/resolve organisations business processes. Faced with myriad challenges, African business leaders are therefore not absolved of perplexed problems that first world countries face. African business leaders therefore, need to cover the basics prior to embarking on huge projects that produce undesired or no results to improve their businesses.

Several key IT challenges are pertinent to businesses in Africa. These are –

1) The strategic business challenge

management of African businesses do not realise the impact of IT on business processes and how IT should integrate into the business to effectively gain competitive advantage. Just because the latest hardware technologies are acquired does not mean one would be competitive. Competitiveness would only be appropriate when IT is fully exploited for all its capabilities and opportunities. If business processes are not working effectively, IT will only speed up problems and not solve them. IT just like any other resource needs to be managed efficiently and effectively.

2) The globalisation challenge

African companies like Sasol, MTN, and many others have realised that in order for them to expand their operations they have to compete with the rest of the world. As a result, IT plays an important part in uniting local and international operations into one cohesive business unit. The South African government has been slow in embracing new opportunities that IT expansion and development could bring to companies and the ordinary citizen. This can be seen by government not granting more telecommunications business licences, and non-deregulation of internet broadband spectrum to service providers to expand IT infrastructure in Africa. This can be attributed to government not understanding the implication of IT and the lack of laws and policies governing the technology.

3) The information architecture and infrastructure challenge –

Many businesses in Africa have not identified their core competencies and how these drive the business; neither do they have sound back office business processes in place. African businesses have the view that, as long as we are connected to the outside world we can do business. Business competencies and goals should drive the business and not the technology. IT should only be a supporting backbone facilitating process. The non existence of IT and communications infrastructure and the exorbitant cost of installing such infrastructure also contribute to the challenge.

4) The Information Systems Investment Challenge

Businesses in Africa like the rest of the world see IT investment in terms of the monetary value of their hardware and software (physical assets). Costs associated with non-physical assets of IT are overlooked. Also, businesses are unaware of:

-          What productivity levels are due to IT or non IT influences;

-          The cost of lost sales opportunities from poorly managed e-commerce or e-business websites;

-          The determination of the return on IT investment.

5) The Responsibility and Control Challenges

As with all technologies, it has to be driven and controlled by human intervention. Most of the IT challenges emanate from the “Persware”, i.e. – people. As long as there is no smooth integration of IT into the people’s environment then challenges will not be resolved. With the high illiteracy levels and poor education on the African continent, it remains a challenge to train and develop people fast enough to catch up with technological innovations and ultimately control and maintain an IT infrastructure. In Africa this is quite pertinent as most people are used to doing things their way and are not fast enough in adapting to new ways of doing things.  On the other hand, people in remote areas of the African continent are fast becoming cellular phone users and this, I think, is one step closer to bridging the IT challenge in the communications divide.

Basic steps that can be used to address the challenges -

1) Agree on common user requirements

Ensure that business processes work efficiently and effectively. Business processes should be short and definitive. All users of IT in the organisation should agree and participate on common requirements which would work in all functional business areas and is acceptable to all parties.

2) Introduce changes in business procedures

Users or “Persware” support is important in anything that needs to be achieved in an organisation. Managers and employees should be able to exchange ideas and share a common vision and goal in achieving and implementing changes in business procedures. Through user participation, people will feel that they are part of the process and have contributed to changing procedures and as a result the organisation will succeed in its endeavours.

3) Coordinate applications development

People need to be informed in whatever the organisation plans to do. IT can disseminate information through: e-mail, intranet and internet, so that everyone is kept abreast of changes. All applications development will be coordinated between various departments so that everyone knows what the status quo is at any given time and no functional area is left far behind in implementing new processes.

4) Coordinate software releases

Everyone involved in the process from various functional areas need to be working on the same thing at the same time. Therefore, software releases should occur throughout the organisation at the same time, to ensure that everyone is working on the same page.

5) Encourage local users to support global systems

Local users need to be encouraged and given the feeling that they have ownership over the system. However, at the same time all users should adapt to new ideas and ways of doing things. African businesses now have to compete with the world and people who are slow to adapt and are inflexible will not survive in the age of IT. This can only be done through user participation in massive IT processes put in place; linking all operations throughout the world in sharing common ideas and knowledge through enterprise resource planning systems such as SAP.

6) Invest in people

African governments, organisations, etc, should invest in educating and developing African people with regards to the development and use of IT on the continent to develop its own in-house pool of IT specialists.

IT can be a panacea for businesses. This is even more so in the African context, where a number of challenges & opportunities exist. African business leaders have a chance to learn from the rest of the world, by avoiding mistakes that have plagued other multinationals.  In order to do this, business leaders on the African continent need to understand the challenges and implications once a decision is made in order to realise solutions.

About the Author

I am an Operations Manager with a combined 15 years experience in the Steel and Water Engineering industries, being involved in spheres such as;operations, maintenance, production, & specialising in optimising business processes.