Softcom announced via a letter from the CEO that it will be unveiling a set of growth tools and initiatives for humans and businesses.
The 14-year-old innovative company claims that these solutions will redefine what’s possible for businesses — powering a new era for businesses and what it means to sell better, sell more, identify people, control money, and make better decisions.
In anticipation of the virtual event, we spoke to the Senior Vice President of Commercial Lela Omo-Ikirodah, on what to expect at the much anticipated Day X slated to hold on the 29th of July, 2021.
How would you describe Softcom’s goal and the impact of the work being done?
In the course of our existence and growth as a company, we have experienced the realities of African society and seen our great potential. We have also identified that there are existing barriers to harnessing these potentials for growth. This led us to understand the importance of delivering technology for the service of humanity and has birthed a new purpose for our company which is a simple mandate to accelerate inclusion and growth of dreams and doers wherever they are.
Our strategy is to make available and accessible human-centered solutions to entrepreneurs who we’ve classified as dreamers and doers. This group of people use their ingenious abilities to drive change and deliver value within society. As evident in Nigeria and reported by PwC, 17.4 Million SMEs within the country contribute to over 48% of national GDP and account for 96% of businesses and 84% of employment.
We want people and businesses to leverage these solutions to solve their common needs and unlock the imminent growth irrespective of their level of growth.
You spoke about your mandate to accelerate growth and inclusion. Can you tell us how your solutions will enable them?
While designing our solutions, we considered the current state of our society, our common human needs, and most especially the possibilities with leveraging science and technology.
We identified 3 common barriers to growth;
The first is exclusion, which is simply a lack of equitable access. People can’t access what they need when they need it and even in cases where they can, what they access is inadequate.
The second is fragmentation. As it is now, a person who wants financial freedom needs several tools: one to receive money, another to save, another to borrow, and so on. Or for someone who does business, they need multiple services to accept payment from customers as no one service provides a means to receive and manage payments online as well as card, cash, and bank transfer payments. There are too many options and this can get confusing because they’re all disunited.
The third barrier is stagnation. People are struggling to grow and aren’t equipped with the information and knowledge to enable them to make progress.
So how exactly is Softcom working to address these barriers?
We believe science and technology are the answer and can be leveraged to solve these barriers through precision, targeting, and instantaneousness. And this is what we have attempted to do by deliberately building solutions for equitable access, defragmentation, and growth.
I think it’s also important to understand who we’re solving for because they also inform our solutions and the particular ways we’ve addressed these problems. As I’ve earlier stated; we classified these people into dreamers and doers. Dreamers are people who have ideas and aspirations, which is pretty much everyone and doers are people who have turned their dreams into products, businesses, and opportunities – entrepreneurs.
What we’re doing is giving them access to an ecosystem of value that will include capital, coaching, knowledge, and other tools that propel and accelerate growth for self and business, financially and otherwise.
Can you give us a sneak peek at some of these tools?
Softcom has worked with multiple businesses across multiple industries, especially small businesses within the bar and lounge, food, retail, beauty, and general retail. We noticed some key challenges recurring across these businesses like managing fragmented payment methods, settlement days, lack of actionable insight for growth and leakages. So we did a detailed market discovery and built a retail management solution that allows entrepreneurs to manage their entire business process end-to-end.
We also built a solution to help people and businesses gather information. We understand that feedback and insight are important to the growth and this tool helps them gain that seamlessly and creatively.
Another solution we’re providing helps people and businesses protect their spaces – whether at home, in the workplace, or at events. They can determine who has access and be informed about who is in that space per time.
To help our dreamers and doers hack financial growth, we also built a bank that provides simple, modern, and reliable financial services – from saving to expenditure control and budgeting – to anyone with a phone number.
Our solutions are built to be intuitive and overall, solve for inclusion, connectedness, and growth. They will help you act faster, with higher precision, and in a decisive, targeted manner, no matter the size of your ambition.
So what can we expect from the July 29 event?
We’ll be unveiling the solutions I just spoke about in their full glory. There are so many features I wasn’t able to touch on and you definitely don’t want to miss out on hearing about them from the great team that came together to build them. So I encourage you to register for Day X.
You’ll be hearing from our CEOs and leadership about our ideology, what drives us at Softcom, and why we are passionate about creating an inclusive society where everyone can thrive. We’re relaunching as a “Business 2 Entrepreneur” company with answers for entrepreneurs and we hope you’re as excited to learn about these answers.
