(Co-founders Babatola Awe, CEO/CTO and Akintayo Okekunle, CFO)
There was a hum in the air and the energy felt electric when I walked into the offices of Revent Technologies in Lagos, Nigeria. This paperless hive was buzzing with workers gearing up for the latest relaunch of their work tool, Flowmono 2.0. Flowmono is a cloud-based solution for document signing and business process management. The Flowmono solution is simple, it gives you a “method and power of signing from anywhere at any time,” says co-founder and CFO, Akintayo Okekunle. With Flowmono, businesses can sign, store, and track important documents, and also easily pivot to a cheaper and easier-to-manage automated system.
With work conditions changing rapidly in the past few years and remote work becoming more common post-COVID-19 pandemic, tools to manage work, productivity, and team collaborations remotely have become more important. In various enterprises daily, workers sign contracts, applications, invoices, payroll, and staff create documentation on the go. Currently, in the market, the solutions available to make these work needs simpler are numerous, disjointed, expensive, and they complicate the work process, especially for African businesses. Often, workers create documents on one app and fill and sign on another. Also, available data drives do not come with a fill-and-sign function. You need tools attached to other tools that cost money, endanger your data, and break up your work processes.
A first-of-its-kind SaaS and business management platform, Flowmono streamlines internal workflow, providing what you need to create an efficient workflow in one place. It is made to be affordable and accessible to businesses in and outside Nigeria, and with its unique model and features, businesses no longer have to invest too much in infrastructure or pay for important infrastructure in dollars. This will help them significantly cut down on spending.
Speaking about Revent Technologies, the parent company to Flowmono, co-founder and CEO, Babatola Awe popularly known as Baba T, “Our goal is to be one of the leading technology companies in the world by helping our clients solve one problem at a time. We believe that technology should make human life easier and that is why we look for very compelling stories to tell with our clients.” What he means by compelling stories is that the team at Revent Technologies is only interested in taking on projects that have the potential to add value to clients and/or their industries. “Technology should make businesses more efficient, nimble, and agile and our mission is to build solutions that work and solve critical human problems in society. It could be fintech, business process management, business applications etc,” he says.
Revent Technologies initially began as a research and development (R&D) company and as they looked out for problems, ideas, and innovations they evolved to create multiple solutions for various industries, one of which is Flowmono. At the start, all Babatola Awe and Akintayo Okekunle had were their credentials and a desire to solve real-world problems through technology. Smack at the height of COVID, they were inspired to streamline workflow systems to ensure smoother working collaborations. Babatola quit his job as a senior manager at Deloitte and Tayo resigned from his position as head of business performance and reporting at FBN Holdings. Together they started consulting based on their extensive career experiences and also building software for companies on request. As they’ve solved one problem, clients have asked for other solutions and they’ve tailor-made products powered by Revent technologies for their clients.
With Flowmono 2.0, customers get access to:
- Flowmono drive: On the drive, you can upload and store documents, sign, fill, comment, review, and share or send documents as you wish. Flowmono is managed from the cloud, which gives customers access to large storage and makes the platform more accessible and cost-effective, especially for startups who might not have the funds but still want to automate and scale up. Flowmono drive enables e-signing and document management. This saves time, reduces error, and protects the IP rights of the document owner. When you upload and share a document for approval, signing or collaboration on Flowmono you can also specify the duration of the agreement (how long it can be legally binding).
- Seamless workflow: Working from Flowmono is pretty easy and it has automatic save features and intuitive drag and drop, search, and editor features. Users can manage messages and contacts and also organise documents in folders.
- Security: Flowmono can also be used to manage business processes securely. Users can share information, collaborate, and create dynamic workflows, safely and securely on Flowmono’s cloud-based system. Besides e-signing, users can monitor any changes or activities on the document from whoever has access to it and continue to collaborate and work on the document from anywhere in the world. To ensure privacy, documents can be encrypted and an OTP will be sent to a document creator to grant access to anyone looking into the document. Users can also lock documents with a pin so no one without express permission can access internal company documents.
The team at Flowmono has made using and integrating with their cloud-based system quite easy with other low/no-code API integration tools. Flowmono’s APIs can be integrated with other applications or software to enable businesses to e-sign i.e. businesses who don’t wish to sign on the Flowmono platform itself but from their own software. With this users can sign and send contracts from external applications and manage documentation seamlessly across multiple web and mobile platforms.
The features Flowmono currently has, enables automated work processes and make collaboration and work easier among teams and external organisations. Users no longer have to spend time on repetitive tasks, struggling to manage work across multiple platforms, and tracking internal work contracts and processes. Business managers also have a digital trail for every document worked on, when it was worked on, and by whom, securely stored in the cloud. Flowmono can be used to reduce excessive paperwork and manpower, thereby saving costs and time for businesses.
(Front row, L-R: Oluchukwu Adumije, SVP/Engineering Lead; and Morenikeji Ishola, Brands, Comms & Marketing Manager. Back row, L-R: Tobi Osimosu, VP/Frontend Lead; Akintayo Okekunle, CFO; and Babatola Awe, CEO/CTO)
With Flowmono 2.0 the team has made some advancements based on customer feedback from its minimum viable product. With this 2.0 release, the system can be decoupled into reusable components across a business. Different departments can use this to create and customise their own workflow components from the Flowmono system, from HR to finance. These microservices make the tool simpler, more accessible, and more flexible. The vision with Flowmono is to become the number one go-to SaaS platform and the goal is to build tools that will enable businesses to work in the cloud. “Our end goal is to blur the line between remote work and on-site work by providing a document managment system (DMS) and API tools that allow other businesses to get the access or functionalities we’ve built on Flowmono and be able to integrate it with their own enterprise applications. More importantly, we’re also trying to create an ecosystem that allows individuals, freelancers, SMEs and large corporations to be able to run businesses end-to-end,” Babatola says. They are also big on talent outsourcing and for them, this means providing talent to build technology for their clients. Revent Technologies has successfully provided over 200 talented professionals to clients across Africa and globally.
Flowmono recently underwent certification under the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) and is proud to be recognized by the regulatory body for its commitment to data protection. As part of the company’s dedication to ensuring the highest standards of data security, they are also currently in the process of obtaining certification from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK. This dual certification approach allows Flowmono to meet and exceed both Nigerian and global standards in safeguarding customers’ valuable data.
Currently, Flowmono has ten corporations using its system and close to 700 overall users. The team at Flowmono has more tools in-store; Flowmono form builder is in the works and they are looking to launch financing tools (invoicing, account, and expense management), HR tools (recruitment, employee, and payroll management), and other operational tools (customer and project management tools). Subscribers can also share their business challenges and needs directly with the Flowmono team as they are interested in offering tailored solutions for these challenges.
