General News
Why in-House R&D Often Beats Acquired Tech when it Comes to Giving Customers Great Software
By Andrew Bourne, Region Manager, Africa, Zoho Corporation
When it comes to choosing technology providers for their businesses, CTOs and IT leaders have two options. The first is adopting a ‘best-of-breed’ approach, which involves hand-picking several disparate apps and products by different vendors, each one serving a specific need effectively. The second option is to take a ‘single vendor/integrated stack’ approach, choosing one tech provider who offers a suite of pre-integrated applications that addresses multiple business requirements in one go. Customers today increasingly prefer the second option to streamline their business processes.
In a bid to cater to this demand for unified software suites, technology companies—especially those that provide best-of-breed apps, are racing to expand their capabilities. Often, they do this through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), buying up apps to satisfy customers’ growing needs. While this approach has some appeal — most notably, it allows vendors to quickly secure market share without building something from the ground up — this is inherently flawed.
By making extensive use of M&As, software vendors risk ending up with a poorly integrated “Frankenstein’s Monster”-style technology stack which falls short of the promise of application consolidation and doesn’t really add value for customers.
The trouble with M&A – Cultural and technological integration issues
M&A activity comes with an array of complications, including culture clashes, redundancies, office politics, increased attrition rates, and tech integration challenges. In fact, a 2016 Harvard Business Review article went as far to say that “M&A is a mug’s game, in which typically 70% – 90% of acquisitions are abysmal failures.”
Those failures ultimately impact the customer, by putting them in the same situation they’d be in if they were trying to work with a string of different products.
Even the biggest companies struggle when it comes to successfully integrating acquisitions. In the consumer space, users know this all too well. Take Yahoo for example. When it bought Tumblr for US$1.1-billion in 2013, it thought it had a surefire winner on its hands. Yahoo’s idea was to strengthen its social media platform services by integrating Tumblr’s blogs more tightly into its network using the former’s personalization technology and search infrastructure. Unfortunately, Yahoo never managed to properly integrate the micro-blogging social network and even stripped it of some of its most celebrated features.
Similarly, Microsoft’s difficulties with Skype are well-chronicled. Having acquired the peer-to-peer calling and messaging service for US$8.5-billion in 2011, Microsoft initially planned to integrate Skype’s telephony architecture into its user communication platform and a few other services. That integration took so long and had such flawed execution that consumer confidence took a massive hit. As a result, when the Seattle-based tech giant launched Teams in 2016, it developed its own video-calling feature in-house instead of leveraging Skype’s capabilities to ensure aesthetic consistency as well as a more streamlined fit among its enterprise collaboration solutions suite.
On observation, it is typically public companies that spend billions acquiring disparate technologies, in order to inherit massive customer bases and expand sales to satisfy investor demands for constant growth. Unfortunately, when an acquisition fails, it’s the customers who bear the brunt of incompatible integrations and broken user experiences. Rather than banking on high-profile acquisitions that hold higher odds of failure, vendors that have their customers’ best interests at heart could also consider investing in developing their own software and services.
The case for going in-house
Developing native technologies and building products in-house surely takes its sweet time. Of course, an integrated suite of business solutions that’s built on a unified tech stack can take even longer, and also religious investment across in-house R&D/innovation capacities, homegrown talent, and resource upskilling. But the investment is worth the effort. Not only does it save big money and make things simpler, it also projects trust and credibility, helping build long-lasting customer relationships.
Creating complementary applications from scratch also ensures that they contextually integrate with one another from the get-go. It also provides a consistent look and feel in performance, making its customers more likely to accept the new product. On the other end, customers too benefit from a set of applications that work in perfect unison to drive better organisational processes and improve collaboration.
When it comes to building great enterprise technology that lasts, therefore, it’s much better for vendors to build in-house than to try and buy their way to growth and expansion.
Dr. Obiageli Amadiobi, director general and chief executive officer, National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP), has advocated Franchising as a sustainable business model for the South East entrepreneurs.
Dr. Obiageli Amadiobi, DG/CEO, NOTAP
She made this call during a one-day sensitization and unveiling of the NOTAP Franchising Guidelines for south east stakeholders and entrepreneurs for a successful franchising business.
The DG who was represented at the event by Mr. Emeka Orji, head of Department Corporate Planning (CP) Department, NOTAP, said that franchising business model had globally been proven to be successfully sustainable due to low business risks associated with it.
She defines franchising as a contractual business relationship between a licensor (the franchisor) and a licensee (the franchisee) that allows the business owner to use the licensor’s brand and methods of doing business to distribute products or provide services to consumers.
She added that in essence, the franchisee pays the franchisor for the opportunity to use his established business model and brand name in running his business.
Dr. Amadiobi said the essence of the workshop was not just organised to explore the possibility of adopting franchising as a strategic platform to transform local dreams into national and global business realities.
She described the programme as an opportunity for business owners and intending entrepreneurs from the Zone to latch into the huge and untapped potentials provided by franchising business models in becoming business and brand ambassadors.
With over 800,000 franchise establishments across the globe, generating trillions in revenue, she described Franchising as a pathway to economic empowerment.
General News
FG Launches Online Citizenship, Business Management Portal to Enhance Transparency, Service Delivery
The Federal Government has launched a new Online Citizenship and Business Management Platform, in a bid to boost transparency, operational efficiency, and service delivery. The initiative, unveiled by the Ministry of Interior, is in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The platform is designed to simplify and accelerate the processing of citizenship and business-related services, allowing individuals and corporate entities to carry out transactions seamlessly from anywhere in the world.
According to a statement issued by Magdalene Ajani, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, the digital platform represents a significant milestone in the Ministry’s ongoing reform agenda.
It noted that the new system would drastically reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks, enhance user experience, and improve turnaround time for applications. “The Ministry is committed to promoting a more efficient, transparent, and secure framework for citizenship administration.
“This digital transformation is a testament to our resolve to improve public service delivery through the use of technology”, the statement reads.
Members of the public, private organisations, and other stakeholders can now access the platform through the Ministry’s official website: https://interior.gov.ng, or directly via the portal: https://candb.interior.gov.ng. For technical support or inquiries, users can contact: candb-support@interior.gov.ng.
The Ministry emphasised that the launch of this platform is just one of several digital initiatives aimed at transforming the nation’s administrative processes and aligning them with global best practices.
Observers believe the platform could become a game-changer in reducing red tape and promoting a more investor-friendly environment in Nigeria, particularly in areas involving citizenship acquisition and business operations.
Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, director general of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has said that the 18 community IT centre the agency has built in the past two years are meant to be a beacon of calls and catalyst of change in those communities where they are cited.
He sated this at the commissioning/handing over of IT centre at Akesan area in Lagos. He noted that the IT centres, Innovation hubs among others are part of digital literacy programme of the agency.
“This center is designed and build to help Akesan community to be part of the digital economy, because the President is big and loud when it comes to national prosperity and inclusivity.
“Our target is to build more than 1600 across the country. We want every community every Nigerian to be part of this national prosperity and inclusivity when it comes to digital economy.
“Today, we are here to commission it, to ensure and encourage you to put it in a good use, because we call it a community center means that we want everybody to be part of it. We don’t want it to be suited in a school where the school will lock it for only students and the staff.
“That’s why we located it in the community. Schools can be part of it. Our senior citizens can be part of it. Our religious centers also can be part of it to learn.
“We want it to be a beacon of call as well as a catalyst of change in this community. We want to see more information technology gurus coming from Akesan community. So, I want to encourage you to also come with a sustainability model so that the center will be on. It is on because when you invest in this kind of infrastructure, we don’t want to be called when there are small things that we should come and fix it. That’s why we are handing it over to the community so that the community can put it in a good use. The community can find a way to make it self-sustaining,” he said.
Dr. ‘Bosun Tijani, Honourable Minister of Communications, Innovation & Digital Economy, the NITDA Community Centre in Lagos, a space that is more than just a building. It is a strategic extension of our national mission – a bridge between the Federal Government’s digital economy policies and the unmatched energy, ingenuity, and innovation that Lagos represents.
The minister who was represented by Mr. Johnson Bareyei, director, e-governmance in the ministry, added that his ministry is committed to promoting inclusivity through capacity building initiatives like the 3MTT programme.
“We are also developing the National Digital Economy & e-Governance Bill, which is a robust legislative framework that will help guide our everyday engagement online.
“Our work at the Ministry also includes Project BRIDGE, our ambitious effort to improve interconnectivity by deploying 90,000km of fibre-optic cable across Nigeria. This is a critical imperative as we work towards making Nigeria a $1trillion economy powered by innovation, infrastructure, and inclusive growth,” he said.
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