"Projects exhibit a strong focus on the customer, processes and value creation"
It would now appear that technology is moving from back office operations to the front. Businesses in East Africa are shifting their focus to client-facing technologies that will enable them engage directly with the client and hopefully provide a positive customer experience, which is key to success of the business.
Businesses today face many challenges, from accurately predicting customer behavior to grappling with extended and global supply chains. In a challenging global economic climate, the differentiator for businesses is often not dependent on just pricing strategies, but the client-facing service they offer. Providing availability of the right products at the right price, backed up by the right information to allow customers to make an informed choice, can be the difference between success and failure.

Such truisms, however obvious they may be, are far from easy to achieve. Out of the 650 businesses surveyed for 2011 CIO100, 82 per cent indicated that the projects they undertook were geared towards delivering client impact. This is 15 per cent more than last year. Different technologies were deployed to achieve this depending on which vertical the business was in.

For instance, CFOA Tanzania, who also bagged the CIO100 PlusOne Award for the automotive industry, implemented a collaboration suite with the aim of providing their customers with quick responses to their queries and at the same time letting them enjoy the same level of service and comfort wherever they were in the country. Integration into their already existing Blackberry Enterprise platform made communication between staff, head office and customers faster and simpler, but most importantly, more accurate.

Sisdo Organization implemented a switching system to drive both automatic teller machines and point of sale systems. Through the switch and a wide area network, they provided both an online and a mobile banking service to their clients. The entire project was designed to give their clients more choice in terms of products and services and at a lower cost, while being more secure and with enhanced convenience.

On the same theme of improving customer experience, Paradise Safari Park Hotel implemented a mobile money system on the M-Pesa platform to enhance revenue through mobile money transfer from customers who do not have cash at hand or credit cards. The hotel invested just US$2,500 for this project, and they have already achieved a return on the investment.

Operational, financial and strategic impact came second, third and fourth, respectively. Operational impact included security, regulatory compliance and operational efficiency. In most organizations operational efficiency is what brings IT to the fore, with IT teams promising increased efficiency and accuracy of transactions and information; for a long time this has been the biggest selling point of IT. So it is very interesting to see businesses moving from just efficiency savings to having IT increase customer choice, improve experiences and even in some cases bring in revenue.

You can read the full article in the January 2012 print Edition of CIO East Africa available in most leading supermarket.