“Our landmark achievement is the development of Nigeria’s first indigenous Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)” – Raji
The Focus Group is a conglomerate of ICT companies that provides end-to-end solutions and services to solve present and future challenges. With headquarters in Lagos and outlets across Nigeria, we combine hardware, software, and services to offer game-changing ICT solutions to businesses and government organisations.
The Focus Group has grown into an ICT powerhouse in Nigeria that specialises in infrastructure, connectivity & networks, and software & applications. Our goal is to help businesses and organisations reach the next level through technology by providing tailored solutions and services that guarantee peace of mind for our clients.
Integrity on daily business operations
Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. In the context of business, it means fulfilling promises made to stakeholders, such as delivering projects and paying staff and suppliers on time. For business integrity to be maintained, a company must have both product/service integrity and organizational integrity.
Business successes so far
In the past seven years, our business has experienced continuous growth in most standard parameters. Despite the challenges of COVID-19 in 2020, we still achieved significant profit growth with lower turnover. While I must credit God for our successes, I am proud of our team’s hard work and dedication.
Government policies and impact on ICT
Although the Nigerian government’s National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy aims to revolutionize industries and promote economic development, government policies are hindering investment in the ICT sector. A conducive and supportive environment is necessary for investments to flow where they are appropriately rewarded. However, the business environment in Nigeria is very harsh for businesses in general and particularly for ICT.
For instance, 80% of ICT products are imported, yet the government’s forex policy excludes ICT products and services from accessing FOREX from CBN. Harsh economic environments for ICT businesses also include multiple taxation, government policies against market segmentation in the telecom space, rising inflation, and cost of living, which will further impact the industry.
Preserving a moral and ethical corporate environment
A major challenge faced by the industry today is the lack of skilled workers, compounded by rising input costs due to recent government economic policies. The challenge is twofold.
Firstly, people lack the necessary skills due to poor education. Secondly, many have a poor work ethic, influenced by a culture that values quick riches over hard work and building wealth over time. These two problems combined spell doom for the nation. To make matters worse, the few talented individuals who could have provided solutions are leaving the country in large numbers (Japa syndrome), forcing companies to import skills. To think that a country with a two-digit rate of unemployment and a population of 200 million will outsource most of its work or import skill sets is unbelievable.
Apart from the challenge of finding qualified employees who prioritize work over money, corruption in the country also hinders our ability to enter certain sectors due to conflicting ethical standards. This has the resultant effect of reducing our market size, and we are quite comfortable with that. We would rather lose a deal than win the deal and get paid for it without delivering the project. Hence, we are being hit on both sides of human resources and businesses when it comes to upholding moral and ethical standards.
Focus Group’s landmark accomplishments over the years
Besides our consistently growing customer base, our landmark achievement is the development of the first indigenous ERP. We now have a proudly Nigerian product capable of managing an organization’s HR, procurement, and asset. This eliminates the need for organizations to spend large amounts of Forex on backend process and service management products.
This initiative will result in substantial savings in Forex for the country and businesses. The second is the breakthrough we had in our IoT subsidiary with the creation of a low-cost product that offers security and convenience to individuals. Our SmartHome products will enable users to manage their homes remotely from the comfort of their mobile phones anywhere in the world. Apart from giving each homeowner the feasibility of their homes from anywhere, it also puts in their hands the power to control and manage both utilities and infrastructures in the homes.
