Continuation of interview…check part one here.
Some of us lost very close friends (to COVID-19); so, it gives me great joy that a Nigerian company working with us, saved lives during that peak of COVID. So, we are not relenting which is the reason we built another software solution – iBroka, from the ground up, for the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers. We built it, working with Microsoft, and today it is an industry solution. A number of brokers – Cordros Insurance Brokers, amongst others using this platform today.
I must also say for the wBiz, we have over close to 1000 users on that platform. We are getting the message out there that these are solutions for us as Nigerians, built by Nigerians with the understanding of the market dynamics including government policies.
Let’s meditate on this: Even if 1% of our businesses in Nigeria; take out of 40 million MSMEs, are using this platform, they will be saved from numerous challenges including the Forex.
With our products – wBizmanager, iBroka you can be assured to get the full-fledged subscription services experience in Nigeria.
What drove Wragby to emerge the first and only Azure Managed Service Provider (MSP) in Sub-Saharan Africa?
Oluyomi Alarape: In December 2020, Wragby became the first partner in over 80 countries of Microsoft multi-country cluster operates. That cuts across some countries in the Middle East. But we can relate it to Sub Saharan Africa, which we are familiar with; we became the first and only Azure Managed Service Provider (MSP) partner.
As a micro service provider expert, what drove us to this is we’ve seen a huge gap across enterprise (corporate) accounts; now, businesses generally have a reliable and experienced certified provider that can cater to the technology needs: transform or translate their business needs, using advanced platforms that is going to meet their requirements. And they can go to sleep, knowing that they’re dealing with the best of the best.
This partner program by Microsoft has lasted more than six years, and there are less than 100 partners worldwide. In the whole of the Sub-Saharan Africa, we are the only one till day 2022.
This is also in line with our Think Big paradigm. We really desire those enterprises and small businesses know about this. More than ever before there is pressure on business leaders and owners to reduce costs and focus on their core area of business. This is core to us. Therefore, we are here to provide them with managed services.
It is also a testament to rigorous 350 hours -plus of audit from Microsoft in Redmond to achieve this status. So, we have this as an offering here; why should your company’s applications continue to witness downtime? All server related issues and customer complaining.
We believe this should be a thing of the past. We have already made a case in the financial sector, oil and gas and expanding to other sectors.
To top it, this this year, Wragby achieved the status of an ISO 27001 certification. And the question is or will be why do we have to do this? It is still in line with what I’ve talked about, what I share with you about our DNA?
Why do Wragby have to do this?
Oluyomi Alarape: Firstly, this is a globally just like the Azure MSP expert certification, it gives our customers the confidence that when they bring their business to Wragby Business Solutions and Technologies Limited, they are in a safe place. Their information or data is well secured.
Today we are talking about security as a major bridge. With this ISO 27001 certification, we are telling our customers and prospects that we are following the standard, the practice, as is expected, at the highest and the strictest standard to provide information security assurance for their businesses.
Now in addition to that, it gives them the peace of mind that once they come to Wragby Business Solutions, they can be sure that there is nothing to worry about as far as their data is concerned, as far as far as their information is concerned because we are possess an internationally acclaimed certification. This is also in line with our vision of extending our services to other African countries. While we have done a number of partnerships with some organizations in Ghana, in Kenya, Botswana, the time has come for business manager to broker more partnership to drive business value across some other enterprise solutions (Managed Services, Business Service Monitoring (BSM) Solution, APIMM) that we have too.
But this is very important as we expand and as we grow services to give more assurance of our capabilities to our customers across the continent of Africa.
Business Reputation
So, when you talk about reputation, you talk about improvement and structure and focus. These are all the things that comes with the ISO certification. And you can see here the scope is clearly stated, software engineering team is certified as where the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions and most of our products comes from. And the same applies our business solutions, our project management office (PMO), customer success, digital advisory, and many more of which I may not have the time to go through all of them during this chat. With that, I will just quickly erase because you can see I can hold you just talking about ambition. Our leadership principle is T.H.R.I.C.E. The T stands for think big.
But let me just close too quickly, this one, “H” stands for have guts, disagree and commit. So, we encourage everyone to imbibe our leadership principles, as I talked about, we do encourage everyone to have voice to speak up to challenge ideas. Innovation comes from bottom up, where you allow people and every member of the team to speak but more importantly is about their sense of what an employee that, you know, we build into all these young leaders, as you take them, catch them young, as you teach them, technology will teach them what it takes to be successful as they go up the ladder, you know, being leaders and being responsible leaders in their chosen area. “R” stands for results oriented.
Now you can see everything I’ve said today, without being results oriented, we will not be there. And now, it’s still a journey for us. But we are excited to see what we have done. Despite the challenges we have in the country, we keep marching on and keep pushing on setting the standards for everyone to see that we are here with a purpose and a mission. When anyone joins Wragby, the first thing we tell them is that wherever operation you like, if it’s just about money, then you are not at the right place. Money is important but what is more important is developing you as a leader. This is because where you grow up as a leader, you will create more money, and you know how to manage the money, for the blessing and the impact on humanity.
But if you don’t, and it’s just about money, you will wreck eventually, because what’s the purpose of money, the money is a tool in our hands, to transform our world. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the summary. So, we teach and raise leaders with that focus in mind, “I” stands for insisting on the highest standard. Again, as you see, we have to get to where we are, and we are still on a journey.
The “C” stands for customer enthusiasm or being customer enthusiastic. Our customers are critical to us. It is obvious that we are here because of them. So, we as a people, as leaders, when we raise role models they would impact businesses, we are there to serve our customers, our customers are just the initial small representatives of the world that we want to make a better place to live.
Last but not the least is the “E” which stands for earn trust. So, when your customer and it’s not you are saying that I am the trusted adviser, what we do is exceeding customer expectation and standing there for customers when they need us the most supporting them to succeed.
And customer in this context means partners or strategic partners. Like I mentioned Microsoft, we do a lot on security that time will not permit me. We have Baracuda, like you know and quite a lot of other solutions we are building on the platform. It also goes by extension to even SAP and couple of others. Most importantly because we know that is truth. that is the window through which we can make the impact on the world for them.
It might be either as a financial service in helping or providing a platform for you. As a father or a mother, to sort out medical bills’ situations for our children, or siblings, or even in paying fees, as the case may be, they are all interconnected. But we see that bigger vision and picture and connect them together.
On that note, I think I’ve managed to show just a few of what we do here. And then we can also say that we do things uniquely, we do things differently. We do not shy away from challenges.
When we started the business way back, we were incorporated officially as a business in Nigeria in 2014. Born out of Nigeria, you know, as an indigenous organization, proudly Nigerian, but at the same time, we have a global outlook. Currently, we have operations extending beyond Nigeria, we’re currently doing business with some of our partners who have our services in Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania.
You know, that shows you that, even though we are born out of Nigeria, we have that global output. Agile, innovation is very key to us in everything that we do. And, of course, it’s spelt out in several services and our offerings. As tier-one Microsoft partner, as I want to always describe us, one of the things that we tried to do is to ensure that we extend the capabilities of the platform as well.
And so, we build on top of our platform, and use it to solve business problems. You know, our vision, of course, is to ensure that we make the world a better place to ive through technology, you know, so we see that as a great alignment, okay, to Microsoft’s own vision as well which is to empower every organizations on planet earth to do so much more.
Of course, the vision also means that, you know, if there are problems to solve, if there are challenges, we do not shy away from coming up with solutions. We design solutions that we can use technology to address. Wragby, of course, also presents a demographic that is mixed, in terms of the generations that make up the entire world.
We are kind of mix in that sense, so we talk about the baby boomers, and Gen Z, and Gen Y’s. So that brings a lot of diversity into how we do things into our perspectives. Yes, of course, it comes with its challenges, but we’ve also been able to come up with creative ways into how we address such challenges so that we do not lose the very essence of all values, we still stay true to our core values, and, of course, our leadership principles.
We stay true to all of that, I mean, while I’m addressing the reality of the fact that we do have changing generation, times are changing too. And then of course, we still must repeat that in that context. Obviously, we need to remain relevant and begin to add value, continue to offer our world class solutions and services. Thank you.
To be continued…
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