Ayodeji Olaofe: Nigeria’s Tech Talents, a Hidden Treasure for the Economy

If you persistently experience glitches with your mobile app, let’s say a banking app, the Japa syndrome may be at work. Many IT talents de japa, leaving a shortage of manpower to drive a smooth user experience.  In this interview, we chat with Mr. Ayodeji Olaofe, the brain behind Reeltech, one of Nigeria’s top IT consulting firms. As a start-up, his business is not immune to japa syndrome. He opens up to Chinedu Ibeabuchi on how he deals with the JAPA syndrome, how his company is filling the shortage gap, and how he imagines the future of the IT industry in Nigeria

Tell us About Reeltech

Reeltech, a Microsoft partner in Nigeria, is a company that helps other businesses use technology to improve their work and make more money. We create software and apps that make managing things like customers, sales, products, and finances easier. We also teach people how to use these tools and make them better. Reeltech work with businesses across industries.

What are the challenges looking at the peculiarity of the Nigerian environment, especially for companies like yours that’s a startup? How are you able to navigate, and what are you doing differently?

Our main strengths lie in support. When we implement and the client is happy, then retention and referral boom. From the outset, what we have consistently done well is in terms of our capacity.

One of the challenges affecting the growing IT industry has always been the fact that talents in our industry are quite expensive to maintain, and they don’t stay in one place. Once they learn a bit, they want to move forward. But since we built our company to be a learning ground, we will always have young promising talents hungry for growth. So, while the ones that have acquired skills in one or two years want to move forward, new shoots are sprouted.  

Another challenge with the IT market is the rate of japa syndrome. What’s the impact of Japa Syndrome on your business?

To be honest with you, between last December and this January, we saw talents left who have been here since 2018. Knowing that they can fetch better IT talents here, companies now come from abroad to recruit talent. Whilst this is commendable for the talents as it results in bigger pay, a shortage of skilled manpower is also a challenge that we have to overcome by investing in training and development. To overcome this challenge, we have set aside rooms to serve as classrooms in our new office complex at Gbagada to train new talents. Also, we are training our staff and making them feel at home. We have people ready to take up the position when others leave. Our management sustainability drive focuses on creating a conducive working environment, better employee welfare, happy staff, and healthy relationships with team members.

Remote work is the new normal. Are you encouraging that?

Yes, so even here, most of the already experienced staff work remotely. We did a big project that lasted one year. We didn’t go to the client’s office, we worked remotely. With the help of collaboration tools like Teams and Zoom, project implementation is quite faster. So, nobody needs to see you if you can do your work. We have tools we use to manage their productivity and timelines. Just do your job.

The trainees are the ones that are expected to come to the office so that they can have one-on-one hands-on training and learn from colleagues. Another thing we have done is to make our office premises feel like home, with relaxation couches, games and other sit-out areas to drive creativity and productivity.

How optimistic are you about the IT industry in Nigeria, from just providing solutions to creating innovations that solution providers can key into?

The tech sector in Nigeria is a fast-growing one. Even the government is trying to move towards using technology to manage many of their parastatals’ work processes, which is a great opportunity for the tech sector in Nigeria.

In the past, most companies used to bring in experts to come and set up their IT infrastructure or implement their software. Today, you can find those talents right here, among Nigerians. It has even metamorphosed into companies abroad coming to Nigeria to scout for IT talents. If there can be encouragement from the government, IT talents can help the economy grow and ensure that Nigeria benefits from the latest technologies.

What are those things that need to be done?

The government should build and fund learning hubs where people can acquire in-demand skills. Invest in infrastructure that enables ease of business and have our version of Silicon Valley. It’s not something one man can do. There are a whole lot, so we need government involvement to do that.

The government also needs to encourage IT hardware manufacturers. This will improve the economy. We need to start making things like SIM cards, chips, artificial intelligence, and robotic devices. Some guys left the country (Japa), and that’s what they are doing there. If the government shows sincere support, this Japa syndrome will be a kind that IT talents will use to gain exposure abroad and come back to invest. If we have the facilities and the support here, they can also stay and create innovations that can put Nigeria on the map.

Can you share some works you have done and how they help businesses improve their work?

We work for several clients in diverse industries. For FCMB PENSIONS, Reeltech implemented an end-to-end Pension Fund Administration solution that manages processes such as enrolment, contribution processing, and benefit payments.

For Dangote Farms Limited, Reeltech customised and implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Dangote farm, a tomato processing plant, to have a 360-degree view of its entire business process, starting from planting, harvesting of farm produce, Purchase of Raw Materials, Warehousing, Process Manufacturing, Quality control and Test Analysis as per specifications, to Selling and Distributions. The system manages all of Dangote Farm’s business processes end to end.

 For Leadway Pensure PFA Limited, The Pension Fund Administration solution was implemented to deploy and implement a centralised Fund Administration solution to process and manage the fund of LPPFA customers with improved operational efficiency and reporting capabilities. The deployed solution provides a centralised system that can easily integrate with other in-house or third-party systems for bringing in and sharing back-end data.

For Lagos State Development And Property Corporation, Reeltech has implemented Customised Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to manage LSDPC business operations in Finance, Property & Land Management modules, Advance Human resource and Payroll Modules

For Nile University, Reeltech Business Solutions customised and developed a Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP solution for Nile University’s business operations to achieve operational efficiency and management information reporting capabilities. The solution also integrates with Nile’s Student Information System (SIS)

Also, A.G Leventis engaged Reeltech to assist in developing and implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 for its Transport/Haulage services, Fleet Maintenance, Real Estate businesses, HR and Payroll.