How Inefficient App Usage Leads to Productivity Loss for Nigerian Businesses

Emma Okonji

Zoho , a leading global technology company, has released the results of its study, tagged: “The State of Productivity and Collaboration in Nigeria 2024,” which surveyed over 500 organisations with more than 50 employees across the country.

The report findings revealed critical workplace productivity challenges, including the overwhelming impact of data silos resulting from fragmented systems and inefficient app usage. The survey study also highlights the growing demand for unified platforms, which can help businesses streamline employee collaboration.

Commenting on the report, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria. Mr. Kehinde Ogundare, said: “Nigerian businesses have adopted a variety of cloud tools over the years to support their digital transformation journey. However, they are beginning to recognise that these disconnected tools often lack integration with their existing technology stack, creating silos that hinder collaboration and lead to productivity losses. As this issue gains attention, the demand for unified collaboration platforms with advanced AI capabilities has surged, as corroborated by the survey findings.” According to him, “In Nigeria, we have observed a notable increase in the adoption of Zoho Workplace, reflecting this trend. Zoho Workplace sets the standard for a unified experience as early as 2017, well ahead of the industry giants. It offers not just a unified interface, but brings contextual data to the forefront, saving time, and enabling users to focus on what truly matters.”

Key findings from the study showed that 55 per cent of Nigerian businesses have adopted a fully on-site work model, while 31 per cent operate in a hybrid setup, and the remaining 14 per cent were in completely remote roles. Most remote roles are held by individual contributors with limited collaboration requirements, while hybrid workers face significant barriers in maintaining effective communication.

The survey also revealed that 51 per cent of employees use 1–5 apps daily, 35 per cent use 6-10 apps, while 14 per cent rely on more than 10 apps. App usage is higher among senior executives, with 81 per cent of the C-Suite employees using more than 10 apps, while 72 per centof junior employees use 1-5 apps. The most commonly used tools are for productivity and collaboration (68 per cent), followed by project management (47 per cent), business intelligence (47 per cent), and accounting (43 per cent). Despite widespread app usage, only 50 per cent of the respondents track their tasks in a unified view, with higher adoption rates among the C- Suite (78 per cent) and senior leadership (63 per cent), the report revealed.

In the area of productivity challenges and opportunities, the report said for the Nigerian workforce, the biggest collaboration challenge remained poor WiFi/data connectivity (80 per cent), across demographics, which indicates the need for solutions that have an offline mode and can work in lower data connectivity.

Other collaboration challenges according to the report, are digital fatigue (54 per cent), and information spread across too many apps (45 per cent).

For middle managers, the second biggest challenge, after poor WiFi, is communication with employees in a remote or hybrid setup, and the most effective way to improve productivity in Nigerian workplaces is to enable quick access to necessary information from different apps (78 per cent), followed by adoption of new technologies like AI (72 per cent), and the ability to communicate from within business apps (55 per cent), the report added.

Giving the economic outlook, the report explained that 51 per cent of the respondents said their organisation had adopted new technology to prepare themselves for the economic challenges. Those who said their companies had adopted new technology were more positive about the ability of their company to deal with the competition (rating 4 out of 5) than those who said their company had not adopted new technology (rating a little over 3 out of 5). The report however said majority of the respondents felt their companies were adequately prepared to face economic challenges.

According to the findings, slow adoption of emerging technologies like AI emerged as the most significant factor hindering their ability to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving market, cited by 46 per cent of the respondents. Other reasons cited as causing competitive disadvantages were low adoption of digital tools (45 per cent), and employees switching between too many apps (41 per cent).