Cut the cost, not the value

I was speaking recently on the subject “Everything Digital” to a group of professionals in Lagos, and one of the audience members in his comments mentioned something very profound, which has inspired me to pen my thoughts further. To paraphrase, he simply said: “when organizations (large and small) like his are faced with very tough financial times especially against the backdrop of our difficult economic challenges as a country, the first costs that they immediately want to cut are training, newspapers and cable TV subscriptions and then the cost of paper”. Interestingly, these items represent the core investments that organizations make in developing their people, save for paper, which I agree that we should cut considering that we will be saving more lives by doing so.

As I have reflected on those comments over the last few days, the challenge before many organizations like his is what alternatives do we have to these? How can we still manage to keep our employees educated and well-informed while significantly reducing our cost and without compromising the quality and impact of the knowledge and education that they receive? Going digital can make the difference, and organizations need to embrace opportunities that digital products offer in providing learning that is scalable, affordable, and still of the very highest quality. Organizations can also use digital platforms to incubate and transmit knowledge and take advantage of the plethora of digital services now available in the market place. The idea is simple: going digital will help you cut the cost, without losing the knowledge and impact. On a macro-level, digital represents a huge opportunity for our society – technology that has been originally developed in Europe, Asia and the Americas can be easily tweaked and modified to suit our local content and context here to produce solutions that can serve our markets and needs at significantly lower costs – reducing our dependence on foreign exchange, and potentially creating an opportunity to export “made in Nigeria” digital products to other African countries who share our context and content and may not be facing the currency and financial crises that we are facing at this time – with Digital, opportunities abound.

A couple of days ago, I saw the front cover of a leading Nigerian newspaper, where the newspaper’s publisher spoke about the rising cost of newspapers and how some newspapers had begun to pass the cost of these print-versions to their readers and advertisers. With the evolution of digital newspapers (and I am not talking about reading snippets of the news on websites) – readers can now enjoy the full digital (PDF versions) of leading Nigerian newspapers – this will over the long-run allow newspapers to focus on content and spend less on newsprint and distribution. Readers can indeed pay less as subscribers to these full PDF versions of newspapers as some are already doing, and indeed everyone will be the better for it – lower cost, more value, same knowledge and of course less paper.

When organizations are faced with tough economic times as we are currently experiencing, we tend to take drastic measures like cutting the cost of training and sometimes eliminating training budgets or reducing them to the bare bones. Interestingly, history has proven that organizations who thrive in difficult times are those that have developed the DNA of innovation which actually comes from self-motivated learning that is actually better achieved when employees have a plethora of relevant and impactful learning resources at their disposal. So instead of eliminating training altogether, forward thinking innovative organizations have made the digital switch, taking advantage of interactive e-learning, audio and video workshops, and other self-paced learning tools and resources delivered on a digital platform. So, you can cut the cost of training, but you can significantly increase its scale and impact without compromising its quality by moving from classroom based facilitator led- training to electronic learning platforms – reducing the cost, but not the knowledge. The challenge is that a lot of electronic learning content is still imported, draining our limited foreign currency reserves and adding its on pressure on our falling Naira – so there lies an opportunity: an opportunity to make the digital switch, but do it “Made in Nigeria”. Made in Nigeria is making significant waves – you may have seen the advert from a leading international hypermarket chain in Nigeria calling for local suppliers to fill their shelves which will empty out in a couple of months since imports are no longer that attractive. So, if made in Nigeria is making waves in household goods and items – it can make a difference in organizational learning when we make the digital switch. Who wants to hear about ‘Jack and Jill” in a Nigerian Telco, Bank, Oil Company or PFA? We want to hear about “Funso, Chinwe and Hassan” in our e-learning that is authentically Nigerian.

Overall in these tough economic times, making the digital switch in as many aspects of your business and personal life can help you to cut the cost without compromising the knowledge, impact and value. Think about this: deepening internet penetration, more affordable digital devices and the growth of social media and e-commerce. Huge opportunities exist for you to cut the cost and not the value.

Omagbitse Barrow