Marie-Therese Phido, a strategy, innovative, sales and marketing expert is the CEO of Elevato, a consulting firm. In this interview with BusinessDay, she bares her mind on challenging and prospects facing consulting firms in Nigeria but said that innovation is the key to success. She also said that if government does not work optimally, by providing an enabling framework it affects everybody’s ability to succeed. Excerpts
Congratulations on the second anniversary of Elevato, in retrospect how has it been running a business?
Thank you, prior to setting up Elevato in 2017, my career was shaped in the furnace of 2 of the 4 big consulting firms KPMG and Deloitte. In both firms I worked with the Chief Executive Officers to develop, drive and implement the strategies of the firms as well as led the Sales & Marketing functions in Nigeria and the West Africa sub-region. Setting up the company in a period of economic recession came with its challenges. As a young firm, we were not immune to the challenges young firms face. But, we set out early to differentiate our solutions and institute clear customer orientation processes, where we could add value to our clients businesses by helping them with value adding strategic initiatives and creating more attractive selling propositions.
We have been able to retain our clients locally and in the West African region. We plan to expand and deepen our service initiatives across various sectors of the economy, especially in the areas of innovation and sales & marketing. We notice that a major problem we have in the country is innovation, many of us copy, are not original and even when we copy, we do not glocalize our offerings.
In the last two years, we have added two products to our stable. Holler!, a consumer review market platform and Boundless a thematic business magazine.
Elevato is a company with competences in strategy, innovation, sales & marketing, business coaching, brand and communication and human resources. What is your DNA?
Our DNA is working with our clients every step of the way and being committed to their success. Our unique value proposition is handholding our clients to work through and achieve results in business frameworks and models we advise them on. We are keen to help our clients answer “what problem are you solving?”, and helping them develop creative and innovative solutions to meeting these needs and achieve their strategic plans and growth aspirations. For example, we understand the fact that digitization is at the heart of most business processes. We are at the forefront to working with our clients to ensure that they weave technology into their offerings to ensure that they continue to remain relevant to their customers as well as achieve efficiencies in their businesses.
Looking back, how will you say the business of consulting faired in the last one year?
It’s been tough. As I said earlier, we started our business in the recession and are still hoping for the economy to recover, to enable everybody succeed. What we have found out, is that many organizations have put a lot of their consulting needs on hold. Despite the fact that they realize the importance of having these services to improve their businesses they just cannot seem to afford paying consulting fees. This situation cuts across the big and the small. They have all decided to optimize and restructure their spending.
A good consulting firm, can work in adverse economic environment, what it needs do is focus on the needs of its clients at each point in time and proffer the solutions that will solve the problems within each organization’s life cycle and add value despite the challenging environment. In a nutshell, we aim to provide value at all times.
Would you blame government for the poor performance in business?
This is a tough question. So let me answer by giving an analogy. I attended the International Real Estate Conference recently, where key stakeholders in the industry and government gathered to discuss the challenges in ease of doing business, regulation and financing in the sector. In every panel, government was put on the spot. The issue is, if government does not work optimally, by providing an enabling framework it affects everybody’s ability to succeed. It is an ecosystem that cascades down to everybody. This can clearly be seen in America, where the government appears to have gotten its policies right and it is having a booming effect on all aspects of business and employment in the country. In essence yes, if businesses are deemed not to be performing as well as they can, especially since the situation is pervasive. I will say, government has a strong part to play in ensuring businesses succeed by providing an enabling environment and easing business conditions.
What Sales & Marketing challenges do you see organisations facing in Nigeria and West Africa?
Many businesses in Nigeria have a myriad of challenges both from a sales point of view and marketing. From a sales point of view, many do not have the fundamental understanding of ‘’what problem am I solving or what are my buyer’s needs’’. Many do not understand their customers, because they are not doing enough research to first ascertain the viability of a business or product before hitting the market. Research is the core of sales and marketing. This is one area that determines the success of any business or product. If you do not get it right, all of your sales and marketing channels will not work. I will advise all business, to ensure they do their research well and not be in a hurry to launch. This advice is for both big and small organisations. It is a perennial problem, that if we can spend time conducting a well done market entry or product research, we would be a lot more successful and achieve maximum results on our investments.
Today, you are celebrating 2 years of being in business. What are your milestones?
God has been faithful to Elevato. We have been able to achieve heights that similar organisations who have been in business have not been able to reach. We have had the opportunity of working across five African countries, helping organisations there to define their strategies and providing business coaching services for them. We have provided strategy services to the foremost hotel in Nigeria, Transcorp Hilton. We work for the richest man in Africa, several banks, multinationals and companies in Nigeria. We have also brought in two additional partners to beef up our specialization in strategy, innovation and human resources. These partners are experienced senior executives with experience from KPMG and Accenture.
We are also in the process of becoming a sub-agent to a top 10 global sales and marketing organization, where we will be given the franchise to provide sales and marketing consulting and training services in about 10 West African countries.
Where do you see Elevato in the next 3 years?
Our objective is to continue to work for the best organizations in Nigeria as well as contribute to the development of SMEs, with our developmental projects and services as well as expand to other countries in Africa and globally. We do not see ourselves as a local Nigerian organization. Our aspiration is to be global and we are taking great strides to ensuring that this happens either organically or by collaborating or partnering. We also want to be the best in the areas we have chosen. We will do this, focusing on human capital development within the organization and being abreast of ground breaking solutions for our clients.
