Adewale Saka, chief operating officer of Tranter IT, one of Nigeria’s pioneering IT asset management firms in this interview with BusinessDay’s Frank Eleanya spoke about the company’s investment in software engineering talents and why every company in Nigeria need to take IT asset management very seriously.
What is the partnership between Tranter IT and ManageEngine meant to address?
Tranter IT became a partner to ManageEngine about 6 years ago as the sole distributor of ManageEngine products and services in Nigeria. The partnership was[CE1] [CE2] meant to deepen market penetration of ManageEngine solutions in Nigeria and by extension help organisations to address various gaps in their technology operations and services and position them for growth.
How important is IT asset management to any organization?
IT Assets are pivotal to stability of IT environment and smooth running of businesses. Effective Management of these assets is therefore critical to service availability, business continuity and ultimately customer satisfaction. Imagine CIOs, CFOs and business leaders being able to determine the quantity and quality of their IT Assets, determine the locations, costs, NBV, history and status of all their assets through a dashboard from any part of the globe. With ManageEngine solutions such as ServiceDesk Plus, Desktop Central and Asset Explorer, organizations will be able to proactively plan for asset maintenance, replacement, trade-in, etc and avoid preventable business downtimes.
How exactly does this help companies planning to change their processes and leveraging new technologies?
ManageEngine Solutions are well-engineered and developed with IT best practices and standards embedded in them. Take for instance the ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus solution designed to deliver top-notch automated helpdesk services which is built on ITIL version 4.0 framework and ISMS. There is no doubt that this innovative solution will help organizations deliver business objectives through low-cost and optimised IT Services. Traditional way of managing IT services will surely give way to superior automated processes delivered by ManageEngine cutting edge technologies.
Your organisation has been offering this service for many years; before you came on board how did companies address their IT assets and what has changed since your entering the market?
Though a couple of Asset Management solutions were in the market but most organizations were not receptive to some of them because of complexities associated with their deployment, and in some cases absence of quality support services. In fact, most organisations including some large corporations were managing their IT Assets manually and at most semi-automatically using various types of assets management tools. Most of these tools are plagued with quite a number of challenges which include deployment complexity, inability to scale, resource intensive, unpleasant user interface and experience, high cost of deployment and recurrent expenditure, unavailability of local support among others.
Introduction of ManageEngine Asset Explorer to Nigerian market by Tranter IT has brought succour to all stakeholders in IT asset management as it provides them with alternative that guarantees agility, scalability, simplicity, standardization and convenience at a fraction of their current cost outlay.
What are the strategies you have that makes your products and services different from competitors?
Our products are uniquely designed to eliminate the pain-points of our customers and we always deliver value for their investment. We have invested a lot in both capacity and market development. A lot of effort and funds have gone into research as well as building a very formidable and knowledgeable technical team responsible for implementing, customizing and providing all forms of technical support required to extract value from our customers’ investments on our products and services. This has made our after-sales service and support very attractive to our customers. Unlike other competing products and services where almost all support requirements are done offshore, our customers enjoy customized and standardized local support from our seasoned professionals giving them the comfort they need to optimise their services. We also work with our clients on regular basis to ensure value realization from their investments in our solutions.
What is the potential of the IT asset management market in Nigeria?
The potentials of the market are quite huge. Every organization including SMEs, have needs for IT asset management because of its relevance to IT cost management, IT Service Management, Information Security and overall business objectives. There are over 20 million business enterprises spread across the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Nigeria with over 95 per cent of them being SMEs. Most of these organizations are managing their IT assets manually with its attendant challenges and frustrations and therefore will be favourably disposed to eliminating their pain points through simple and cost-effective IT Asset Management solution.
How much investment goes into sourcing your talents and ensuring they have the right skillsets to deliver their jobs?
To us at Tranter IT, sourcing, developing and empowering talents is more than just a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). We attract raw talents (fresh from universities or Colleges) and take them through our academy where they are groomed to become professionals. Our position in the market has also helped us to attract quite a number of experienced professionals from various industries when such need arises. We have well-seasoned human resource (HR) professionals and our HR policies and processes are not only world-class but also largely automated. In most cases, the grooming starts with an intensive training spanning 4 to 8 weeks depending on cadre of staff and the role they are expected to take in the organisation. This is followed by internship and a mentorship program which is customized for each employee. I can assure you it does not come cheap as we have to balance that with competitive remuneration and staff welfare programs to retain our most valued asset – Our People.
You have a new line-up of partnership: can you tell us some of their unique features and what makes them the perfect fit for organisations?
The next half year will witness introduction of a number of our new products and services while also giving more attention to pushing our flagship products and services in the market. On Security side, we will be pushing aggressively SafeXS, a security solution for data protection. Also very close to that is QR Patrol, a solution specially designed for tracking and monitoring security guards (both para-military and military) and giving the command and control centre comprehensive visibility on what is happening to their officers and men. Our special Managed Services product called TenPlus IT, designed to address IT support gaps in the SME space is also a product that will eliminate almost all IT challenges being confronted by SMEs in Nigeria today.
How affordable are these products and services?
I can assure you that all our products and services are very competitive in terms of pricing. We believe more in value delivery and strongly believe that volume will compensate for our thin margins.
