FIVE STEPS IN RUNNING AN EFFECTIVE SOFTWARE BUSINESS IN AFRICA.

FIVE STEPS IN RUNNING AN EFFECTIVE SOFTWARE BUSINESS IN AFRICA.

Running a software business in Africa is completely different from every other part of the world, infact software in Africa is still at its infancy. I have been working in the African software market for over nine (9) years and I must admit that my biggest huddle has always been to convince potential customers to purchase an intangible product.

Here are five steps to consider in running an effective software company in Africa.

1.   Invest in teaching.

One has to understand that there is a high likely hood that your potential client may either not have used software or barely used software before. As a software entrepreneur, you are to spend  lots of time teaching and training your potential client on why adopting your software, will be beneficial to their business operations.

Change they say is very difficult. In Africa, change is almost impossible because your potential client is probably very entrenched with his or her own ineffective way of doing business. I found out that about 80% of my time with the potential client was spent teaching and training on the benefit of my software to them and how it will help to improve their business operations.

2.    BRANDING.

As a software entrepreneur, it is important to understand that a typical African business operation will either prefer to go with a foreign software that does not meet their business needs to a locally made software that exceeds their business expectations.

Therefore, to successfully operate your software company in Africa, it may be necessary to have to liaise with foreign partners to build credibility. Overtime as your software product penetrates the market, it will be well known and referral will start taken place.

3.    RELATIONSHIP.

Getting to know and understand your client is vital, the key is to focus on quality over quantity.

Software business relationship requires lots of time and patience, helping a customer to grow into your product. 

Current and prospective clients usually have the most relevant opinion and useful feedback to offer, so it is important as a software entrepreneur to communicate, listen, and build relationship with the future source of your income.

4.    UNIQUENESS.

The African market place is filled with copycats, you need to evaluate and identify your areas of strength, furthermore, it is important you create software that will be very unique, complete, while yet very simple. The ability to create a product that will stand out from the crowd is very important.

African clients like to show off so if they have your software and it is solving their problem, they will show off your software which is free marketing.

5.    PRICE.

To achieve market penetration in the African market, the price structure of the product is extremely important. Africans are especially price sensitive and it is important to keep initial price point as low as possible so that once the client is on board, and is actually using the product then other features can be introduced to them.

In conclusion, I must admit that running a software company in African is especially challenging but extremely rewarding. As long as one is in it for the long haul and one is creating the necessary software to meet the increasing demands, there is no doubt, one will remain relevant in the market place.

TOPE OLUTOLA is the Managing Director and CEO of ETN.CONNECT. a full fledged Software and Internet Services Company with particular focus in the African market.

ETN.CONNECT currently has packaged software which include,

.CONNECT ADMINISTRATOR,

.CONNECT EDUCATOR,

.CONNECT SHOPPER,

.CONNECT MEDICAL,

.CONNECT HOTTELIER.

Can be reached at OLUTOLA@ETN.CONNECT.COM. Twitter is @etnconnect.

....AND MY MEGA HARD DRIVE GOT FULL!!

I had a 500gb hard drive I never thought would get filled up for at least 4 years. Well Surprise!! It got filled up within 6 months. {Working on a special project}. Two weeks before it got totally full, I noticed my system was unusually slow. A golden rule I have is that if my brain and hands are working faster than my computer, then something is definitely wrong. 

Unable to bear it any longer, I decided to defragment it. It took hours which I was willing to spare since it was for the greater good. Upon completion, I noticed that my brain and fingers were still operating faster than they system. Hmm..What do I do, I called upon our help desk support and they notified me that if the hard drive is getting too full, it acts that way. So I decided to compress it.

Compression Completed!! I rebooted and got an error about “BOOTMGR MISSING”. I raced to our our specialist engineers (Final Help Desk Support), Engr Nicho and Engr Wale.

Usually, this thing should be easy if my DVD drive were working but unfortunately it isn’t. Still don’t know why but that’s for another day. He sloted in his USB drive and after some magic, he was able to use a series of commands

• Bootrec.exe /fixmbr
• Bootrec.exe /FixBoot
• Bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

IT WORKED!!!


I was able to work although frustratingly for about 12 hours before I did something again and the laptop packed up again. It was Saturday morning and I decided to use the time to spend with my kids.

On Monday, I rushed to the office seeking the help of my computer specialists. The battle then began. They tried everything they could all to no avail. Two issues were that I didn’t partition my hard drive to separate the OS from Data. They could have easily formatted the OS partition and I would be fine. Since data could absolutely not be tampered with, and My DVD drive wasn’t working. It was literally hell.

{Meanwhile I was going out my mind!! No work to do.}

Solution:

Since I needed more space anyway. I decided to upgrade my laptop hard drive by 100%. We all sighed a breath of relief expecting to just format the new hard drive and later copy all my files.

My laptop rejected the hard drive. Why? Don’t know.

Ok since it is a SATA hard drive and experience has shown an OS could be loaded from a different system and then hooked to another system. We tried that option…Failure.

We attempted to load the OS from a USB drive …Failure

Eventually, we borrowed an external DVD drive and was finally able to format and install the OS. ---Success.

It took 19 hours to copy my files from the old hard drive to the new one.

After reinstalling all the softwares, all my old preferences on all the softwares were gone. Didn’t lament much because I just went to my old hard drive which is now connected via USB cable to my laptop and took the following steps.

1.   Open the directory

2.   Click on the USERS directory

3.   Select my old profile name

4.   Append \Appdata\Roaming to address bar

5.   Copied all the files and data there 

6.   Pasted in my C:\USERS\PROFILE NAME\AppData\Roaming

I was back and running again.

Contact us at TECHNICAL@ETNCONNECT.COM or 08037217281 if you have really serious computer issues.

CREATING SQLITE DATASOURCE IN COLDFUSION

To create a SQLITE datasource in Coldfusion

Steps

1. Download the latest Java class file from Zentus
2. Save downloaded file to Coldfusion8/web-inf/lib directory
3. Rename to clean the numbers if you wish
4. Restart the Coldfusion Service or reboot the server
5. Log into Coldfusion Administrator and click on datasources
6. Add a new datasouce and for driver, select OTHER
7. For the JDBC url , enter jdbc:sqlite:\Users\xxx.db
1. Where xxx.db is the sqlite database file
2. Note: Use the full path of the fule in the JDBC Url minus the drive letter
8. Driver Class is: org.sqlite.JDBC
9. Driver name is :sqlitejdbc.jar
10. Leave everything blank
11. Submit and it should be registed....Congrats

How I got started in ColdFusion

This is in response to Steve Bryant’s original post and idea.

I graduated with a Finance Degree and immediately after my graduation, I got a job with a reputable Financial Organization in the Midwest where I worked for about a year and half. I grew tired of the job and one day decided to move to a new place I had never lived.

I found myself in Baltimore, MD. Again financial experience helped in landing a job with a technical firm in Hanover (Teksystems) where I was a credit analyst. But again I was bored. One day I happened to stroll to the web department of the company and was impressed that they were all having fun at their job. I wanted in. I picked up an HTML book and read it up over a weekend and applied. During those times, 1998-99, there werent too many web designers or developers .

I got a junior position in the web team and promptly got to work. I always told everyone i hate working hard but working smart. There was a small challenge in the web team at that time and since I was the most junior in the team, all the data entry job was given to me. I hated it. I had to figure out how to work smarter. I told a friend about it and he told me about Coldfusion. The name alone was scary at that time but he told me all I had to do was to read it. I read the Ben Forta book three times within a month. I felt like Neo in the Matrix ready to unleash my knowledge on the world.

The following week, i was able to convert the data to access, i linked it to my developer version of Coldfusion and walah!! problem solved. Heck I was able to represent the data in a whole new light. I became an overnight star...

Since then, I have used Coldfusion to solve every issue that has faced me in business, technically etc. I always find a solution with CF. I still use it. Its been 13 years now.... Honestly speaking Coldfusion has changed my life. I made so much money working for the biggest and best organizations because I was a CF programmer. I always thank the day, I picked up the BEN FORTA BOOK. I am run my own company all thanks to COLDFUSION...

Testing

Believe it or not. This is my first time writing on a blog. I just believe I am led to write out the various things in my mind. My mind is full of thoughts, thoughts so deep I wonder how I'm ever going to deal with them.

I hope this blog captures my mind, my thought, my dreams, my visions, my hopes and best of all, my miracles.

Enjoy