Sunday Ehigiator
Information Technology experts in Nigeria have advised business owners to see digital transformation as a journey to build their identity and new stream of asset.
This, would help them avoid business disruption, saying there would be complete change of work definition in few years to come.
They gave the advice at the recently held Philip Consulting’s (PCL), Chief Information Officer (CIO) breakfast meeting held in Lagos. The theme of the event was: ‘Digital Transformation and Cyber Security: Emerging Trend.’
The Managing Director, PCL, Rob Taiwo, stressed the need for organisations to leverage on co-creation platforms available in the industry.
According to him, “Over the years, there has been a complete extinction of some companies who were one time a force to reckon with in their various sectors, but disrupted by technologies with no legal battle.
“New trends in digital technologies provides new adventures for emerging companies to tap into the opportunity.
“Firms need to strategically move from adoption to addiction to take advantage of new innovations and think different about their workforce and prepare for a tougher 360-degree competition, while aligning Human Resource (HR) in the new frontier of Digital Technology (DT).
“Nigeria must manage its digital infrastructure and improve it cyber security to ensure everyone is secured, because digital transformation is everyone business, hence it is a journey and not a destination which must be added in our work design.” he explained.
While delivering his speech on digital transformation and the Nigerian Ecosystem, the Digital Advisory, Microsoft, Daniel Adeyemo, said technology needs to grow from grassroots with a change in the curriculum to embraced the trend as can be seen across the various sector in the economy, with major changes still going to happen.
According to Adeyemo, “In the Financial Service Industry (FSI), the fraud detection has the capability to track and detect crime perform on digital platforms, so we encourage organisation to protect their data identity beyond firewalls through Artificial intelligence.”
In a panel session, discussants were of the opinion that for Nigeria to effectively benefit from digital technology, there must be a holistic approach towards creating an enabling environment that would allow entrepreneurs to invest in the cloud technology in the country.
Provision of critical infrastructure like electricity and political stability where also highlighted as factors that would attract investor in the data industry.
According to them, “cost of running business in Nigeria is high, political instability and unfavourable policies are necessary to attract investors in the country as we are losing foreign exchange by hosting our data in other western countries.
“Private sectors need to be engaged to help influence in developing capacity building through training, to drive cyber security in Nigeria and, companies need to start the journey as the trends are catching up with everybody.”
