It’s one of those moments again and I’m really excited to be interviewing a female technopreneur from Nigeria, Paulette Erijo, who is a social media consultant and founder at Letche Technologies.
In a recent email interview, Paulette shares with us insights into Enterprise 2.0 in Nigeria and how her start-up, Beezbox is set to push forward Enterprise 2.0 tools and technologies into the African market.
Enjoy the interview!;-)
SN: Please tell us briefly about yourself, your background and your interests.
Paulette: You already know my name, Paulette Erijo. Most people try to respell my surname not knowing they actually are misspelling it. Lately I’m a Social Media Consultant and I have been an IT consultant for a while where I focused on document management and knowledge management. It’s been over 7 years within the industry for me.
I’m the founder of Letche Technologies and a team player at Beezbox SAS. I’m still growing within the industry. I graduated from Southern Cross University where in studied Applied Computing. I guess you’d understand why I my interest in IT application in our everyday life is very strong. Coming to my interest, I enjoy quite a number of things even though my laptop has stolen the better part of me. I enjoy watching the NBAs, so I stay up late to watch the games. I enjoy good music, jazz, R&B, soft rock and classical.
SN: The focus of your work has been on engaging companies to creating communities that would connect their customers, partners and employees together. What have been your milestones?
Paulette: Internet technologies and trends are currently making a lot of noise globally and every right thinking business man out there is realizing that it’s just the beginning of the game. Especially for us who have followed it from the inception of web 2.0 to the stage it has grown today. The internet has become a more interactive and collaborative medium for all. So my goal is to offer businesses a platform to leverage the powerful tools that web 2.0 is offering to drive and meet their business goals. Along with major professionals out there, I’ve been part of the campaign for the use of online communities as the best way to engage the major parties that make up your business, your customers and employees. Hence the concept, “Social Networking in Business”.
SN: You recently launched Beezbox Enterprise 2.0 platform that has catered for the European web market. Any plans for the African web market?
Paulette: Beezbox Enterprise 2.0 platform was launched in 2007. Following its launch we launched our first application Beetnic social network on it and today we have launched other corporate social networks for different organizations but all of these have been for the European market. The African market was taken into consideration during this launch and that is why, while we had press release on media like Telecom TV in Europe we also had a PR in Thisday online in Nigeria. Africa is an emerging market but it’s also a market that needs a lot of patience when it comes to new technology. Two years back when I ask someone “do you know Facebook?” , I get a strange look like, “what’s that?”. The traffic from Africa to sites like Facebook a year back cannot be compared to what we have today.
More people are learning about this trend and getting engaged in using social sites on a daily base. So I’m putting the same weight on campaign in the African market like I am doing for the European market. With particular interest in trendy countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, the list goes on.
SN: From your blog called Letche Blog, you wrote about plans to push Enterprise 2.0 in Nigeria. How do you intend to achieve this?
Paulette: Letche has segmented the Nigerian market into various industries. So ranging from financial, educational, oil & gas, telecoms, media and entertainment we have crafted target markets. Interestingly, one of Beezbox’s five social networking package University 2.0 was designed while studying the Nigerian market and its academic pattern. We intend to do a lot of preaching of Enterprise 2.0. We’re looking forward to carrying out our first networking event in 2010 where we can have decision makers from different enterprises come to speak about the benefits of E2.0. But before this can be achieved we have to build more E2.0 clients in Nigeria to join the global E2.0 family. The first quarter of 2009 is going to tell us a lot about how the market is going to grow. For every client that rolls with us, we intend to give a massive buzz like how we did for clients like Footemotion, Mnemos 2.0… Our plan is to offer social media consultancy service to any company or organization planning to ride the E2.0 trail and provide them our unique platform. Letche blog will remain our enterprise social network blog to educate more on E2.0 industry trends.
SN: What challenges do you envisage towards pushing Enterprise 2.0 in Nigeria?
Paulette: A major challenge will be a draw back from the oldies. Meaning the young , trendy and innovative driven employees and employers are more likely to be in my good book than those who are used to the old and traditional way of doing business. Unfortunately we have more oldies as decision makers. Another is the “know-it -all” IT crew. Statistics show that some IT team are always on our case, when it comes to ASP services, we don’t blame them we blame their limited exposure. But our aim is to gain their buy in at the end of the day. There’s got to be a win-win somewhere.
SN: How can companies in Nigeria participate in your Enterprise 2.0 platform and what are the benefits?
Paulette: Two steps: Companies have to wake up. They have to be ready to get involved with their customers. Customers want to be heard, they would move to a competitor that would give them a platform to listen, interact and collaborate. They want a better reason to identify with your brand. E2.0 will give you a competitive edge over your competitors.
Secondly, if performance and productivity means a lot to your business then is time to improve performance and meet business goals through improve employee collaboration. You can never go wrong with investing in E2.0, you just can’t go wrong. We have forecasted E2.0 to be your best investment for 2009 and beyond. If you are ready to roll you can always contact me.
SN: Do you think Nigeria is actually ready for the adoption of Enterprise 2.0?
Paulette: I have waited 2years for this moment. Are we here? Is the country ready? I think we are. We asked the same question during the uptake of mobile technology but today we have over 50million mobile users. Early adopters will see great benefits, and I’ll give a thumbs up to bullish companies who would step up.
SN: Where do you see Nigeria’s web 2.0 industry in the next 5 years and what role are you likely to be playing in this industry?
Paulette: I foresee a major impact in the next 5 years. I see big brands having their social sites. I see Nigerian brands going into other territories using web 2.0 as a medium. I see Nigeria web 2.0 industry making headlines like it did with GSM and 3g. For the first time we had Nigeria host GSM 3g West Africa conference in 2008 and same is planned for 2009. I see many new startups. I would be at the beck and call of any company seeking my service. I’m looking forward to seeing more professionals come up. I would continue to unleash innovative ideas with web 2.0 as we walk towards web 3.0. My fingers are crossed for Nigeria’s web 2.0 industry.