E-Financial
Obi, eTranzact Founder Tasks Business Leaders on Creating Unique Value for Customers
Dr. Valentine Obi, founder and group CEO, eTranzact, has called on business leaders to be unique in formulating business strategies in order to deliver valuable products for its customers.
L-r: Dr David Olaniyi Oyedepo, Chancellor, Covenant University, Canaanland, Ogun State and Dr. Valentine Obi, founder and group CEO, eTranzact, after the lecture recently.
Dr. Obi’s eTranzact is Nigeria’s premier payment processing platform boasting of home grown Switch with its processing power which activates its partners’ to drive billions of dollars in transactions yearly through eTranzact card, and direct from bank account gateways.
Delivering a speech at the African Leadership Development Centre, ‘ALDC Leadership Masterclass’, with the topic: Business Strategy and Innovation, held recently at Covenant University, Ogun state, recently, Dr. Obi, urged business leaders to identify set of customers they intend to serve in their respective markets, in order to enable them create unique strategies that will deliver valuable products to these customers.
According to him, “if you’re trying to serve the student community, being the best is different from if you’re trying to serve working class people with families. There is no best way to compete.
“There are lots of good ways to compete depending on who you’re trying to serve.
“So we are not competing to be the best, we are competing to be unique. It is about making choices and the most fundamental choice is, Who am I trying to serve.”
He also described business leaders quest to serve everyone in their sector as one of the mistakes in strategy formulation.
He said, “One of the worst mistakes in strategy is to try to serve everybody.
“You can’t meet the need of every customer, you just can’t do it, it’s impossible.
“You can’t meet all the needs of every customer. Fundamentally, if you have a strategy, you’ve got to decide which needs, of which customers, you’re actually going to seek to meet.
“Secondly, Another tremendous mistake in strategy is to get into a competition with your competitors on the same thing.
“If your competitor is trying to be the lowest cost, it’s pretty unusual to win, if you then try to chase them and be low costs.
“The essence of strategy is to find a unique position in your business that delivers unique value to the customers you choose to serve.
“So, to be truly successful, we really need a strategy and that strategy isn’t about just being the best, but a set of choices we make on a long term to distinguish ourselves from competitors.
“It defines how we are going to compete differently. And it also really articulates the competitive advantages that we will seek to create and use, in order to win.”
He further pointed out that if we’re doing the same thing as our competitor, it means we don’t have a strategy.
“You’re just trying to do the same thing better. That’s not strategy, that is operational excellence.
“Strategy is around choices that you make, versus the choices that your competitors are making
“Simply implementing best practices, buying the latest machine, using the internet to communicate with your customers. There are lots of things that managers do, to actually keep making the company more productive and more efficient. All those things are a necessity, but they’re not strategy.
“Strategy is not about doing the same thing better. Strategy is about finding that different place for the organisation to deliver value.
“What makes it challenging, however is that, you have to do both of these things at the same time .You have to keep adopting best practices, but at the same time having real clarity about what is going to make you different in the marketplace”.
Speaking on the part of businesses craving to be number one or number two in the industry, Dr. Obi said that those are mere goals and aspirations but not strategy, he noted that strategy is the unique positioning that allows us to get to whatever goal we set for ourselves.
He called on businesses not to confuse strategy with goals, noting that the two cannot be mixed together.
He said, We cannot mix goals and strategy together, we have to separate them, we need to separate the goal we’re trying to achieve, and then the strategy is how we’re going to get there.
“Also, When we think about strategy, we also have to recognize that strategy is holistic. It’s not about any single action that you might want to take. It is not just one thing one steps. Strategy is not to go international, that’s not a strategy. Raising research and development is not a strategy. Strategy is holistic.
“It’s the whole set of choices that you make collectively in order to position the company for success, over time, in the marketplace.
“It’s not just, one step, it’s a set of steps. Strategy involves all the functions of the organisation. It includes marketing, production, finance, everything together to create that unique positioning, that’s what strategy is all about”, he added.
Julius Arhebun, the Head of Agency Banking a Nigeria’s leading payment service bank, MoneyMaster, has disclosed that the promotion of financial inclusion is one of the core mandates of the service.
He said this recently as the bank introduced a new 100MB data offer for every transaction made in the offer, which is available for Glo customers using the bank’s USSD banking code, *995#. The initiative is meant to incentivize the unbanked and underbanked population to ease the creation of their own mobile wallet via its USSD banking platform.
According to him, the offer builds on the various financial education “we have been providing online and across our various customer touchpoints”.
He added that “with this new 100MB offer, we want to encourage Nigerians in the unbanked and underbanked pools to be financially included by having at least a mobile wallet. The account number of this mobile wallet is derived from their mobile number, and can be easily recalled”.
MoneyMaster PSB is a leading provider of innovative digital financial products and services that transform lives and contribute to sustainable living.
The PSB has the mission to deepen financial inclusion and has been instrumental in providing financial technology services to bridge the gap between the banked, underbanked and unbanked population.
The payment service bank recently unveiled a 10 percent data bonus for existing and new customers who are on the Glo network for recharges of N1000 or more. The offer has been adjudged one of the best in the country based on the volume of data on offer to customers. The data purchases have a 30-day validity while unused data can be rolled over upon next plan subscription.
The National Pension Commission (PenCom) and the Pension Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp) are taking steps to integrate workers who are not currently contributing to the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) into the Micro Pension Plan (MPP).
The initiative targets workers without any form of pension coverage, including those who have left previous employers under the CPS but wish to join the MPP.
The MPP is designed to allow self-employed individuals and those working in companies with fewer than three employees to contribute towards a pension for their retirement or in cases of incapacitation. Additionally, pension operators are developing incentives to make the MPP more appealing to potential contributors.
At the micro pension plan industry stakeholders’ engagement forum held in Lagos recently, organized by PenCom and PenOp, the Acting Director-General of PenCom, Omolola Oloworaran, highlighted the critical role of the MPP.
She said the event’s theme: “Reimagining Micro Pension Plan: Balancing Service, Policy, and Health” accurately captures the essence of the MPP as a transformative tool for improving the lives of Nigerians.
To maximise the impact of the MPP, PenCom is embarking on several initiatives like market segmentation, rebranding, advanced technology, incentives and others.
Oloworaran pointed out that with over 77.5 million workers in Nigeria’s informal sector, even a small increase in MPP participation could unlock billions of naira in savings, positively impacting individuals and the wider economy.
In his presentation on the “Overview of the Micro Pension Plan,” Babatunde Alayande, head of the micro pensions department at PenCom, emphasised the importance of providing incentives to make the MPP more attractive and accessible to its target market.
Okhueleigbe John, head of the micro pension unit at Stanbic IBTC Pension, stressed the need for tailored policies to promote the growth of the MPP. He also advocated more financial literacy, public-private partnerships, and innovative funding strategies to drive incentives for the scheme. Additionally, he called for a review of the pricing structure of micro pensions to make them more appealing to investors.
Dr. Shem Ouma of Kenya APSA also provided valuable insights, recommending that operators incorporate built-in benefits, ensure flexible payment systems for contributors, and leverage technology to drive the MPP forward.
NGX has seen a record foreign investor transaction activity, with a 156% YoY increase reaching N744.34. Foreign investors’ transactions on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) reached a total of N744.34 billion in the first 10 months of 2024, which was an increase by 156 percent Year-on-Year (YoY) when compared to the N291.38 billion recorded in the first 10 months of 2023.
The N744.34 billion foreign investors’ transactions recorded was another all-time high for the Nigerian bourse.
The latest NGX’s “Domestic & Foreign Portfolio Participation in Equity Trading,” for October 2024, revealed that foreign investors contributed about 16.65 percent out of the total transactions of N4.47 trillion reported in the 10 months under review.
The report revealed that foreign investors’ inflow and outflow stood at N344.30 billion and N400.04 billion, respectively.
The CBN recently implemented some reforms in the foreign exchange market aimed at enhancing transparency, compliance, and market stability. These reforms were part of the CBN’s broader strategy to create a fairer, more stable FX market and support economic growth through better monetary policies.
In tandem with these reforms, the CBN has also implemented aggressive Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) hikes, with the goal of curbing inflation and stabilising the naira, a move supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Domestic investors made up of retail and institutional investors transacted an estimated N3,726.63 trillion worth of stocks in the period under review.
The breakdown showed that domestic retail in 10 months of 2024 transacted N1.909.99 trillion as against N935.78 billion recorded in 10 months of 2023, while domestic institutional transacted N1.816.64trillion in 10 months of 2024 from N1.706.23 trillion in 10 months of 2023.
According to the report, the total transactions at the nation’s bourse increased marginally by 1.97percent from N493.01 billion (about $307.84 million) in September 2024, to N502.73 billion (about $300.05 million) in October6 2024.
“The performance of the current month when compared to the performance in October 2023 (N220.94 billion) revealed that total transactions significantly increased by 127.54per cent.
“In October 2024, the total value of transactions executed by Domestic Investors outperformed transactions executed by Foreign Investors by circa 82 per cent,” the report stated.
“A further analysis of the total transactions executed between the current and prior month (September 2024) revealed that total domestic transactions increased by 0.81per cent from N451.60 billion in September 2024 to N455.27 billion in October 2024.
“Similarly, total foreign transactions increased by 14.61 percent from N41.41 billion (about $25.86 million) to N47.46 billion (about $28.33 million) between September 2024 and October 2024.”
Verve Partners Ali Express On Seamless Cross-Border Shopping
Stanbic IBTC Asset Management Unveils Anti-scam Measures to Protect Mutual Fund Holders
MoneyMaster Promotes Financial Inclusion, Offers more Bonus to Customers
Copyright Commission Warns School Proprietors Against Pirated Books
NAICOM Signs Agreement with NDPC on Data Protection in Insurance Sector
Edo State Launches Data Centre in Benin
Echefu Launches LUFT TV, another Pay TV after Failed TSTV Project
UBA, Mastercard Launch Special Debit Card for 75th Anniversary
CBN to Sanction Banks Linked to Cash Hawkers
QNET’s Amezcua Workshop in Lagos: A Glimpse into Wellness & Innovation
E-Business2 days agoNITDA Alerts Nigerians on Cybersecurity Risks Linked to Spotify
Telecom1 day agoGoogle, Meta Criticize Australia’s Rush to Pass Social Media Ban for Under-16s
Telecom2 days agoFG Plans Four New Satellites as Part of Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda
Telecom2 days agoMTN Nigeria Shops for N50Bn Commercial Paper to Boost Working Capital
News2 days agoAsein, DG NCC Seeks IP Policy for Every University
E-Financial1 day agoPenCom, PenOp to Integrate Uncovered Workers into Micro Pension Plan
Telecom2 days agoEmpowering Youth: Highlights from Meta’s First Youth Summit in Lagos
E-Financial2 days agoForeign Transactions on NGX Hit N744.34bn in 10 Months, Up 156% YoY