CATEGORY: Exclusive Articles

Bottomline: In this piece, I explain why the Nigerian Society of Engineers will request to begin the regulation of banking infrastructure in coming years. As banks become engineering institutions (Goldman Sachs employs 9,000 engineers), they are doing many engineering projects. Yet, engineering regulation has not come to them, unlike other sectors like oil & gas, […]

Bottomline: In this piece, I present five phases which are necessary to build high performing technology-enabled companies in Africa. Indeed, the thesis goes beyond technology but to any specific industrial sector. I also explain that one of the key elements of high performing companies is arriving in the market with new ways of doing things. […]

Bottomline: Few days ago, we discussed scalable advantage and quantified how companies can ascertain their capabilities to scale by looking at their marginal costs, distribution channels, market sizes and industry. In this piece, I explain how that scaling can be done in the most authentic and sustainable way. You want durable scalability: ability to grow […]

Bottomline: There are three major marginal costs which are consequential in the broad ecommerce business: cost of goods sold (COGS), distribution cost and transaction cost.The distribution cost is the most challenging in Africa because that is the cost that turns an ecommerce operation into a traditional physical business. The first, COGS, is incurred irrespective of […]

Bottomline: In this piece, I explain the secret winning formula of GTBank. Any bank can mimic that formula for similar results. An eminent banking institution in Nigeria, GTBank leads the industry with 40.2% cost-to-income ratio. Across many industry metrics, GTBank is leading or among the top three in the nation. But GTBank did not start […]