Digitising an SME in West Africa: where to start
A simple method to prioritise an SME's digital initiatives, avoid over-ambitious projects and get results within a few months.
Many leaders approach digitisation from the wrong end: one big, long, expensive project that gets bogged down. A step-by-step approach delivers better results, faster.
Start with the pain points, not the technology
The right question is not "which software should we buy?" but "what wastes us the most time or money every week?". Re-keying data, quotes made by hand, tracking payments in a notebook, forgotten customer follow-ups: these pain points are the best starting points.
A simple prioritisation grid
For each initiative you identify, score two things from 1 to 3: impact (time or money saved) and effort (cost and time). Start with high-impact, low-effort initiatives. Keep the big structural projects for later, once you have early wins.
- High impact / low effort: do it now.
- High impact / high effort: plan it, broken into pieces.
- Low impact: ignore for now, whatever the effort.
The most valuable first initiatives
- A clear, well-ranked website: often the first contact with a customer.
- Online collection via mobile money, to get paid faster and without cash.
- A simple tool to track sales and payments, to drop the notebook.
- A dashboard of key figures, to decide on data rather than impressions.
An SME that first digitises its collection and payment tracking almost always recovers cash it wasn't seeing.
Three pitfalls to avoid
- Trying to do everything at once with a full "ERP" from day one.
- Choosing a tool without asking who will use it daily and how they will be trained.
- Neglecting migration of existing data and maintenance after go-live.
A two-to-four-week scoping engagement, run with an outside perspective, is usually enough to lay out a realistic 12-month roadmap.