Enterprise solutions are designed to integrate multiple facets of a company’s business through the interchange of information and Africa is home to innovative enterprise solutions helping to accelerate business across the continent.
We now take a closer look at the five enterprise solutions shortlisted for the Appsafrica Innovation Awards which take place in Cape Town on November 14th.
1. Kasi Insights – Cameroon
In a recent survey by the World Federation of Advertisers, more than 62 % of marketers said that the lack of local market data is hindering their attempts to generate insights on this fast growing market. Basic data on media consumption, retail performance or shopping habits is scarce and when available, it’s outdated, unreliable, generic and expensive.
KASI Insight is a web-based data collection platform that provides reliable data and actionable insights from Africa in two weeks. This is achieved by leveraging the growing internet penetration in Africa to collect reliable consumer data from the grassroots consumer.
2. Flutterwave – Nigeria
Payment processing in Africa can be very cumbersome. To provide that same full-service payment option, merchants and payment service providers have to integrate with each form of payment individually. This means customers can have a POS that accepts Visa and maybe not Mastercard, commonly resulting in failed transactions.
Flutterwave’s technology accepts traditional card based payment processing but also caters to more popular payment processing methods like ACH and mobile money payments and all the above can be done with one API with ability to scale into any currency or any country. It has been launched in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, UK and US.
3. Celstra – South Africa
There is increasing demands from enterprises to progress beyond their current “systems of records” (ERP and similar solutions) to “systems of engagement”, which have a direct bearing on their operational execution processes.
Cloud and Mobile technology is an ideal enabler for these non tethered business processes. However most of the current business systems do not support such technologies or even such operational business processes, since they have been developed on architectural, technology and business requirements options available way before cloud and mobility. Migrating to new technologies for such complex systems is only an uncomfortable fix, and not a long term solution.
Celstra’s MIO Mobile App Platform addresses this business execution space with out-of- box configurable operational business solutions using cloud and mobility. Enterprises are now able to introduce cloud and mobility rapidly and cost effectively and without complexing or risking their existing back-end business systems.
4. Alpha Exchange – South Africa
Global capital markets have become extremely fragmented over the past ten years, particularly within Africa. Institutional equity research is a peculiar industry, approximately $20 billion worth of product is distributed without any pricing mechanism or agreement in place. Global regulators have had enough and for the first time research will need to be transparently priced, a fundamental shift for this industry.
Alpha Exchange see this an opportunity and help global investors tap into harder to reach pools of quality African insight through a free market platform to facilitate doing fair, competitive business in Africa. They use technology to connect global investors with African insight and intellectual capital from professionals, experts, thought leaders, consultants and subject-matter experts.
5. Sauti – Africa
Informal cross-border trade (CBT) is a major feature of African economies: it creates jobs, contributes to food and energy security, and alleviates poverty. Small traders are particularly vulnerable to higher levels of harassment from border officials (customs, police, and immigration), including excessive charges, bribe extortion, impounding of goods, sexual harassment and gender-based violence.
They are often unaware of their rights as traders and customs procedures and documentation required, and because of information asymmetry lack the voice to hold officials accountable. Sauti a mobile-based platform, empowers SMEs to take advantage of the regional market by equipping them with up to date and reliably sourced market and trade information. The platform enables traders to report incidents of corruption and harassment at borders and is accessible both through SMS/USSD and a mobile application.
The Appsafrica Awards supported by Uber, Opera, Mobile Monday South Africa (MOMO) the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) and the MMA the Awards celebrate the best in mobile and tech from across Africa, providing winners with global publicity, recognition and networking with 300+ industry peers at the Awards party in Cape Town on November 14th.
