www.ikekalufile.blogspot.com

I think it is becoming overwhelmingly clear that we are truly in the digital age. Remember the internet of things phenomenon? Everything is being digitalized, stored and used within the digital space. What does this mean to us as individuals and business people? Let’s set the stage by providing a simple definition on the subject. “Digital transformation is the use of any digital technology to provide better products, services and experiences” – Brian Solis. Would you say this definition is simple enough? Can you identify with this definition or do you have a simpler one? I definitely can identify with it both as an individual and a business leader. Recently I developed and facilitated a workshop themed ‘ TO DELIVER A BOLD NEW DIGITAL WORLD THROUGH INNOVATION’. One of the objectives of the workshop was to provide participants with a personal understanding of the digital phenomenon. This is so critical for anyone or organisation that wants to play in the digital space. You have t...

Customer Passion Point Limited (CPPL), one of the leading value creation consulting firms in Nigeria has been appointed by Cumii as a partner. Cumii uses innovative technology to connect businesses and people. This helps to transforms lives, businesses and the global economy. Ikechukwu Kalu, Chief Executive Officer / Lead Consultant at CPPL said “this partnership will enable us provide business marketing consulting services which will include creating quality awareness and adoption for Cumii products. The two major products CPPL will be supporting are Technites and Tasknites” Tasknites offers an end-to-end product from survey design to report compilation. Tasknites will help organisations to stay ahead of the competition by identifying key underlying factors that drive the industry through effective and efficient research solutions. The Tasknites initiative utilises mobile surveys to generate real time reports from high quality data at much more affordable costs. Tasknites pr...

Let me welcome you to the month of February, the second month of the year. Also, let me ask you – how has the year been so far? I hope we can all answer this question with some positive stories to tell? This is our desire and wish for you. The results we have had so far could be either as a result of the cycle of our business or the state of preparedness with which we commenced the year 2017. There is a popular saying ‘accelerate your business or be ready to die’. I remind myself and my clients about this because it’s so easy to lose sight of it. We have to continue to hone our skills, develop new ones and learn winning strategies to thrive in times of intense competition and economic hardship. We started the CPPL Monthly Training Program 28 months ago because we saw an obvious gap in the capacity building and development for business owners and professionals. It’s one thing to know what we want to do and have a huge vision but unless we have the right structure behind it, that b...

As Nigerians, we all believe strongly in the marriage institution. No matter the tribe or religion, we celebrate it with loads of fanfare. We never deny ourselves the opportunity to celebrate as loud as we can every time a couple gets married. However, as glorious as our wedding ceremonies are, we find that lots of these marriages don’t survive the test of time. Our divorce rates are rising across board. If the marriage decline was a business or economy related decline, people would have been asking why. There would have been lots of research and commentaries on the matter. People would have come up with theories and preferred solutions, but that is not the case here. We have an ‘another one bites the dust’ attitude and just move on to the next wedding ceremony. On Dove Eyes, we are concerned. We talk about the issues. We have done some research. We try to understand the issues. We counsel people before and after marriage. We comfort those who fail at it and help t...

A friend read my post on Facebook which says "As there are an enormous (and ever-increasing) set of possible ways to create value, how do we decide which type to pursue? Is each way of creating value as useful to us as another?”. He reviewed it carefully and shared his thoughts which are captured thus ‘On a broader perspective, I believe values that should be pursued should be values that promote customer loyalty to a company's brand whilst expanding her customer base. Though values created for customers may differ from one company to another, there is a general basis for creating impactful and profitable customer value. They include (but not limited to) excellence, quality and empathy. I would say yes, because value creation is intricate in nature as it is the result of a comprehensive network of strategies backed up with sound implementation. Some ways of creating values may seem to be "less" important to a company than others but it is upon these l...

I had an interesting discussion with a friend on core values recently. We came to the conclusion that core values are a must for every business and they must guide the way things are done in the organisation. If this is true, then we must carefully develop our core values. Our values must be true about us and we must be intentional about operating by them. The unfortunate thing is that a good number of businesses develop their core values but never operate true to them. They put them together because it is trending in the business world. There is really no intention to live by them. This is not right, in fact totally unacceptable. Why would you have integrity as one of your core values and your enterprise is into and even endorses practically everything that will bring business not minding whether it is legitimate or not? Why have core values that we do not intend to keep? Core values should be what I would like to describe as "tangible expressions of who we are as an o...

2016 has ended and we have started another interesting year, we cannot but ask ourselves questions like; how will 2017 be? Will the recession be over soon and what must we do to stay afloat in times of recession? These are very important questions we should ask as we kickoff business this year.  The word recession is no longer new to us, it is all around us. But what is recession? The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) defined a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in a real gross domestic product (GDP), real income, employment, industrial production and wholesale-retail sales”. Economic recession can also be defined as a negative in the real GDP growth rate of a country for two consecutive quarters (say first and second quarters). Judging by the above definition Nigeria is experiencing economic recession, since her first and second quarters growth in 2016 were -1.7%...