According to Wall Street Journal, 3 in every 4 small businesses fail. In 2013, the Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sector employed 84 per cent of the total labour force in Nigeria, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. However, 75 per cent of all Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) fail in the first two years due to a lack of access to capital and poor business management. A KPMG MSME Banking study (2014) revealed that in the preceding three years, the rejection rate of MSME loan applications by commercial banks was greater than 50 per cent for nine of 18 banks and as high as 90 per cent for three of the banks.
From the above, it’s clear that the MSMEs are important to the growth of every economy. It’s also very clear that MSMEs do not get the financial backing they require from financial houses due to poor record keeping.
However, these are the type of challenges the team at ikOOba Technologies love to take on. The Lagos-based accounting tech startup focuses on creating solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Their current efforts have created a robust yet flexible solution, called the ikOOba BMAC ( The BMAC).
The BMAC is a cloud accounting solution that is collaborative, easy-to-use and highly customisable. It is a working tool for SME business owners to run their businesses smartly which translates to smarter business decisions. If they need finance, they can allow finance providers collaborate with them in order to enhance their credibility and give confidence to finance providers. The BMAC is also available as a mobile app so business owners can update the Notebook to enable their accountants post their record from anywhere anytime.
Formally launched at the 46th ICAN Conference, the software was met with approval and excitement from the accountants present at the conference.
According to ikOOba Technologies founder, Sam .S. Afemikhe – the platform is designed to bring together 3 groups – Business Owners, Accountants and Finance Providers such as Banks or Angel Investors. The BMAC boasts of a number of innovative features such as The Notebook, The Dashboard and its Collaborator Tool – all designed to make for a new type of business experience.
The Notebook was designed to act as the historically foundational Daybook where business owners and managers with no accounting knowledge can record daily business transactions on the go then getting them posted into the accounts at a later time. The Dashboard provides a variety of gauges and charts to show the performance of a business in an easy–to–understand format. The Collaborator Tool enables business owners give access to accountants to support them remotely while giving the finance providers a view into the performance of MSMEs in their portfolio. This helps finance providers provide better services to the business owners thereby reducing their cost and risk to serve.
Sam Afemikhe further stressed that it is a proven fact that when a business embraces technology in the management of its affairs, it would experience growth and profitability. ikOOba BMAC and other ikOOba solutions make it easy for business owners to get data about their business performance quickly without breaking the bank.
Following the launch of the BMAC, the ikOOba team plans to partner with a number of finance providers and business owners to support them to facilitate collaboration with a view to help close the funding gap whilst nurturing businesses to become stronger structures in the economy.
ikOOba Technologies is also home to other business focused solutions such as its Inventory Management system (IMS), the ikOOba Human Resources Management (HRM) system and the Document Management System (DMS) – all of which interface directly with the BMAC as an ecosystem of solutions that makes the business run smoothly and more efficiently.
