Digitalise your business processes to remain relevant, Provost urges cooperative societies

Lagos State Cooperative College has urged cooperative societies to digitalise their business processes to remain relevant in the emerging business world.

Mr Akorede Ojomu, Provost of the college, gave the advice at a capacity building programme for cooperative societies at the college premises in Lagos on Wednesday.

The programme was tagged: ‘Digitalization Transformation Strategy for Cooperative Societies.

Ojomu said the programme was designed to ensure cooperative societies were at par with other business rivals, such as banks and other financial institutions in the state.

According to the provost, the nation is at the stage where application of digital technology has become imperative to the survival of business entities.

He said it was necessary to take proactive action that would guarantee competitiveness as the world was being narrowed down to a global village.

Earlier, Mr Joseph Onyema, an Information Communication Technology expert, said cooperative societies needed to move away from a man-to-man way of doing business and transit to digital models.

Onyema said digitalization would increase their customer base, profit and also keep them afloat in the business world.

, “Digital transformation technology strategy is actually the lifeblood of any business.

“For cooperatives in Nigeria, we are beginning to realise that their space is being encroached by fintech and banks are beginning to dabble into their space.

‘For cooperative business, it is important to transit their business model to a digital space to grow their customer base; reduce cost margins and increase profit as against doing man-to-man marketing and locking themselves within a few cooperative members.

“They need to expand, using the internet to leverage and have cooperative with hundreds of thousands of people,” he said

Similarly, Kenneth Odusanya, a financial expert, enjoined cooperators on the need to be financially literate to avoid creating liabilities that would have a negative impact on their lives.

According to Odusanya, financial literacy is borrowing to make investment and not borrowing for consumption of frivolous things that only create liabilities at the end.

The financial expert added that cooperators should borrow to meet investment needs that would yield them income to be financially independent.

“Many financial cooperators are not financially literate and most times end up creating liabilities for themselves rather than creating assets.

“The cooperators need to understand that each time they spend, they either spend on assets or liability, which has to do with their borrowings from their cooperatives.

“Financial literacy will lead to financial independence.

“From financial literacy, you can know how to plan your financial independence.

“Many lack financial independence, because they are not financially literate and they will never achieve financial independence because they are illiterates,” Odusanya said.