November 2020 - Descasio

Descasio Announces Exciting NEW Rebrand

“In the last year, Descasio has successfully diversified and scaled its product and service offerings with the goal of broadening our footprint across the continent,” said Dele Nedd, CEO of Descasio. “Our brand identity and website better reflect our market-leading position and clearly demonstrates the comprehensive lifecycle of services we bring to our clients across the continent.”

Descasio, one of the leading providers of technology solutions and digital transformation strategies in West Africa, announced today the launch of its new corporate brand identity. After 10 years in the tech space, these changes come at a time when the company is evolving its product and service offerings and expanding its global reach.

“In the last year, Descasio has successfully diversified and scaled its product and service offerings with the goal of broadening our footprint across the continent,” said Dele Nedd, CEO of Descasio. “Our brand identity and website better reflect our market-leading position and clearly demonstrates the comprehensive lifecycle of services we bring to our clients across the continent.”

The newly redesigned website features easy-to-navigate pages while providing a seamless user experience. The site also better highlights the full suite of services Descasio offers.

“While our name remains the same, our logo, business focus and value proposition have changed significantly to better represent who Descasio is and the innovative and modern technology solutions that we provide to our clients. The time for transformational change is now and we aim to lead in every capacity” commented Gbemi Ajayi, Chief Strategy Officer.

In line with this new direction for Descasio, Chief Innovation Officer, Femi Olugbesan stated “Descasio’s rebranding is not just aesthetics. In addition to the new graphic identity, our first proprietary product to be launched into the market will no doubt change the face of technology on the continent”.

Descasio has grown from a single location office in 2010 to offices and partnerships across the continent today with expansion plans. Currently, the company provides an array of technology-driven solutions, including Digital Transformation, Security Optimisation, Cloud Services Management, Robotics Process Automation, Technology Consulting and Analytics and Reporting.

While these changes come at a time when the world is in recovery mode, post-Covid19, Sales Director, Nehita Fashe pointed out now was the opportune time for the rebrand process to be unveiled “We are distant from the traditional model that began 10 years ago and have taken this opportunity to evolve and improve our approach to market as a whole. Despite how far we’ve come, we remain steadfastly dedicated to innovating at the very edge of sustainability and technology.”

About the logo
The new logo rebrand is rooted in the company’s commitment to ‘Transform Businesses through Technology’. The fonts of the new logo are smooth and steady, which elucidate Descasio brand conception of ‘modern and dynamic’. The deep blue represents ‘Technology’ and the orange circular icon represents ‘the change and transformation that our clients go through when using our services’, the two combined implies Descasio’s spirit of constant exploration and innovation on the way of Technology. Our new look embodies our commitment to innovate every day like it’s Day One.

About Descasio
Descasio is one of Nigeria’s leading B2B technology solutions companies enabling small and medium-sized businesses, enterprise and public sector organisations to expand, digitise, optimise revenue and save costs through the use of digital technology since 2010. Please visit contact us to explore the new website and learn more about the products and services we offer.

4 Min. Read/November 26, 2020/by admin

Featured Success Story

Descasio Partners with First Bank to Strengthen Employee Relationships with Microsoft Teams

Since its inception, First Bank of Nigeria has regarded its people and partnerships central to its long-term success. For more than 125 years, this pioneering Nigerian institution has been steadily pursuing its vision of empowering people by providing the best financial services possible. Now, Microsoft Teams has made it easier for the company to realize that goal with a single platform where thousands of employees across the country can work together simultaneously and efficient.

For an organization of First Bank’s size and prominence, effective communication is one of the most important ingredients of success. Staying connected takes work, especially when teams are dispersed and employees are frequently on the move. “Our department is at one of the head office annexes, and as most of our internal stakeholders are head office departments, we attend quite a number of meetings, explains Folake Ani-Mumuney, Group Head of Marketing and Corporate Communications at First Bank.

Before, bank employees were using a variety of tools, including email, phone, text messages, Office Communicator, and Microsoft Skype for Business to connect and keep the business running smoothly. The multitude of communication streams and solutions would sometimes create inefficiencies and didn’t cover all aspects of effective collaboration, like online document sharing and co-editing. “With Skype, you could have a meeting, but working together as a team, having documents shared in one place and people collaborate on it at the same time was difficult,” says Folasade Ajanaku, Service Delivery Manager at Descasio, a local Microsoft partner retained by First Bank to carry out the implementation.

When the need for a new solution became apparent, First Bank opted for Teams. “Our evaluation showed that Microsoft Teams had the features we desired for overall enhancement of business efficiency, hence the decision to go with it,” explains Akeem Adesina, CIO at First Bank. “The project was part of the strategic initiative leveraging technological advancement to drive and achieve business goals with a productive and conducive workspace for business efficiency and enhanced productivity.”

Communicating with less noise, more productivity
Although most employees were satisfied with Skype for Business as a communication tool, the main challenge was to show the advantages of Teams, creating “stickiness” from day one. To build employees’ confidence in the solution, First Bank adopted a step-by-step approach, starting with the deployment of Teams in the Financial Control department. “When Teams was first introduced in the Bank, there was the usual resistance to change. Adoption has, however, been on a steady rise,” notes Ani-Mumuney.

Although most employees were satisfied with Skype for Business as a communication tool, the main challenge was to show the advantages of Teams, creating “stickiness” from day one. To build employees’ confidence in the solution, First Bank adopted a step-by-step approach, starting with the deployment of Teams in the Financial Control department. “When Teams was first introduced in the Bank, there was the usual resistance to change. Adoption has, however, been on a steady rise,” notes Ani-Mumuney.

In every single department, the new tool created value that extended way beyond essential video conferencing features. In the past, First Bank employees dealt with considerable email noise, slowing down task execution. Now, Teams covers all aspects of holding meetings and sharing documents.

Cultivating staff engagement
With time, the solution has built effective, enterprise-wide staff awareness and engagement through new, better ways of working, according to Ajanaku. “First Bank had each person work on a document separately, and there was one employee who would stay after work to collate each individual’s feedback and work done by everyone on the team.” This way of working devoured time, led to errors, and caused enormous friction. Staff work-life balance also suffered. Teams has changed all this by providing First Bank’s employees with an enhanced mobility and agility that has proved especially invaluable for employees located upcountry, outside metropolitan areas.

Now, employees no longer have to travel to bank headquarters to participate in meetings. Since Teams is compatible with several different operating systems, they can join from anywhere, and work on any device. According to Adesina, the application’s comprehensive sharing and collaboration support led to a significant reduction in the risk, time, and cost of travel for meetings and workshops. “With Teams, there has been over 10 percent reduction in the cost of travel and hotel accommodation for internal meetings, training, and workshops,” he adds.

Building connections beyond corporate walls
Currently, Teams is the main internal collaboration tool within the company. However, several bank departments also use it to streamline external communications, such as the procurement team. “They looked to use Teams for communication with their external vendors. So, we also showed them how to add guests in Teams,” says Ajanaku.

Going further with Teams, First Bank has gained the opportunity to expand its organizational reach and engage a broader audience. The company’s 125th anniversary was the perfect occasion to test the tool’s live streaming capacity. “The Anniversary Lecture by Daron Acemoglu was streamed live to enable staff to watch the events, as they were held during working hours and we were not all able to attend,” explains Ani-Mumuney.

“It was a week-long program, and First Bank had many events scheduled to have its customers, users, and staff who were outside the country join the celebration. The bank used Teams broadcast to stream that event to all of these groups,” adds Ajanaku.

Envisioning an exciting future
By now, First Bank of Nigeria has incorporated Teams into all of its business processes. For Adesina, the results couldn’t have been more spectacular. “Any organization in need of an efficient collaboration tool that can transform work and make employees feel like doing more should consider Microsoft Teams. Our experience with Teams has been simply amazing.”

Looking forward, the bank aims to integrate the solution with third-party applications, further strengthening team cohesion, and empowering every employee to work toward common goals.

6 Min. Read/November 24, 2020/by admin

Success Stories

Descasio Helps Fidelity Bank Secure The Future with Azure

At Descasio, we believe that companies shouldn’t have to pay millions of naira to be able to keep up with technology that will help keep them in business. That is why, we offer a number of solutions that are compatible across several industries at competitive prices.

Recognized by top industry analysts and professionals, Descasio’s robust set of products and services are well-suited to improve operational efficiency in any business.

Fidelity Bank makes a change
Fidelity Bank is a full-fledged commercial bank operating in Nigeria, with over 5 million customers who are serviced across its 250 business offices and various other digital banking channels. Focused on select niche corporate banking sectors as well as Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). Fidelity Bank is rapidly implementing a digital based retail banking strategy which has resulted in exponential growth in savings deposits over the last Six (6) years, with over 40 percent customer enrollment on the Bank’s flagship mobile/internet banking products.

Challenge
The banking industry is one of the most vibrant, fast-growing sectors in today’s economy. With a burgeoning client list of individuals and businesses, the increased demand for banking services created a surge of new market players. To keep pace with the industry and remain competitive, the team at Fidelity knew they had to act quickly in a continuously changing market.

‘’We realized we faced several key problems, that would hamper the way we did business’’ Michael Ogunlade, team lead, system administration technology. “ Chief among the problems we faced was the fact that we were still processing our work manually. Which meant we operated a basic lift and shift model, which was prone to human error, due to the amount of man hours it took to complete tasks”

With a system that couldn’t keep up with the industry and no room to maneuver, the Fidelity Bank team knew it was time to give modernization a chance.

Solution
To solve their problems, Fidelity Bank searched for a team that would understand the complexity of their business and most importantly bring a swift solution. With a decade’s worth of experience Descasio was able to resolve both questions.

The goal of Descasio was to move in and not simply be a technology partner but to also help Fidelity change the way they worked. The first port of call was for Descasio to begin a full assessment of the systems that were already in place. This was followed up by identifying key areas of concern and finally providing an extensive overview of the entire IT infrastructure and submitting a report and recommendations on the best cloud migration options available. One thing was clear, Microsoft Azure ticked all the right boxes for the project.

The migration process to Microsoft Azure was planned and conducted by Descasio. After performing a thorough review of the systems in place, Descasio opted to migrate Devbank’s data assets through a lift -and – shift technique. This migration process allowed multiple systems to be moved simultaneously and during ongoing operations, without any significant interruption allowing for business continuity.

By the end of the entire process, staff of Dev Bank were able to take control of the system from day one, with minimal training.

Results
Descaiso was able to identify an implementable approach and system for migration. “We saw the effectiveness of Descasio. They were able to gather data quickly and effectively which allowed us to review the cost implications of the Iaas migration approach and properly analyze the RTO and the TCO of the chosen lift and shift approach to cloud migration strategy’’ ’ said Micheal.

With the help of Descasio, Fidelity Bank has been able to maintain their competitive edge and focus on their motto of keeping their word to their customers.

4 Min. Read/November 24, 2020/by admin

Success Stories

Descasio Helps DevBank Keep Pace with Innovation Through Azure

Recognized by top industry analysts and professionals, Descasio’s robust set of products and services are well-suited to improve operational efficiency in any business.

At Descasio, we believe that companies shouldn’t have to pay millions to keep up with technology that will help keep them in business. That is why, we offer a number of technology solutions that are compatible across several industries at competitive prices. Recognized by top industry analysts and professionals, Descasio’s robust set of products and services are well-suited to improve operational efficiency in any business.

DevBank makes a change
The Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) was conceived by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) in collaboration with global development partners to address the major financing challenges facing Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria.

Challenge
As a fast-growing business and a potential target audience of 37 million MSMEs. The team at Devbank knew they could no longer rely on their old enterprise package solution (Veritas Netbackup). “We were constantly looking for ways to improve our ability to backup and store all our data in a safe and secure way”, said Abiodun Ijaware, Head, Information Technology. Several issues came up as DevBank tried to navigate the system they had in place, but two key issues stood out for Devbank;
1. The high costs associated with the platform
2. The cumbersome management levels needed to operate efficiently.
Given all the challenges faced in a fast-paced business environment Devbank knew it was time for change

Solution
Small daily and weekly checks whenever necessary can make all the difference in spotting problems and addressing them before they get out of hand. Stay vigilant, and what will undoubtedly start off alienating and challenging will eventually become simple and second nature. In the long term, your business’s security and health will be all the better for it.

After meeting with several vendors, Devbank settled on Descasio as a technology partner. Descasio was able to show us how moving to Microsoft Azure cloud, would not only solve all the issues we faced but that the system was scalable and flexible at an affordable cost.

By the end of the entire process, staff of Dev Bank were able to take control of the system from day one, with minimal training.

Resolution
Having worked with the Descasio team, the Devbank team were able to experience what the industry calls ‘the real deal” when it comes to service delivery. “With Descasio we have been able to easily meet our compliance and regulatory objectives for backup and recovery while also having time to focus on strategic objectives.’’ Said Abiodun.

With the help of Descasio, Devbank has been able to get a swift resolution to the issues that they faced previously. Not only was their overhead significantly reduced but the new Microsoft Azure cloud system allowed them to focus on their core business of investing in Nigerians.

3 Min. Read/November 24, 2020/by admin

Digital Transformation, ICT Impact, Information Technology, Success Stories

Unity Bank Partners with Descasio to Achieve Increased Scalability of their Application Leveraging Azure

For over a decade, Unity Bank Plc has served individuals, businesses, and the public sector of Nigeria’s economy in the areas of investment, savings, and other retail banking operations, from over 200 locations within the country and with its team of more than 2,000 employees.

In delivering optimal service to its customers, the bank has the obligation to ensure that responses to customer demands are right on time. This, to a large extent, helps to guarantee customer retention and secure word of mouth publicity which has proven to be the best form of advertisement, having the ability to increase customer loyalty by 16 to 24% according to the Wharton School of Business.

The impact of delays in service delivery goes beyond affecting public reputation but can also lead to loss of revenue, which was the case for Unity Bank. “Whenever there is downtime from our datacenter, there is always a major impact on the business group services running on the server. This directly impacts the delivery timelines of our services to our customers and invariably translates to a loss of revenue of over $10,000 per hour when the recovery process is not managed effectively.” said, Ugochukwu Aku, Head, IT Infrastructure, Unity Bank.

Although a lot of manual work was put into managing our applications at every event of downtimes, it wasn’t enough to meet the business objective.
In addition to this, the bank spent a lot of time and money on the procurement of additional hardware to meet the demands for hosting new products and services geared towards catering to the needs of its customers.

The problems encountered by Unity Bank pointed clearly to the need of hosting its core critical application on a cloud-based solution, one that Descasio had the requisite competency for providing.

Unity bank came to learn of this competency when Descasio approached them with an Application Modernization workshop which was set up in collaboration with Microsoft.

“During the online workshop, Descasio showcased the value of having a seamless solution that requires less human input and delivers in a timely fashion. Descasio also showed the flexibility and reliability of hosting our application on Microsoft Azure.”
“We reviewed Descasio’s proposition of migrating our application to Azure alongside other business continuity processes at the time and came to a conclusion that Azure presented more value.” Explained Ugochukwu.

The Result

Since the migration to Microsoft Azure App Services, Unity Bank has been able to meet several of its objectives. Primarily, they have been able to overcome the management burden that previously existed when the app was hosted in their on-premise infrastructure. This has translated to the provision of a more solidified service experience to customers and a huge reduction in losses as a result of downtimes.

Speaking on other benefits of Microsoft Azure app services to the financial institution, Ugochukwu said, “This solution really helped us in having successful app deployments. Unity Bank has also enjoyed easy scalability as they can now develop new applications and scale resources to meet the demands with ease and in no time. Ultimately the solution has helped us to improve our overall business performance at a reduced cost.

“Today, our IT team has more time to focus on other directly related bank projects as most of the previous issues we have had as regards applications sitting on physical infrastructures are now being taken care of.”

Commenting on the bank’s experience with Descasio, Ugochukwu said “Descasio was not picked based on preference or relationship, they were picked by the bank based on competency shown with the deployment of app services. We as an organization ensure to work with competent partners as this directly translates to the quality of service delivered to our client.”

“We have enjoyed great customer experience, an excellent display of product knowledge, and an utterly reliable service delivery from Descasio and will recommend both Descasio and Microsoft to all organizations looking to implement an effective, secure, and reliable IT solution as we have,” he added.

4 Min. Read/November 15, 2020/by Team Descasio

Digital Transformation, Press Release, Success Stories

How Trustfund Increased Its Revenue Using Microsoft Cloud Service – Azure Provided by Descasio

With over 15 years of expertise, Trustfund Pensions has been the leading Pension Fund Administrator in Nigeria. The essence of Trustfund Pensions Limited goes beyond administering and managing pension funds, but also to improving the overall net worth of the average employee and providing a stable means of sustenance after retirement.

 To achieve its vision of scale and market dominance, Trustfund Pensions Limited delivers world-class, innovative, quality pension management products and services at low cost, through technology-enabled channels and highly skilled professionals, combined with an aggressive marketing strategy.

To sustain their dominance in the market, they partnered with Descasio, a leading technology solutions company in Nigeria, in order to deploy Microsoft Azure cloud solutions to host the company’s online assets which have greatly increased delivery speed and efficiency. 

Loss of Revenue

Prior to partnering with Descasio a year ago, Trustfund faced a lot of downtimes which caused a lot of strain on workers who had to work overtime to resolve the issues.  This translated to a huge loss of time and revenue as the prolonged system lags negatively impacted service rendered to customers. 

The pension company tried to solve the problem by moving to an open-source hosting platform, but due to regulation, they needed a more secured and structured cloud solution platform.

Flexibility and Reliability

Trustfund quickly sought for a more reliable and effective cloud solution platform to stem these incalculable losses. In stepped Descasio, in collaboration with Microsoft, to deploy a seamless Azure service that requires no manual process while delivering maximum business value, showcasing the flexibility and reliability of the cloud offering.

More Time to Focus on Other Aspects of the Business

The adoption of Azure by Trustfund through Descasio has helped the team to focus solely on other profitable aspects of the business as the technical team at Descasio continues to oversee the hosting infrastructure and resolve support requests that would have usually taken a lot of time.

According to Ndubisi Agba, the Head of Information Technology at Trustfund, the most positive experience of the solution is how efficient Azure is in meeting regulatory objectives, 

“Microsoft Azure through Descasio has helped the Technical team at Trustfund in having a successful IT audit with external auditors as it checks all the requirements and helps meet most of the standards in having a secure and reliable website hosting solution.” 

                                                                  Ndubisi Agba – Head of Information Technology

No doubt, it’s obvious the Pension Company has experienced a transformation with the use of Azure which has shore up revenue leaks before their partnership with Descasio.

3 Min. Read/November 10, 2020/by Team Descasio