Banke Alawaye is known for being an expert in exploiting digital tools for business growth. With over 20 years of work experience with many businesses, she has been helping personal brands and organizations make the best of digital tools for years. She has a B.Sc in Computer Science, a Masters in Business Administration from Edinburgh Business School, Scotland and a Certificate in Entrepreneurial Management from Pan African University’s Enterprise Development Centre. Her work experience spans investment banking, software development, management consulting and digital marketing. Currently Principal Consultant, Innovative Solutions, an emerging digital consultancy based in Lagos Nigeria. She serves as program manager CodeLagos – an initiative to train 1 million Lagos residents to code. She is on the advisory board for Girl Code Academy and co-founder, SheProfitsAfrica – a Digital and Entrepreneurship Fellowship programme designed to assist women entrepreneurs in leveraging ICT tools to grow their businesses profitably. She is a passionate advocate for women in technology and was recognized as Digital Frontier Woman by DecadeOfWomen.

Below is a summary of the Interview Tech & Your Small Business with Banke Alawaye

She recounted her growing up days in Surulere, a suburb in Lagos state saying that it had been fun being that it had been easy moving around at the time as compared to now where the city had become congested. She recalled that she had developed an interest in computers at a very young age even as she had always wondered how they worked.

According to her, she had started learning to compute when it had just been the Ms-DOS operating system at the time before the advent of the Windows Operating System where it was just the black and white screen. At the time, she had a big brother who worked with computers and she had always been fascinated by what he did as she always wanted to know what it was about.

Sequel to studying Computer Science, she recalled that her first job as a programmer was at a direct marketing firm where she often sat down with the more experienced programmers so as to learn from them. Often times she took to dissecting the codes they had written only so that she could recreate them.

Tech & Your Small Business with Banke Alawaye

During her time at the company, she identified some tasks that could be carried out in an easier and more efficient way using Microsoft Word and Excel. So she decided to create a How-to Guide for her colleagues and teach them how to use Microsoft word and do specific tasks for the company on Microsoft Excel. She admitted that since then she had been convinced by the fact that life and business could be made easier using tools such as computers. After her first job, she later went on to work in a bank in the IT department only to end up in the investment banking department as she often spent most of her time helping them with tasks on the computers.

Program manager at Code Lagos, Banke recalled that she had started out at CodeLagos, three years ago before then she had worked as a Consultant at the office of the Special Adviser Education for Lagos state. She recalled that while they were looking at the plans for the administration one of them was to provide a platform for technology in Lagos. So they decided to create programs in line with the Governor’s mandate for the administration and CodeLagos happened to be one of them. According to her, the idea behind CodeLagos was to train 1 million Lagosians to code by doing so take coding to the grassroots and allow for equal access.

She advised people to visit the website: codelagos.org as there is an online Course that one could take. She further mentioned that Codelagos was currently running Online, in Primary Schools, Secondary Schools both Government and Private as well as outside of School. According to her, there were no requirements needed to be part of the program still she advised that interested persons be of good character and show discipline to time.

Tech & Your Small Business with Banke Alawaye

On the question of a good product or good service, she chuckled saying that a business needed both as if one could not keep their customers happy without having a great product. She remarked that often times small businesses tend to get excited about their product still it falls on the needs of the market at the time. She further remarked saying that if one’s product is not solving a problem and people don’t find value in it, then it is not a valuable product. Stressing on this, she maintained that no matter how good customer service is, if the product was not solving a problem, the customers would likely not trade with the business again.

Speaking about small businesses keeping up with technology, she advised that they keep it simple even as they use Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, they are said to be keeping up with what people are using that way keeping up with one’s target market. She however advised against taking more than can be handled as in the case of someone who could only attend to 30 people a day such persons need not be on all social media platforms but should take care to understand the kind of people that their product could appeal to and where they could be found mostly.

She, however, pointed out that social media was not the only means through which one could reach out to their customers. To this, she spoke on the recent glitch that occurred on some of the social media platforms where people could not post and respond to this she remarked saying that if someone’s business depended on those platforms that means if and when those platforms do shutdown such businesses will cease to exist as well. To this, she advised that people endeavour to have a website for their businesses as it didn’t cost much.

To strategies that people use to sell their business, she ruled an attitude where people just go on and post most of their pictures saying that social media did not work that. To this she remarked that social media is supposed to be social and should be about building communities, building trust and building a tribe that believes what you say and then they start to buy from you.

She advised small businesses to not be averse to the use of technology as it could be as simple as using a calendar, or the Whatsapp messaging platform and it was just about being deliberate.