Nigerian businesses incur losses due to app overload – Zoho

Nigerian businesses are struggling with productivity losses due to excessive reliance on multiple disconnected applications, a new report by global technology company Zoho has found.

The study, titled “The State of Productivity and Collaboration in Nigeria, 2024,” surveyed over 500 organisations with more than 50 employees and highlighted critical workplace challenges, including data silos and inefficient app usage.

The report, obtained on Monday, revealed that 51 per cent of employees use between one and five apps daily, while 35 per cent rely on six to ten.

Meanwhile, 14 per cent of workers use more than ten apps, with app usage highest among senior executives—81 per cent of C-suite employees reported using over ten apps, compared to 72 per cent of junior employees who use fewer than five.

The Country Head, Zoho Nigeria, Kehinde Ogundare, stated, “Over the years, Nigerian businesses have adopted a variety of cloud tools to support their digital transformation journey.

“However, they are beginning to recognise that these disconnected tools often lack integration with their existing technology stack, creating silos that hinder collaboration and lead to productivity losses.”

According to the report, only 50 per cent of businesses track their tasks in a unified view, with higher adoption rates among C-suite executives (78 per cent) and senior leadership (63 per cent).

The most commonly used tools are productivity and collaboration apps (68 per cent), followed by project management (47 per cent), business intelligence (47 per cent), and accounting software (43 per cent).

Poor WiFi and data connectivity emerged as the most significant collaboration challenge, affecting 80 per cent of employees across different demographics. Other issues include digital fatigue (54 per cent) and the difficulty of managing information spread across multiple apps (45 per cent).

“For middle managers, the second biggest challenge after poor connectivity is communication with employees in a remote or hybrid setup,” the report noted.

The findings show that 55 per cent of Nigerian businesses still operate fully on-site, while 31 per cent have adopted a hybrid model and 14 per cent are fully remote. Hybrid workers, the report found, struggle more with maintaining effective communication.

Respondents explained that the most effective way to improve productivity is to enable quick access to necessary information across different applications (78 per cent), followed by adopting new technologies like artificial intelligence (72 per cent) and enabling communication within business apps (55 per cent).

However, the slow adoption of emerging technologies like AI was cited as the biggest factor hindering competitiveness, with 46 per cent of businesses identifying it as a challenge. Other factors included low adoption of digital tools (45 per cent) and employees switching between too many applications (41 per cent).

“As this issue gains attention, the demand for unified collaboration platforms with advanced AI capabilities has surged, as corroborated by the survey findings,” Ogundare said.

“In Nigeria, we’ve observed a notable increase in the adoption of Zoho Workplace, reflecting this trend. Zoho Workplace set the standard for a unified experience as early as 2017, well ahead of the industry giants,’ he added.