Scramble for virtual office products from eSolutions

Patronage of virtual office products and services by organisations in the country is gaining momentum with dozens of institutions signing on to the variety of services offered by local information and technology (IT) consulting firm, eSolutions Consulting.

The firm has reported a spike in patronage for its virtual office products, including the Smart Workplace, EasyDoc, Accord Corresponding Manager, Poject360, and eCase Manager. The services are aimed at giving employees access to their office documents and data while they are out of the building.

Currently, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of eSolutions , Mr Allen Olayiwola,  said about 20 institutions, including the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Petroleum Commission, Ghana Grid Company, Devtraco, Fidelity Bank, Ghana Commercial Bank, NDPC, District Assemblies Common Fund, Volta River Authority, Ministries of Finance, and Trade and Industry, among others, have signed on to the company's IT solutions, which were unveiled a year ago.

"The response has been surprisingly overwhelming. One of the things we did was to say you can try us free of charge for sometime and we have been receiving a lot of calls everyday.

“After sometime, most of the institutions that have tried our products are coming back to say; 'look, these are the products we need and so sign us on,'" Mr Olayiwola told the paper in Accra.

He explained that although the solutions allowed employees access to company information on their smart device on the go, not every employee was allowed access to every information, given that some data should not be accessible to certain people in the office.

"If you are a reporter in a media organisation, you definitely shouldn't have access to the pay information where you would  know how much who is receiving. Also, we have encrypted our data to make sure that all that goes in is safe and secured from hacking and other malicious activities," he added.

Microsoft award

Over the years, eSolutions, which is headed by Mr Solomon Adiyiah, the Principal Consultant, has been partnering the world's leading producer of computer software, Microsoft, to develop most of the applications that it uses to support the operation of organisations in the country.

A Partner Sales Executive at Microsoft's Ghana office, Madam Amma A. Kwateng, praised the eSolutions team for its commitment to excellence, which she said earned the firm an award at this year's Microsoft CityNext Conference held in June, this year.

At the event, the works of eSolutions were singled out of over 30 competing firms from Africa for mention and recognition.

A Senior Consultant and Chief Operating Officer (COO) at eSolutions, Mr Gabriel Dela, said the award was humbling and hoped it would spur the team to deliver on its core mandate of helping improve office work in the country.

Helping organisations cut cost

In most institutions where profit is of the essence, saving cost and improving efficiency is paramount to the survival of the organisation.

As a result, Mr Dela said eSolutions has a wider  objective of helping optimise employee performance while improving efficiency at the work place.

"The bottom line for any business owner, executive or manager is to look at how to increase efficiency and reduce cost at the same time, and this is what eSolutions seek to address," Mr Dela said.

Making reference to the frequent review of documents at meetings by executives, the company's CTO said the cost and inconveniences associated with photocopying documents for review could be avoided if such an organisation used eSolutions's virtual office products.

With them, he said the document could be placed on a common platform, where each participant could access on their smart devices and review, thereby eliminating the inconvenience and costs that came with paperwork.

For institutions with many branches across the country or subregion, he said meetings needed not be done physically but through the company's video conferencing solutions, where each person could remain at his/her location and still be able to fully participate in decision making.

Once that strategy is adopted, Mr Dela said the cost of transportation and time wasting would be eliminated and that would help save cost and improve the revenue base of the company.

Mr Dela thus called on corporate Ghana and other organisations to phase out the old ways of running offices, where data is kept in paper files, and rather migrate to electronic solutions, which promised more efficiency with small investments.