Zoho Executive has identified five structural shifts Nigerian businesses need to scale.
NewsOnline Nigeria reports that Kehinde Ogundare, Regional Head for West Africa at Zoho Corporation, has urged Nigerian entrepreneurs to reduce their dependence on founders and informal processes by building structured, technology-driven systems that can sustain long-term growth.
Ogundare said many businesses in Nigeria remain heavily dependent on their founders’ memories, personal relationships and WhatsApp conversations, leaving operations vulnerable whenever key individuals are unavailable.
He argued that while Nigerian entrepreneurs have demonstrated remarkable resilience amid infrastructure challenges, economic uncertainty and intense competition, surviving difficult conditions is fundamentally different from building a scalable enterprise.
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“Hustle may launch a business, but structure is what allows it to scale,” Ogundare said in an opinion article titled, Formidable Is Not About Size: Why Structure Is the Secret to Scaling Nigerian Businesses.
According to him, founders can assess the strength of their organisations by considering what would happen if they stepped away for 30 days. A business that slows down or begins to decline in the founder’s absence may lack the systems required to operate independently.
Ogundare identified operational inefficiencies, fragmented information and the absence of repeatable processes as major factors limiting the growth of Nigerian businesses.
He explained that organisations become vulnerable when essential information exists only in an employee’s memory, customer relationships are managed through private conversations and decisions are based on incomplete records.
Although such businesses may continue operating, he said their ability to grow sustainably and predictably would remain limited.
Drawing from his experience working with companies across Nigeria, the Zoho executive said businesses that scale successfully are not necessarily those with the most funding or talent. Instead, they are often organisations with clearly defined structures and connected operational systems.
He outlined five changes Nigerian businesses should implement to move from survival to sustainable expansion.
The first is a transition from memory-based operations to permanent systems. Ogundare warned that customer information should not remain exclusively with individual employees because relationships and institutional knowledge could disappear when those workers leave.
He advised businesses to document customer conversations, preferences and interactions in searchable systems that preserve organisational knowledge.
“The system must remember so the founder can simply decide,” he said.
The second shift is from intuition to data-backed decision-making. According to Ogundare, business decisions based entirely on instinct are often made without a complete understanding of the situation.
He recommended using real-time dashboards and measurable insights to replace reactive assumptions with proactive strategies, noting that the absence of reliable data could lead to costly mistakes.
Ogundare identified the third shift as moving from relationships to customer intelligence.
While acknowledging that personal trust plays a significant role in Nigerian business culture, he argued that relationships become more valuable when supported by accurate and accessible data.
By converting customer interactions into scalable knowledge, businesses can anticipate consumer needs, identify potential dissatisfaction and respond before customers leave, he said.
The fourth change involves moving from chasing revenue to managing it systematically.
Ogundare said statements such as “we are talking to a few people” do not constitute reliable indicators of future income. Businesses should instead manage revenue through clearly defined sales pipelines, forecasting and employee accountability.
The fifth shift is from departmental silos to connected customer touchpoints.
He noted that customers experience the consequences when sales, finance, operations and customer-service teams function independently without sharing relevant information.
“A customer should experience one cohesive business, not five disjointed departments,” he said.
Ogundare recommended a unified business architecture capable of connecting customer, financial, operational and employee data across the organisation.
He compared this structure to an operating system, explaining that just as digital devices require coordinated systems to function effectively, businesses need integrated platforms to manage their activities and information.
The Zoho executive said fragmented operations were becoming increasingly unsustainable as companies respond to modern market expectations and Nigeria’s expanding digital economy.
He noted that Nigeria’s digital economy is projected to reach $18.3 billion in 2026, but maintained that organisational structure would determine which companies successfully capture the emerging opportunities.
According to him, the next phase of economic growth will not necessarily be dominated by businesses that work the hardest, but by those that develop the systems required to sustain their progress.
“Formidable is not a size; it is a structure, and you can start building it today,” Ogundare said.
