Running a business is hard enough. It gets even worse if it is a small and unstructured business, with no proper management of sales, inventory, accounts and all other titbits. But perhaps if all of these things could be handled in one single application, the entrepreneur could focus on the critical parts of the business.
NTISA Business Solutions is a Retail Management Solution that provides end-to-end retail management suite of products that makes life easier for business owners and their customers. A brainchild of Waje Smart Solutions – a three-year-old technology company – NTISA came up last year as a disruptive method to alter the old way individuals and businesses interact.
As a guest on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour, technology entrepreneur, Amah Ifeanyi explained that Ntisa Business Solutions is modelled as a Business to consumer solution to help small businesses reach their consumers using automation tools.
The Ntisa application is available on the Playstore with several features. The sales and order management features help merchants and logistics personnel to handle and track sales and orders from the point the order is made until delivery is successfully completed. Inventory management is another feature that allows businesses to take stock of all their products, fusing the online and offline inventory so that at every point, they have a clear idea of what stocks they have left.
The Delivery Tracking and Logistics Management is a feature that brings seller, buyer and delivery personnel in a single space so that the product can be tracked from the point the order is made, through the delivery process until it gets to the customer.
Explaining the need for this feature, Amah said, “What used to happen is that people order a product and then go into limbo. They don’t know where the product is and cannot track anything, and they keep calling the merchant to ask questions. They have no idea who is delivering it or where it is. But what we have now is that all parties in the transaction have access to each other, and know where the product is at every point.”
Financial records speak volumes. One key issue for small businesses is funding, and in their search for loans or investments, there will be demands for financial records. Now, the NTISA Retail Management Solutions has a couple of accounting software plugged into the application. Merchants can now use this feature to get records and insights into their operations and have some accounting records that they can present in their search for funds.
Irrespective of the number of branches, a merchant subscribed on the Ntisa platform can view the sales across all his products and branches, and gauge the profitability of the business. One can easily spot products that are selling better and what products should be improved upon. And all of these can be accessed with an affordable monthly subscription plan starting as low as N6,880 for small businesses, and N2000 per bike for small courier logistics.
In just 10 months of launch, the Ntisa application is gaining adoption among merchants across different cities in Nigeria, although the plan is to take this robust retail management solutions Pan- African in no time.
“Adoption is coming gradually even in areas that we never anticipated like Uyo and Port Harcourt. We are first taking the low hanging fruits, being businesses that have tried to adopt technology but had issues. Then for the others, we are educating them through various channels to show them how Ntisa can make business easier for them,” Amah stated.
Expansion plans will take Ntisa into Ghana before the end of 2021 and into other English-speaking African countries over the next decade. According to Amah, the business is at the stage of driving adoption and subscription and reinvesting its cash flow. Options like private equity funding will only be explored when the expansion plan exceeds the available funds.
