Banking Consolidation........ @asktrezorlandia @oyamagng

The Banking Consolidation…..

Enter Soludo with the banking consolidation and reforms, banks were scrambling to survive. It was a case of acquire, get acquired or die. We had to transform as well, we embarked on an overhaul of our IT system, moving from Kapiti (a truly ancient version of it) to finnacle, we also acquired two banks, Nigerian American Merchant bank and Cooperative Development bank! It was a clash of cultures, software systems and accounts.

I know everyone had their fair share of pressure but IT ehn, e no get part two (second to none, for those of you who don’t do pidgin). It was bad enough that we were already perceived as “those people that cause trouble and make our work hard” by other units of the bank, then now there was so much more to deal with. We were doing Monday to Sunday, closing very late and in the midst of this I had to deal with the mainland to island commute and be at work for 7, 7:30 and we wonder why life expectancy has dropped to 45years. Tufia! (i.e God forbid)

It was obvious we needed new direction and a strong leader on management level or close to save our drowning IT unit. Then came Mr. Oni, a high flying all rounder from Accenture. The task ahead of him was huge, but he did all he could to measure up. At this point however, I was feeling like I was in a tornado, no purpose, no direction, no hope. It was that time again, I had to get out…….. To be Contd.

Life Skills Learnt

1. Be prepared! The banking consolidation favored those who saw the future. They were in the know. 
2. It’s not obvious in the post, but I learnt to “document” every single thing. I would try to tell my boss (before Mr. Oni) something verbally and he would say, “document it” by this he meant through a mail (for mail trail) or a memo. This was a period of immense heat and you could get fired for any slip ups.
3. I was on every committee you can imagine like the IT steering committee for one, it was like I had secretary written on my head. Well I learnt how to write minutes from being every meeting’s secretary and believe me, it’s a skill! Lol

2013…….06 June, 2013

At the end of each day, especially the not so fruitful days, I sit down and review the day, did I achieve anything, what did I do, what did I not do and then I look for things that I need to do better or new things I need to try. I need to step up my marketing, seriously step it up, this is a no brainer and sounds so very basic, but it is not at all (especially when there is no money!)

I recently found out that one young Ife student who attends my church runs a social media marketing service, Oyamagng; he’s a twitter maestro and is not doing badly for himself. He runs social media campaigns for small growing companies like me. If you run a small business, or need to introduce a new product, you should try them out; encourage young enterprising students who are not yahoo yahooing!  Anyway I have engaged the young man, we’re one week into this father’s day campaign and I’m feeling his work.

I now have a new handle called @asktrezorlandia, its dedicated to answering questions about gifts e.g. what can I buy for my boss, what can I buy for my daughter, what kind of flowers should I send for a birthday and so on. I thought about setting it up a while back but never came round to it, then when I engaged oyamagng and gave him his brief voila, I check my twitter timeline and what do I see “introducing #asktrezorlandia a platform for getting ideas for gifts”! Talk about running with a brief, this boy is on fire. So I had no choice but to sharply go and create the handle that had been in the cooler for yonks. I do hope the handle @asktrezorlandia would be to gifts what @Gidi_traffic is to dealing with Lagos traffic. AMEN!!! J

I also finally sent out that mail introducing Trezorlandia as a supplier of corporate gift items to the people on the list I compiled. I figured, I can send to the ones I have for now and I’ll send when I have more. If not I would still be compiling this said list a year from now.  By the way, I didn’t get one single reply, imagine that. Maybe I need to re-word the body of the mail or edit the subject, I need ideas! Uncle Leke Alder where are you?

Entrepreneur tips

1. Do something every day that you haven’t done before. No matter how small. Nothing is irrelevant; continuously improve on the finer details of your business.
2. Just do it! You’ve been playing with this thought in your head for some time, how do you know it’ll fail without even trying?
3. Build a team, we know you have skills in every area, still you can’t do everything yourself. Dispel the thought that you have no money to pay for services, consider forming mutually beneficial alliances with people and other companies.