Zoho, a leading global technology company, has unveiled the results of its study, “The State of Productivity and Collaboration in Nigeria, 2024”, which surveyed over 500 organisations with more than 50 employees across the country. The findings reveal critical workplace productivity challenges, including the overwhelming impact of data silos resulting from fragmented systems and inefficient app usage. The survey study also highlights the growing demand for unified platforms, which can help businesses streamline employee collaboration.
“Nigerian businesses have adopted a variety of cloud tools over the years 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. As this issue gains attention, the demand for unified collaboration platforms with advanced AI capabilities has surged, as corroborated by the survey findings. 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. It offers not just a unified interface, but brings contextual data to the forefront, saving time, and enabling users to focus on what truly matters,” said Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria.
Key Findings from the Study
The study shows that 55% of Nigerian businesses have adopted a fully on-site work model, while 31% operate in a hybrid setup, and the remaining 14% were in completely remote roles. Most remote roles are held by individual contributors with limited collaboration requirements, while hybrid workers face significant barriers in maintaining effective communication.
The survey also revealed that 51% of employees use 1–5 apps daily, 35% use 6-10 apps, while 14% rely on more than 10 apps. App usage is higher among senior executives, with 81% of the C-Suite employees using more than 10 apps, while 72% of junior employees use 1-5 apps. The most commonly used tools are for productivity and collaboration (68%), followed by project management (47%), business intelligence (47%), and accounting (43%). Despite widespread app usage, only 50% of the respondents track their tasks in a unified view, with higher adoption rates among the C-Suite (78%) and senior leadership (63%).
Productivity Challenges and Opportunities
For the Nigerian workforce, the biggest collaboration challenge is poor WiFi/data connectivity (80%), across demographics. This indicates the need for solutions that have an offline mode and can work in lower data connectivity.
Other collaboration challenges are digital fatigue (54%), and information spread across too many apps (45%). For middle managers, the second biggest challenge, after poor WiFi, is communication with employees in a remote or hybrid setup. According to the respondents, the most effective way to improve productivity in Nigerian workplaces is to enable quick access to necessary information from different apps (78%), followed by adoption of new technologies like AI (72%), and the ability to communicate from within business apps (55%).
There is a clear demand for unified collaboration platforms bolstered with AI capabilities that can be integrated into existing software ecosystems. Such solutions will not only help in reducing the time taken to do the job, but can also reduce digital fatigue as one will not have to juggle multiple apps.
The Economic Outlook
As per the survey, 51% of the respondents said their organisation had adopted new technology to prepare themselves for the economic challenges. Those who said their companies had adopted new technology were more positive about the ability of their company to deal with the competition (rating 4 out of 5) than those who said their company had not adopted new technology (rating a little over 3 out of 5). However, largely, respondents feel their companies are adequately prepared to face economic challenges (57%).
In fact, according to the findings, slow adoption of emerging technologies like AI emerged as the most significant factor hindering their ability to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving market, cited by 46% of the respondents. Other reasons cited as causing competitive disadvantages were low adoption of digital tools (45%), and employees switching between too many apps (41%).
Zoho Workplace
Zoho Workplace is a unified collaboration platform that brings together communication, collaboration, and productivity applications, showing all relevant information and tasks in a single view. It comprises email, chat, online meeting, webinar, office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation), file storage, and social intranet.