During his second year at Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University, Oluwadare Ibitoye found himself becoming increasingly fascinated by how businesses work.
Inside the classroom, the answers appeared straightforward. But why did so many promising ones struggle to scale? Courses in Operations Strategy and Management Accounting explained how companies optimise costs, improve productivity and create competitive advantages. Case studies that showed what efficient organisations looked like.
Outside the classroom, reality looked different. Businesses around him weren’t failing because they lacked customers or ambition. They were struggling because they were running systems in siloes.
Inventory sat in one application. Attendance records were kept separately from payroll. Sales in another. Customer relationships lived inside WhatsApp chats. Accounting was often done at month-end, sometimes inaccurately, and managers spent more time reconciling numbers than making decisions.
“The further I looked, the more I realised people were managing businesses with fragments,” Ibitoye says. “Everyone had software. Businesses struggled with interoperability.”
