technology

03 Jul 2016
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How Is Technology Influencing Youth Activism and Accountable Governance

Sticky Post By On July 3, 2016

“How Is Technology Influencing Youth Activism and Accountable Governance”

written form delivery at the IMANI Africa Youth Forum

 

Introduction
It’s glaring to every critical observer that countries with fast and consistent growth rates, enviable democracies, accountable governance and buoyant positive youth activism, have a common factor which is the effective appreciation and employment of technological innovations and versatility to their pursuits. Whilst accountable governance is the fundamental need of every human society today, youth activism can also be identified as a major policing catalyst to achieve this reality today.
Obviously the youth being the major part of the productive populace in every society, are the most affected by the kind of governance at play in the society.

It is important to note that the youth however are the major influencers in every society’s democratic process and governance where their voices are heard and they are likewise privy to resourceful information. In this light, a society without positive youthful activism is deprived of the opportunity to have a more refined democracy and accountable governance.
* Common factors which have a history of frustrating the existence and growth of youth activism include press censorship, bureaucracy and also manhunt in some cases.

In an age where Information communication technology plays a major role to expose flaws in budgetary allocations, exposing  malpractices, putting the real issues on the table and pushing for change in policies and decision making, Governments must not overlook these contributions made by the youth and must provide an enabling environment where active youth activism promotes good and accountable governance in a tech savvy society.

Technology offers the youths with innovative and multi-faceted ways to:
1. Voice out their opinions on government policies and issues of concern to their target audience through multifaceted social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs etc. Good examples would be the  “Bring back out Girls campaign” and many others.
2. Test government efficacy by making all elements and information associated to governance and government decisions. accessible to both the government and citizenry such as figures and technical related to public projects

3. Facilitate accountable governance in data collection and record keeping through data management systems

4. Simplify and make all elements and information associated to governance and government decisions accessible to both the government and citizenry through interactive websites and mobile applications.

Examples of How Technology is Influencing Youth Activism and Accountable Governance in Africa
BudgIT – Facilitating Social change and Development by using Technology to simplify a Country’s State/Regional and National Budget.
yourbudgit.com (Subsites for other countries Ghana: http://budgitghana.com , Sierra Leone: http://budgitsl.com ) The website targets the urban youth, Civil Society Organizations and government institutions to:
1. Track Government approved Projects, eliminate corruption and also identify cases of abandoned government projects within their States.
2. Present abridged State and National budgets in the form of infographics, interactive application, Videos and quick data access on all government projects to enable a citizen to ask clear and relevant questions pertaining to Government spending.
3. Publish bi-annual policy document that for improving budget processes, institutions and encouraging transparency.

Social Media Tools
Using dynamism to effect Social and Political change, a lot of African Youth are resorting to Facebook, Twitter etc… to mobilize and create awareness on issues. The most popular approach to attracting attention is the use of the Hashtag, campaign creation of specific issues pertaining to the freedom of individuals and the call to address issues

 

Co Author’s

Jessica Agbanu : Marketing and Product Manager EDEL Technology Consulting

Ethel Cofie : CEO EDEL Technology Consulting

 

23 May 2016
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EDEL Technology Picks Up IT Consulting Firm of the Year Award

Sticky Post By On May 23, 2016

Last Saturday EDEL Technology consulting (www.edelitconsult.com ) was adjudged this year’s Ghana Information Technology and Telecom Awards (GITTA), “IT consulting firm of the year”.

EDEL Technology Consulting is a Global brand that uses the combination of modern project management techniques, Standard software engineering and industrial strength architecture to deliver technology solutions to its clients, with projects delivered in West Africa and UK.
EDEL prides itself as one of the best in the IT industry in Africa.
GITTA

The GITTA awards is the only awards in Ghana which recognizes the excellence in the ICT industry. It is the most respected awards that celebrates excellence in innovation, product development and service delivery.

EDEL Technology has array of past and current clients like the World Bank, Dalex Finance (6th Company on the Ghana Cub 100 list and Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana (CIMG) Non-Bank Financial Institute of 2014 and Clean Team Ghana (a project funded by the Unilever)

EDEL is currently funded by USADF (United States Africa development fund) to build a micro working platform (M-ablode www.mablode.com ) to help shape the future of work across Africa

According to the CEO of EDEL Technology Consulting, Ethel Cofie, “winning throws a challenge to us keep being the best and to improve on our services delivered to our clients”.

EDEL Technology was also recently judged one of the top 100 globally competitive companies in Ghana .

Find out how we can become a technology partner for your organization at www.edelitconsult.com and also request a free consultation from the EDEL Team here http://edelitconsult.com/request-a-call/

19 Mar 2016
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EDEL Technology Named As a Globally Competitive StartUp

Sticky Post By On March 19, 2016

Ghana-Startups-Club-100-Poster2

 

Shortlisted from a comprehensive list of several groundbreaking and high growth startups by Ghanaians; these 100 startups have become or are on their way to becoming market leaders in their respective industries. Aiming to be globally competitive, these startups are leaving no stone unturned in the pursuit of their vision. These are definitely the 100 Must Watch Globally Competitive Startups in Ghana from several sectors including but not limited to Agriculture, Finance & Investments, Fashion, Technology, Media, Entertainment, Manufacturing, Health, Education, Retail and e-Commerce, Energy and Social Enterprise.

The African Network of Entrepreneurs (TANOE), an award winning Social Enterprise in partnership with Avance Media conducted a compelling research which received numerous public nominations leading to the creation of this 100 Globally Competitive

13 Jan 2016
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PRESS RELEASE : CAN WE BUILD WEALTH IN AFRICA USING THE MOBILE PHONE? AN EDEL/USADF PROJECT

Sticky Post By On January 13, 2016
group of african american college students closeup

PRESS RELEASE

“CAN WE BUILD WEALTH IN AFRICA USING THE MOBILE PHONE?”

Creating employment and wealth by giving global business access to an on demand and scalable workforce in Africa via a mobile micro working platform named M-Ablode. A collaboration between EDEL Technology Consulting and United States African Development Fund

group of african american college students closeup

group of african american college students closeup

USADF as part of the YALI( Young African Leaders Initiative) provided grant funding for the development of the mobile based platform M-Ablodé . Ablodé  is an ewe word  spoken by the fon ewe people  originating from Ghana,Benin,Togo meaning Freedom or Independence

The problem: The African continent’s labour force will be 1 billion strong by 2040, making it the largest in the world, surpassing both China and India (McKinsey Global Institute, 2010). In Africa youth unemployment  occurs at a rate more than twice that for adults, Youth account for 60% of all African unemployed ( World Bank).

Solution: M-Ablodé is a Micro working platform that enables individuals and businesses globally to coordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks that computers are currently unable to do. The micro workers will be based in emerging markets specifically Africa.

The Customers (Requesters) will be able to post tasks, such as content creation, image identification,  acquiring information, data input, data verification, proof-reading, translation, copy-editing, graphic design, information gathering (e.g. GPS data, Sentiment Analysis).

Telecoms giant Ericsson expects mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa will increase to 930 million by the end of 2019, making Africa the mobile first continent. This has led us to develop M-Ablodé .

M-Ablodé will be launched in June 2016. Sign up to be first to know

Site: http://mablode.edelitconsult.com

About USADF

The U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) is a small but effective tool in the U.S. Government’s Foreign Assistance toolkit.

USADF is on the frontier of development, working directly with Africans on the ground to combat some of Africa’s most difficult development and foreign policy challenges with programs to increase the U.S. diplomatic and development presence in the hardest to reach areas of extreme poverty.

USADF awards small grants (up to $250,000) for technical assistance and capacity building to grassroots organizations, cooperatives and community enterprises that strengthen local institutions and achieve lasting impact. The grants help organizations create tangible benefits such as increasing or sustaining the number of jobs in a community, improving income levels, and addressing social development needs.

 

About EDEL Technology Consulting

EDEL Technology is a leading digital products  consultancy. We deliver software and mobile development, consulting and training services.

We are passionate about solving our clients’ problems, and we bring a fierce focus so we get the job done right, every time. By sharing our knowledge and understanding our clients’ businesses, we deliver the right results for them. The company’s reputation is built upon solving complex business problems to provide reliable and scalable business solutions.

This we achieve through a combination of:
Modern project management techniques
Standard software engineering
Industrial strength architectures

The EDEL Technologies team has diverse experience in technology solutions delivery across the continent with projects delivered in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Gambia.

Specialties

Software Development, IT Consulting, Mobile Application Development, Social Media Strategy

 

17 Aug 2015
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Failed Requirements ?

Sticky Post By On August 17, 2015

Failed requirements are one of the most common reasons of failed projects.   In fact, the more of requirements are missed, the more expensive it is for organisations . EDEL Technology Consulting uses numerous methods to ensure that you as client never lose money because of incomplete requirements

The requirement gathering techniques may differ from one project to another. Some requirement gathering techniques may prove highly beneficial for you in one project but may not be as productive in the other project or for some other company. Therefore the usefulness of a technique is determined by its need and the kind of advantages it offers in a particular project. There are 10 essential requirement gathering techniques that you must be aware of in order to manage the projects in a better way and run your business successfully are:

  1. Brainstorming
  2. Document Analysis
  3. Domain Analysis
  4. Interface Analysis
  5. Interview
  6. Observation
  7. Prototyping
  8. Requirements Workshop
  9. Reverse Engineering
  10. Survey

We discuss some of them below

Interviews

Interviews are strong medium to collect requirements. Organization may conduct several types of interviews such as:

  • Structured (closed) interviews, where every single information to gather is decided in advance, they follow pattern and matter of discussion firmly.
  • Non-structured (open) interviews, where information to gather is not decided in advance, more flexible and less biased.
  • Oral interviews
  • Written interviews
  • One-to-one interviews which are held between two persons across the table.
  • Group interviews which are held between groups of participants. They help to uncover any missing requirement as numerous people are involved.

Surveys

Organization may conduct surveys among various stakeholders by querying about their expectation and requirements from the upcoming system.

Questionnaires

A document with pre-defined set of objective questions and respective options is handed over to all stakeholders to answer, which are collected and compiled.

A shortcoming of this technique is, if an option for some issue is not mentioned in the questionnaire, the issue might be left unattended.

Task analysis

Team of engineers and developers may analyze the operation for which the new system is required. If the client already has some software to perform certain operation, it is studied and requirements of proposed system are collected.

Domain Analysis

Every software falls into some domain category. The expert people in the domain can be a great help to analyze general and specific requirements.

Brainstorming

An informal debate is held among various stakeholders and all their inputs are recorded for further requirements analysis.

Prototyping

Prototyping is building user interface without adding detail functionality for user to interpret the features of intended software product. It helps giving better idea of requirements. If there is no software installed at client’s end for developer’s reference and the client is not aware of its own requirements, the developer creates a prototype based on initially mentioned requirements. The prototype is shown to the client and the feedback is noted. The client feedback serves as an input for requirement gathering.

Observation

Team of experts visit the client’s organization or workplace. They observe the actual working of the existing installed systems. They observe the workflow at client’s end and how execution problems are dealt. The team itself draws some conclusions which aid to form requirements expected from the software.

 

Prototyping

Prototypes can be very effective at gathering feedback. Low fidelity prototypes can be used as an active listening tool. Often, when people can not articulate a particular need in the abstract, they can quickly assess if a design approach would address the need. Prototypes are most efficiently done with quick sketches of interfaces and storyboards. Prototypes are even being used as the “official requirements” in some situations.

Software Requirements Characteristics

Gathering software requirements is the foundation of the entire software development project. Hence they must be clear, correct and well-defined.

A complete Software Requirement Specifications must be:

  • Clear
  • Correct
  • Consistent
  • Coherent
  • Comprehensible
  • Modifiable
  • Verifiable
  • Prioritized
  • Unambiguous
  • Traceable
  • Credible source

Credits

http://mobidev.biz/

http://tynerblain.com/

03 Jun 2015
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Strategy and Technology to make your Organization More Revenue

Sticky Post By On June 3, 2015

Are your current revenue streams plateauing? Are you looking to build additional revenue streams Have you reached highest revenue limits with your current clients looking to build an additional revenue stream?

In a world full of continuing business uncertainty and tough economic challenges, what would you give for a predictable, growing revenue stream that creates loyal customers and helps sell product?

Are you a Business looking to bring your business into the Digital Era?

Do you want to digitize your services to provide increased and additional revenue stream?

If any of these questions keep you up at night as a business owner or CEO then talk to us as Edel Technology Consulting.

EDEL Technology Consulting was built on the tenet: organizations all over the world need to align strategy and technology to ensure that they survive, innovate and beat their competition.

Let us a give you a quick example

Case Study 

Setting the Scene

A legal firm (RF and Partners) have being in business for the last 10 years. They serve small to medium size companies and have being successful so far. RF and Partners have noticed that they have stagnated in terms of profits and unless a the company strategically transforms itself and come up with innovative products, the RF and Partners might be gradually heading to closure as they might not be able maintain the current cost of running the firm – an indication from their financial projections..

EDEL Technology Consulting is contracted to bring synergies in strategy and technology to enable RF and Partners’ growth.

Phase 1

Strategy and alignment meeting

EDEL Technology Consulting’s initially setup strategy sessions with the RF and Partners’ team to understand their business and by so doing establish key points:

 Unmet needs of customer

What strategies to employ to address them

The evolution of the market or industry, and strategies to adopt to remain relevant to industry evolutions

These questions help define strategies and direction of RF and Partners and how EDEL Technology Consulting can align technology to new revenue channels, revised products or redefinition of business models.

Phase 2

Design Workshop

DesignThinking_UXC

Design thinking process first defines the problem and then implements the solutions, always with the needs of the user demographic at the core of concept development.  This process focuses on need finding, understanding, creating, thinking, and doing.  At the core of this process is a bias towards action and creation: by creating and testing something, you can continue to learn and improve upon your initial ideas.

In the Design thinking workshop a problem space emerged

Problem Space

There was class of SME’s that RF & Partners were not serving and these were startups and individuals who need quick simple legal services without having to pay huge retainer fees.

Worldwide, there are about 300 million persons trying to start about 150 million businesses. About one third will be launched, so you can assume 50 million new firm births per year. Or about 137,000 per day. As firm birth and death rates are about equal, the same number of active firms, say 120,000 probably terminate trading each day–world wide

These startups cannot afford the high legal fees or retention costs charged by the traditional firms, but are still in need of legal services

There were a large number of solution s to offer services to these client in way the was price sensitive and yet provided RF and Partners good margins.

Solution One

On demand Online Platform in which startups would enter and answer a number of questions and a set of tailored documents would be generated automatically. There would be little human intervention and startup would be able to access template legal documents at on demand price.

We create a prototype to test viability of product (minimum viable product for testing without actually building out the whole platform?)

  • We quickly put together a one page Google form. ( it takes 10 minutes to create)
  • In the Form we included a mobile money number to which amount was to be paid (clients base is in the emerging markets where mobile money is prevalent)
  • On receipt of payment paralegal with supervision of second year lawyer would compile legal document startup needs to preset template

We market the product through online mediums

 (We increases cost by 10% each week and document volume of sales at each price point- This is to find the maximum price at which clients will pay for the service). Edel Technology Consulting runs the product experiment for a month.

How do we test this product and what are the Key success factors

The Key Success factors here was the volume of sales and how many people clicked to view the of the Google forms

Solution Two

On demand service in which organization who can request, an online conference with a legal practitioner and pay for a set time .In that time legal practitioner and can review and give advice. The user can pay based on experience and seniority of legal practioner.

How do we create a prototype (minimum viable product for testing without actually building out the whole platform)

  • We create a landing page for users to request the service ( request can be done via landing page or the via email)
  • The user can pay for service using mobile money ( clients base is in the emerging markets where mobile money is prevalent)
  • On receipt of payment paralegal schedules a Skype call with user for the time paid for with Lawyer

We market the product through online/sms marketing

(We increases cost by 10% each week and document volume of sales at each price point- This is to find the maximum price at which clients will pay for the service). Edel Technology Consulting runs the product experiment for a month.

How do we test this product and what are the Key success factors

The Key Success factors here was the volume of sales and how many people clicked to view the of the Google forms

At the end of the month the revenue generated and feedback from client who bought the service is used to make the decision on digital product to build for RF & Partners.

  • We build Digital Product
  • Create Product go to market strategy
  • Choreograph product launch

EDEL Technology Consulting has provided RF Partners a digitized service that will increase revenue flow year on year 20%.

 bigstock-Portrait-of-happy-leader-with-44709070

We would love to bring these expertise to your organisation , please contact us at services@edelitconsult.com

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