Jireh Technologies has been setting the pace in Nigeria with its cutting-edge technology solutions for the pharmaceutical and hospital industries. With over 16 years’ outstanding impact, its services have been massively sought by other industries, such as the oil and gas, real estate, security and education. Managing Director of the company, Mr Ehi Silence, in this exclusive interview with Pharmanews, explains the vision driving their business and their corporate journey so far in the Nigerian landscape. Exerpts:
What is the core vision driving the operations of Jireh Technologies in Nigeria?
The core vision, or what we call our goal, is to build a world-class, technology-based organisation that delivers quality and cost-effective ICT solutions and services to its valued customers. That is the core driver of our business. And of course, the primary delivery focus is to ensure that all our customers go home, enjoying and experiencing our services with peace of mind.
What value do you think your services will add to the e-pharmacy and e-hospital management systems in Nigeria?
A lot. If you look at most management sectors, particularly the professional sector in the country, there is a great need for technology because, today, technology drives every business. The professional sector is not left out. So, we found a need for us to develop solutions that can help the pharmaceutical industry and the hospital space.
Regarding the hospital sector, our services will improve the quality of services in hospitals through organised patient care services, monitoring of drug prescriptions, and, of course, payment tracking and generating of seamless reports at any time. This will help in reducing expenditure on hospital consumables in general and time spent in the hospital. Indeed, these solutions take the patient right from the front desk until he or she leaves the hospital.
There are so many opportunities to help the patient. The out-patient department as well as the in-patient department are embedded in it, together with the pharmacy and the laboratory. All the aspects of medical practice are embedded in the software to ensure that both patients and service providers have peace of mind. It provides a platform for telemedicine where and when required. It improves the efficiency of staff and hospital professionals.
For the e-pharmacy, it is an effective tool for driving the management of every pharmaceutical space, whether it is retail, distribution – indeed, all the aspects of pharmaceutical service delivery. It is very important. It is also to improve the efficiency of the system, to ensure effective monitoring of services and activities.
Customer retention and prescription are robust in this solution. We also provide 2D solution optimal drug inventory management by monitoring the drug movement in the pharmacy, providing a platform for pharmacies with multi-branches to coordinate from a central point like the head office. And all of these are seamless.
It also provides a platform for pharmacies which are in different locations to manage their activities, using technology. It also helps to track valid and expired drugs. In a nutshell, our e-pharmacy solution is to bring about peace of mind for both the pharmacy owners and the patients who visit them.
How do you intend to market your value propositions to the Nigerian pharmaceutical and hospital industries?
Any service which cannot reach the people who need it is really not it. We will deploy publications in the print and digital media. We are also engaging members of the healthcare family in Nigeria. We shall partner with several health groups that serve as a target audience for our services. We shall also participate in the annual conferences of relevant professional bodies like the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) and the Association of Hospital and Administrative Pharmacists of Nigeria (AHAPN).
The entire management of Jireh Technologies constantly engages the executives of ACPN and AHAPN at all levels. The idea is for us to partner with all these various pharmaceutical groups to ensure that, through them, we are able to deliver our service offerings with peace of mind.
We also intend to make presentations at conferences and seminars and the opportunities are there. Any time these associations are having programmes, we want to be able to support them to ensure that, through them, we can reach out to everyone who needs our services.
Your services are essential to the pharmaceutical industry in Nigeria and perhaps, beyond. What are the strategies you have put in place to ensure that their demands are adequately and promptly met, at all times?
We have the capacity to respond to high demand. We already have licenses of these products resident with us. We are in partnership with a foreign firm. We have a robust team of IT and pharmaceutical professionals. For instance, our business development manager in Jireh Lagos is a pharmacist. We have put all of these in place. We do not intend to bring just IT people; we also want to bring in more pharmaceutical professionals to be able to add value to what the IT people are doing.
We already have a mission statement for the organisation which speaks for what I have just said. For instance, we have said that we will be adopting ICT standards in our delivery process. We have to imbibe the highest professional standards. A pharmacist with nothing less than 20 years’ experience in the field is no longer a novice. We want to engage technical sales agreement with local and foreign players – which we have already started. We are building and retaining competencies through training and retraining.
To sum it up, we are very focused, dynamic and adaptive. The reason is that technology is very adaptive. And so, following the trend of what is going on in the industry, it is a good springboard for us to launch out to ensure that all of these bodies are able to hear us and enjoy our services.
Tell us about your operational presence so far in Nigeria.
We have our corporate head office in Port Harcourt, with a full-fledged regional office in Lagos. Today, we have a footprint of services in all states of Nigeria. Part of our service offering is delivering services to telecoms operators. There is no local government that we have not worked with in Nigeria. We are a part of the massive roll out of the RF works for the operators, MTN, Econet, Globacom. We have thousands of BTSEs and RF stations that we deploy. Big time, we are in the oil and gas which is our second business. Today, we serve major IOCs both in their land stations and their offshore stations. We are more than 16 years in the business and we have been offering outstanding service and have developed unique solutions that meet their needs.
Besides the pharmaceutical and hospital landscapes, which other industry do you think requires your services in Nigeria?
The real estate is one of them, the hospitality and the educational industries also need our services. The religious and security institutions also need us. The construction industry too. A whole lot of them are already enjoying our services.
What are you plans for the immediate future in terms of competition?
By the grace of God, I have travelled quite a bit and I see that competition is the order of business. We have to prepare ourselves against every form of competition. Jireh Technologies as a brand thrives on information and capacity development through our research and development team.
We have an R&D team that is working on our products, constantly following the trend in the industry and that gives us an edge over some of our competitors. It also puts us in front of a whole lot of them. Apart from following the trend, we do a lot of massive training for our staff. There is no week in Jireh that we don’t have training in all the departments. The Accounting, Sales, Engineering and even the Management teams are constantly trained. I just completed a management training at the Lagos Business School. Capacity building is the order of today’s business. With all of these, we have been able to meet the demands of our customers through our technology solutions.
In one sentence, how would you convince your customers to embrace your services as essential components of their businesses?
Our brand is sitting on a tripod stand of excellence quality and integrity. We also have a slogan that every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. We believe in autographing our work with excellence.
