The entrepreneurship ecosystem in West Africa is one that is emerging rapidly. Almost every young person wants to start something on their own, however, the beauty of this has been marred by the lack of some basic business skills.
One of these skills which is very crucial to the growth of a business and sets as a bait to attract investors is keeping financial data and using the same to make informed financial decisions.
For this reason, Meghan McCormick, a social entrepreneur set up OZÉ Innover which is the French for “Dare to Innovate”.
OZÉ begun in Guinea as a startup that provides several solutions to help solve the unemployment problem in the country. The company does this by teaching and supporting local youth who develop their own small businesses.
In a feature about her on MIT news, McCormick said: “We are trying to solve the issue of youth unemployment through entrepreneurship and through making small businesses more efficient — starting more businesses, starting them well, having them grow up to the point where they can be employers.”
The startup organized an accelerator program dubbed “Dare to Innovate: The Conference for Social Entrepreneurship” which started in 2012, one year after a meeting with some concerned Guinean youth.
McCormick was a community economic development volunteer with the Peace Corps in 2011. After her term ended, a section of the youth who benefited from her work came to her and said “Americans come and go. Projects come and go. We’re Guinean. We’re here. This is our movement and we need to make sure this continues,” MIT news reports.
One of the solutions that this company has created is a business analytics tool that helps small businesses make data-driven decisions to improve their performance.
OZÉ’s business analytics tool
On February 28 2018, Disrupt Africa reported that ten startups were finalists of a competition in Harvard “which is offering startups the chance to win cash prizes of up to US$10,000.” and business management app Oze, is one of them.
In May 2018, Americaninno reported that OZÉ has grown and now has a team of eight and hiring “and is now closing its first seed round of funding, after winning a Harvard University President’s Innovation Challenge contest and grants from MIT.”
The Harvard University President’s Innovation Challenge is a competition that makes students present innovative ideas that tackle “pressing issues facing the world and to explore turning their ideas into impactful, real-world ventures.”
Following the award it has won, this shows the extent to which OZÉ, as a business tool has the potential of helping businesses in Africa make sound business decisions with the use of financial analytics.
The cloud-base mobile application collects financial and social transaction data at the point of sale. When it takes this data, it analyzes it to spot problems as they emerge and helps the entrepreneur to solve them with targeted mentoring.
The app analyses the data to create financial statements and assess the health of the business. It then goes a step further; based on the actual performance of the business the entrepreneur receives recommendations and tailored mobile training modules to increase their capabilities.
OZÉ continues to analyze the data and if the training does not improve performance, the issue is escalated to a business coach for remote 1-on-1 mentoring. Imagine a business intelligence platform + an accountant + an online MBA + an evaluation specialist + a human mentor and you have OZÉ.
To sum up what OZÉ does, McCormick tells americaninno that “We have the hypothesis that what gets measured gets managed, and if we can take data from a pile of (ledger) notebooks and aggregate it in these digital platforms, then we can actually help economies operate more effectively.”
OZÉ helps business owners like you make decisions with confidence so your business can grow faster. Click here to get OZÉ. Download OZÉ from the Google Play Store enter this secret code: L55PSURUUR and Stand a chance of winning a Samsung S8.
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