Announcing the Twiteze Imbere Campaign Award Celebration

Celebrating the Twiteze Imbere Campaign Award Winning Small Businesses

 

To recognise and celebrate the winners of the Twiteze Imbere campaign SME Response Clinic Business Awards, and reflect on the campaign, Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR) and ConsumerCentriX hosted a half-day celebration alongside key campaign partners on May 19th.

The Twiteze Imbere campaign was created to recognize the role small businesses are playing in Rwanda’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the campaign, the general public nominated their favorite small businesses, giving their nominees the chance to win an SME Response Clinic Business Award. The competition featured three categories: women-owned businesses, start-up or innovative businesses, and established businesses. Three winners and five runners-up stood out from almost 2,000 nominations.

During the celebration, Jean Bosco Iyacu, Country Director of AFR, congratulated the winners and thanked them for their role in Rwanda’s economic recovery. Mr. Iyacu also highlighted AFR’s ongoing efforts to support small businesses in Rwanda and appreciated the diversity within the businesses that were nominated.

Anna Gincherman, Managing Partner at ConsumerCentriX, encouraged the entrepreneurs to utilise the SME Response Clinic’s resources to grow their businesses.

“The SME Response Clinic will continue to support entrepreneurs by providing access to financial opportunities and information on business development services,” she said.

The three winners discussed how they plan to use the one million Rwandan francs prize to grow their businesses. They responded to some questions from partners and networked with business development experts including RICEM’s Dr. Olivier Mukulira and Malik Shaffy, Country Manager of the African Management Institute in Rwanda (AMI).

Jean Bosco Manirareba, winner in the established businesses category, said that the prize money will be invested to expand market reach beyond Kirehe District where Umucyo operates.

Hamdani Habumuremyi, winner of the start-up/innovative business category said: “The prize money will allow me to acquire new machinery and equipment to support my business activities.”

Judith Kaine, winner in the women-led businesses category said: “I plan to use the award to increase visibility and awareness of my business across Rwanda.”

In addition to the prize money, the three winners will each receive expert business advisory services provided by Rwanda Institute for Cooperatives, Entrepreneurship and Microfinance (RICEM), and AMI. These services will equip them with the skills and knowledge to further improve the success of their businesses.

Meet the winners here


AMI

AMI Online Bootcamp: Tools for Managing Risk and Learning from Others - Mathew Rwahigi

The SME Response Clinic is a digital platform powered by ConsumerCentriX, Access to Finance Rwanda, and Rwanda Private Sector Federation to support small and medium enterprises in Rwanda struggling to adjust to the economic realities of COVID-19. To provide much-needed training opportunities for the entrepreneurs, the SME Response Clinic joined forces with the African Management Institute.

Testimonial: Matthew Rwahigi, Owner, Thella Café – Saturday May 30, 2020

Matthew Rwahigi, a small business owner in Gisozi, was hit hard when the COVID-19 lockdowns began in Kigali. Luckily, as a participant in AMI’s trainings for small businesses, he learned the skills to negotiate with suppliers and his landlords and to make the tough decisions needed to help his business survive.

“The conversations and hearing from other colleagues through the AMI workshops, you feel like you’re not alone. At first I thought maybe I was in the wrong business, this was a bad idea, I just burnt my savings for no good reasons. But then you hear other people and you feel that you are in this with so many others. It gives you the strength to stay the course and find the resources to manage.”

What was most valuable for you about the AMI trainings?

First, I learned to focus on learning how to manage a business. I got to focus a bit on my business. Since I Getting to focus a bit – I hadn’t done business in the past, I did not have the tools and skills to plan and make tough decisions, like having to lay off staff.

Second, I benefited from networking and finding out what other people are going through. I learned a lot from this. I really value the community of business people and their input, because if my business is going to survive, I need these relationships. Now at least I have some knowledge, and if my business doesn’t survive, and if I started another business I would be better informed, and more empowered.

How has AMI supported you?

AMI is there when you need to ask a question, to give you tips and ideas. There is an online business portal with tools and courses, and these are important in continuing to build skills.

“The AMI group really helped us in empowering us to feel that this is not the end of the road, to have a feeling that yes, there is a pandemic but you can still try to tune your business up a bit to survive the pandemic, and even have an opportunity to continue after the pandemic.”


African Management Institute

AMI Online Bootcamp: Tools for Managing Risk and Learning from Others - Yannick

The SME Response Clinic is a digital platform powered by ConsumerCentriX, Access to Finance Rwanda, and Rwanda Private Sector Federation to support small and medium enterprises in Rwanda struggling to adjust to the economic realities of COVID-19. To provide much-needed training opportunities for the entrepreneurs, the SME Response Clinic joined forces with the African Management Institute.

Testimonial: Yannick Tuyishime, CEO and co-founder of Tsapal Company Ltd

Yannick Tuyishime is the CEO and co-founder of Tsapal Company Ltd, a footwear and apparel manufacturing company since late 2019.  The company was brand new when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but participating in the AMI Bootcamphelped to keep business afloat during crisis.

“When we came up with the idea for our company, we saw that there are many problems in the community that we can do something about. The first is that there are high rates of unemployment in Rwanda and in Africa. The other is that we see that we can do something that can do boost Made in Rwanda products. Import taxes are high in Rwanda, and so by increasing Made in Rwanda products we can fill the gap by bringing prices down and manufacturing locally.”

With the AMI Bootcamp, Yannick learned how to better manage cashflow, negotiate with his landlord, improve communications between staff and with customers, and assess and plan for risks. This allowed him to receive a reduction on rent during the worst part of the lockdown, as well as to keep all staff employed by making some salary reductions as well as cutting down on unnecessary costs. The company even reduced some of the product prices so as to keep customers on board and not lose them during the pandemic.

Yannick encourages other Rwandan entrepreneurs to attend AMI’s courses and upcoming Bootcamps so that they too can benefit from the toolkit and learn to manage risks, negotiate with customers and suppliers, and bring larger visions to fruition while dealing with today’s challenges.

“I appreciate the AMI Bootcamp because now I record weekly all of our expenses in the business and use the project management plan. The other thing is that I’ve learned how to assess some risks – like in this time, what I’ve learned from AMI bootcamp is that I can sit down and see what is not going well, what is going well, in cash management. I can make an action plan to meet the risks that I’ve assessed. Wholeheartedly, I can’t thank AMI enough and I encourage everyone to attend AMI Bootcamps and for those who have already attended to take some of the other courses that they provide. When someone wants to grow a business sustainably the AMI bootcamp will really help.”


Online Business Bootcamp

AMI Online Bootcamp: Tools for Managing Risk and Learning from Others - Justine Ntaganda

The SME Response Clinic is a digital platform powered by ConsumerCentriX, Access to Finance Rwanda, and Rwanda Private Sector Federation to support small and medium enterprises in Rwanda struggling to adjust to the economic realities of COVID-19. To provide much-needed training opportunities for the entrepreneurs, the SME Response Clinic joined forces with the African Management Institute.

Testimonial: Justine Ntaganda, Owner, La Corniche Hotel in Rubavu and Nyabihu, and Salma Nkusi, Manager (it is a family business)

Justine Ntaganda and Salma Nkusi operate the “La Corniche” hotels in two locations in Rwanda, Rubavu and Nyabihu. The hospitality and tourism industry has been hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and the mother-daughter team has found that the AMI trainings have provided an opportunity to take a step back, learn new business skills, and make decisions that will help the hotels to thrive in the future.

What was most valuable for you about the AMI trainings?

“My daughter Salma and I have benefited enormously from the tools shared by AMI. For me personally, the advice shared on tools for better collaboration helped us to choose to use “One Drive” to share information. The tool for analyzing clients’ needs was also an interesting exercise during this time because demand has changed a lot. It is important that we adapt and continue to do our business.” ~ Justine Ntaganda

With the AMI tools, we are now able to check our books on a weekly basis, track cashflow and be accountable. Now, we even have a meeting on a weekly basis with our staff using the data and make decisions about where we stand. Where do we need to cut, for example?

These tools are helping with day-to-day management and the trainings have provided content in an understandable way. What’s more, the session on goal setting has been very great. Now as a team we talk and think together about our long-term goals and put them in writing as well. This helps us to prioritize and to decide how we will track our progress together.

“AMI is pushing me towards the implementation of all of these new ideas that I had but weren’t written down, and didn’t have a timeline –the tools are great, and looking at budgeting of the organization is something that we need to have in place for banks in terms of funding, too.” ~ Salma Nkusi

How has AMI supported you?

For us, it has been like going back to school, only for our personal growth and for the benefit of our business. AMI has helped us create a budget, and not only that, but to learn how to communicate with our staff so that they clearly see that there are reasons that we make the financial decisions we need to make.

One other interesting area of support from AMI is their “A New Rise” daily meditation. It’s another way to start your day by clearing your mind, breathing, and planning instead of waking up and feeling as if you are just facing emergencies.


Online Business Bootcamp

Rwandan Online Business Bootcamp Launched

Rwandan Online Business Bootcamp Launched

By Alejandra Ríos and Jessica Massie

A version of this article was originally posted on the SME Response Clinic

To support entrepreneurs in these challenging and unprecedented times, Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR) has partnered with the Rwanda Private Sector Federation and ConsumerCentriX on the SME Response Clinic. This digital platform provides entrepreneurs in Rwanda with information on financial management and industry insights to improve their response to this crisis.

However, information alone is not enough. As a result of this conviction, the SME Response Clinic is promoting a series of webinars and virtual programs through a partnership with the African Management Institute (AMI), to help entrepreneurs to adjust to financial uncertainty by deepening their skills and business acumen.

On Tuesday, May 12th, small businesses in Rwanda across sectors and with different business sizes joined the first FREE “Business Survival Bootcamp”  facilitated by the African Management Institute (AMI).

Jean Bosco Iyacu of Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR), opened the webinar with a message of solidarity for the SME Response Clinic and SMEs in Rwanda.

The webinar takes businesses through important tools for planning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

These include:

  • Scenario planning for your business – how do you deal with issues regarding customers, suppliers, infrastructure, staff and cash flow? How will these be affected if I close or have slow business for two weeks? What if it is two months?
  • Organizational risk assessments – looking at the different dimensions of business, the risks they face, and how to mitigate them. What do you do if you can’t get the goods you need for your store, or supply your customers?
  • Impact on cash flow – what to do if and when your cash flow is affected by an unexpected closure or low period.

All participants are given access to tools, such as cash flow planning spreadsheets, from AMI to use to help in their own businesses. These resources are free and designed specifically to navigate the issues in the COVID-19 pandemic, and include additional courses.

These tools and conversations are important given that the pandemic is likely to continue to affect SMEs in Rwanda – and around the world – for an unknown period of time. According to Diederik Wokke of AMI, many small businesses originally thought they would be affected for just the first two weeks of the lockdown. Now that the situation is stabilizing but slowly, businesses still need to build these skills and plan for a more uncertain future.

Conversation during the training highlighted some of the questions that SMEs have right now. For example, supplier negotiation is becoming more difficult now that businesses are able to open little by little. A shop renting a space may have had more flexibility in terms of payment during the lockdown, but this is changing as the country opens.

Finally, there are still many questions around payments and transferring to contactless mechanisms as much as possible. Many businesses are switching to digital payments and are still in the learning phase.

But with planning, management, and resources like those available from the SME Response Clinic, small businesses will be more likely to survive this pandemic.

Find out more about the upcoming sessions at “Expanding My Skills” on the SME Response Clinic website and on Facebook.

About the Authors

Alejandra Rios is an expert in inclusive finance with a focus on small-and-medium (SME) enterprises, advising leading commercial banks and microfinance institutions in emerging markets for the past twenty years. Her portfolio in MSME finance consultancy covers change management, housing finance, rural finance, institution-building, strategic planning, and credit management.   She is a Partner at ConsumerCentriX.

Jessica Massie is a consultant in financial capability and microfinance based in Kigali, Rwanda. She has lived and worked in a variety of African countries for almost 20 years, and specializes in curriculum development, training, research and writing, with a focus on skill-building and behavior change. She is working with the ConsumerCentriX team on the SME Response Clinic in Rwanda.


Grow your business with Rebecca Harrison

New ways to train businesses on a growth path with Rebecca Harrison

REACHING THE UNDERSERVED: EPISODE 3

New ways to train businesses on a growth path with Rebecca Harrison

If you can get entrepreneurs and their teams to implement some simple but effective habits, then you very quickly start to see results

-REBECCA HARRISON
Co-Founder and CEO, African Mangaement Institute (AMI)

 

Wanjiru Mbugua [00:00:00] I had this idea but had not started, RD clothing. And so when we started on the second month of my training, I remember there’s this trainer who asked us, what do you think are your four best ideas, business ideas that you can work with from the comfort of your bed? You know, something that people would be using, something that people don’t like, something unique, something interesting that you would do as a business and change your life and change other people’s lives. I said “That’s it.” That’s it for me. That was it. That’s all I needed.

Narration [00:00:48] The African Management Institute, commonly known as AMI, has developed Africa’s first scalable solution for skills and enterprise development. Their blended methodology focuses on encouraging adoption of effective business practices. It does this by combining web and mobile platforms with in-person workshops to help participating entrepreneurs develop the skills and habits they need to grow their businesses. Two years ago, AMI expanded its impact in this space by partnering with Kenya Commercial Bank, one of the largest retail banks in East Africa. Through this partnership, KCB’s business clients were invited to join AMI’s Grow Your Business program. Anna Gincherman, Partner at ConsumerCentriX sat down with Rebecca Harrison, co-founder and CEO of AMI to learn more about how blended learning works, how it addresses different profiles of entrepreneurs, particularly women, how it benefits partner banks, and how results are being measured.

Anna Gincherman [00:01:53] Rebecca, you can start with you introducing yourself and just a few words about AMI?

Rebecca Harrison [00:02:01]  My name’s Rebecca Harrison. I’m the co-founder and CEO of AMI, African Management Institute and we enable ambitious businesses across Africa to thrive. We do that through practical tools and training. AMI has been around for about five or six years. We have offices in Nairobi, Kenya, Jo’burg in South Africa and Kigali in Rwanda. We’ve trained about 27,000 people, managers, leaders, entrepreneurs and their employees in about 15 countries across Africa.

Anna Gincherman [00:02:30] The ConsumerCentriX team spent about a week in Nairobi talking to clients of KCB Bank, learning about their experience with the bank’s financial and non-financial services. And many of the clients were raving above the program. They took in 2017, which was conducted by AMI and my favorite quote from the primary school entrepreneur, Simon, was his name, was “these people (meaning KCB and AMI) don’t even know how good this program is and how important it was for us.” So very positive feedback. So it would be great if you can describe what this magic program is,  what’s different from what else is out there and why you think it was so influential?

Rebecca Harrison [00:03:22] I’m delighted to hear entrepreneurs are saying good things about us. So, Grow Your Business is a whole new approach to learning for entrepreneurs. So I guess what we’ve done at AMI, is to turn training on its heads. What traditional training does has take entrepreneurs out of their business and put them in a classroom and has an expert talk at them. And what we see, in terms of results, is that entrepreneurs really struggle to translate that kind of knowledge into any real change in the business. They might get some new knowledge, but then that doesn’t really translates into any kind of real result for the business. So what we’ve done at AMI, is we’ve really dug into the evidence base and the research around what works in developing SMEs and entrepreneurs.

And the big insight and the secret sauce of Grow Your Business is that what makes the difference for is business practices and habits. And if you can get entrepreneurs and their teams to implement some simple but effective habits, then you very quickly start to see results. So when we were designing Grow Your Business, we were thinking both about, you know, how can we really drive impact, but how can we do that in a way that’s cost-effective. And that’s where we came up with this blended model. And the idea of blended learning is that you combine online tools and resources. We provide those through a mobile app as well as an online platform. And the idea is that our entrepreneurs can access practical tools online, anytime, anywhere, and you can apply them immediately in the business. So we’re not taking entrepreneurs out of the business for days on end. We’re going to them at that point of need. So that’s the first piece is the online tools.

The second piece we’ve learned in an African context, purely online learning doesn’t really work on its own. So you still need some kind of human components, kind of human touch, as it were. We combine the online tools with experiential in-person Face-To-Face workshops. But we don’t do as many of the traditional programs. So, again, we’re not taking people out of their businesses for days on end. Over a course of six months, we take the entrepreneurs out for three days, beginning, middle and end. And they have really high impact experiences. So those are really memorable days. You know, they’re not sitting listening to someone talk. They’re interacting, they’re networking,  they’re role-playing and practicing some of these tools that they’ve been downloading on their phones and on their computers and getting a feel for what does that mean for me and my business? Blended learning often only really covers those two components online and in-person. We take it a step further and when we say, well, it’s online tools, in-person experiences and then in the business or on the job practice and application. Throughout our program, we’re journeying with our entrepreneurs to support them and incentivize them to implement these habits and practices in the business.

At the office of African Managment Institute in Nairobi, Kenya

In terms of gender, we’ve seen some really interesting trends. So we noticed on the program with KCB, for example, at the intake level, there were, I believe, it’s 55 percent men and 45 percent women. When we looked at the completing entrepreneurs, that ratio had flipped. So 55 percent of the competing entrepreneurs were women and 45 percent were men.

-REBECCA HARRISON
Co-Founder and CEO, African Mangaement Institute (AMI)

Anna Gincherman [00:06:24] Excellent. And do you think this approach fits best, a particular profile of an entrepreneur? We know the SME segment is heterogenous as there are so many different types of business, sizes of businesses, and there is a gender aspect to it. Do you think your program is best suited for a particular profile or it’s kind of a universal application?

Rebecca Harrison [00:06:47] Yeah, that’s a great question.  There’s a few different lenses, size of business and gender.  Let’s take size of business. There’s two components. So one is the content needs to be tailored for the right size of business, but also the approach. So what Grow Your Business does is we begin the program with a diagnosis where the businesses take what we call the practices survey. And the survey aims to discover which practices are already being implemented and which aren’t. So it’s not how much do they know, it’s what are they doing. And based on that survey, the entrepreneur chooses five things that they want to implement in their business. So it could be starting to forecast that cash flow, starting to do one on one meetings with their direct reports. We’re not prescribing a learning journey. The entrepreneur decides what’s important for them. Now, that works really well for an entrepreneur who’s a little bit more established and who knows enough about their business to be able to identify what they need to do. What we’ve found is with earlier stage or smaller entrepreneurs, they need more direction and so they don’t yet know what they don’t know. And so they need a more directed learning journey. So that’s the big difference that smaller micro entrepreneurs need more guidance.

In terms of gender, we’ve seen some really interesting trends. So we noticed on the program with KCB, for example, at the intake level, there were, I believe, it’s 55 percent men and 45 percent women. When we looked at the completing entrepreneurs, that ratio had flipped. So 55 percent of the competing entrepreneurs were women and 45 percent were men. So women were more likely to complete the program. It seems based on qualitative feedback that they were more likely to translate what they’d learned into real impact for their business. So they were more likely to be implementing the practices, more likely to be growing their revenue, creating jobs.

Anna Gincherman [00:08:44] And why do you think that is?

Rebecca Harrison [00:08:46] Yeah, that’s the big question.  We have a few hypotheses that haven’t been tested. We think that because there are potentially fewer opportunities available to women, that when they get an opportunity like this, they’re more likely to seize it for the reasons that, you know, you at CCX have documented, life is particularly challenging for a female business owner. And so, you know, when you get an opportunity, you seize it and you run with it.  That’s one hypothesis. Another is that the blended learning approach may be particularly well-suited to women who might have multiple responsibilities. Instead of having to take a whole week out to come to class, they’re able to access learning on their phone in the evening during a break. And we’ve had feedback quite consistently from women that they really appreciate that flexibility.

Narration [00:09:35] Through AMI’s flexible schedule and innovative curriculum. Wanjiru finally got the motivation she needed to start her clothing business.

Wanjiru Mbugua [00:09:44] After the 2017 elections,  my other business, the marketing PR business was really slow. And I was thinking, what other business can I come up with. Then a friend of mine told me about this KCB workshop that she had been invited to. So she invited me to go and I went. And after that workshop, we were invited to join a program that would take about six months. It was a pilot program, Grow Your Business, GYB. And so they said, if you’re ready, we would start in January and to finish in July. I said, why not? Because the schedule appeared to be reasonable, because it wasn’t every day like a compass or any other school program. And so it was going to work for me. I had this idea, but had not started, RD clothing. And so when we started on the second month of my training, I remember there’s this trainer who asked us “what do you think are your four best ideas, business ideas that you can work with from the comfort of your bed? ” You know. Something that people would be using, something that people would like, something unique, something interesting that you would do as a business and change your life and channge other people’s lives. I said “That’s it.” That’s it for me. That was it. That’s was all I needed.

Wanjiru gives a customer outfit ideas. 

We’ve seen our NPS score go very high because of that extra mile that we have gone with the customers and it has also increased customer satisfaction levels to double-digit growth. So the non-financial services, comes as a pillar within the business model.

– NAOMI NDELE
Head of SME Banking, Kenya Commercial Bank 

Rebecca Harrison [00:11:07] Another really interesting aspect of GYB is the peer to peer networking and mentoring.  We definitely have program managers who are journeying with our entrepreneurs to help them extract insights and apply those to the business. But also where a lot of the learning happens, we believe is between the entrepreneurs themselves.  There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that a) entrepreneurs love networking. I’ve never met an entrepreneur who does not like networking. And also, you know, being a business owner can be lonely. They really get a lot of value from engaging with other business owners and learning from them.  We actually structure quite formally into the program what we call pods, which are small groups.  In between the formal workshops and while they’re accessing tools on the online platform, they’re also meeting in small groups and they’re sharing what they’re learning and critically they’re holding each other accountable to what they’re learning. And with we’re discovering that a lot of the value seems to be coming out of these pod groups.

Narration [00:12:11] For Samuel, a private school entrepreneur based in Nairobi, the close bond of his pod outlived the duration of the program.

Samuel Njenga [00:12:19] We were also joined with other business people. We formed pod. That we could even meet without the trainer, discuss. And up today, we are still challenging each other, talking, communicating. So that has really helped me a lot.

Anna Gincherman [00:12:35] From what we know that the partnership with KCB Group in Kenya was one of the first of AMI’s partnership with a banking institution. And we see more and more leading banks try to expand their SME proposition, understanding that it’s not only about access to finance, but it’s also about access to knowledge, access to skills, existing network, and that can really facilitate that business growth of their clientele. So from your point of view, where do you see the kind of the benefit for banks of partnering with institutions for yours?

Rebecca Harrison [00:13:20] Yeah. Well, first of all, we loved working with KCB. They’re a great partner, really engaged and really invested in the success of that of their business club members, entrepreneurs. Yeah. I mean, for me, the key benefits for the bank are around de-risking of the businesses.

Narration[00:13:38] As the head of SME banking at KCB, Naomi Ndele pays close attention to the impact of non-financial service programs on clients and on the bank’s overall portfolio growth.

Naomi Ndele [00:13:51] We had customers whose loans were going to be called up, but from the lessons of this training, they were able to restructure their finances and pay up their loans and actually completed the repayment of the loan within that the year of the AMI program. So the benefits of the blended learning were really impactful to the customers, which also resulted in a benefit to the bank in the sense that we were able to recover loans that were almost going bad.

Rebecca Harrison [00:14:22]  The second is just the power that it gives the brand, I think. I mean, when we worked with the KCB clients, we really saw them that the way that they felt towards KCB really turned around and shifted during the course of that program. So many of them saw such transformation and they saw KCB as an intrinsic part of that transformation and an intrinsic driver. So again, for the bank, having your brand associated with transformation in a business and the impact that’s going to have, I would imagine on a loyalty, client loyalty and kind of net promoter score would be really significant.

Naomi Ndele [00:15:01] We’ve seen our NPS score go very high because of that extra mile that we have gone with the customers and it has also increased customer satisfaction levels to double-digit growth. So the non-financial services, comes as a pillar within the business model. It goes beyond just giving products and solutions to walking the journey of building a business with a businessperson.

Samuel at his school in Nairobi, Kenya 

Rebecca Harrison [00:15:35] The other kind of real differentiators of your business is that we’re razor-sharp focused on business impact. Most training programs, the only metric they track is bums on seats or number of people trained and they really don’t track in any kind of rigorous way the real impact on the business. For a lot of the traditional training programs in entrepreneurship around Africa, we don’t actually really know if they work. Not only do we take impact measurement really seriously, but we’ve actually embedded it into the core of the program. We believe that if you measure it, it gets done. A core part of this program is helping entrepreneurs see that if they understand what’s happening in their business, they can identify the core drivers and they can make good decisions. the first thing they do when they come on to grow your business is to start tracking their revenue, their costs, their profits. And we also ask them about the size of their workforce. So we can eventually track job creation and what we see immediately as once they start doing that, they suddenly realize are not quite making the amount of money that I thought I was. And that really quickly concentrates their minds. They get bought into the program really quickly because they start seeing where they can make more money, which is all entrepreneurs want to do. And they quickly start then using some of our tools to negotiate with suppliers to reduce their costs through minimizing waste. They stop serving their customers so they can see what their customers really want. How can they maximize revenue? They start changing the way they deal with their team and thinking about how they deal with their employees.

Samuel Njenga [00:17:10] One is how my staff are today. The way I deal with them, with the training that I got, they are very happy. We do a lot of team building. We do a lot of training and therefore they are really empowered. It is through them that I’m able to get the results that I’m getting in the classroom because I’m the manager. I’m not able to teach every child or even I don’t teach. I do the management. Therefore, by empowering my staff, by giving them a lot of exposure, doing a lot of team building, meeting their needs as they give the feedback, they do the work and therefore we get the results.

Rebecca Harrison [00:17:53] So you see that because they’re measuring what’s happening in the business, that’s what actually drives the impact. And then, you know, of course, it feeds itself. So then we go on to kind of measure business impact against those metrics on a regular basis during and beyond the program.

Narration [00:18:09] Since Anna sat down to talk with Rebecca in late January, AMI has had to make considerable changes to their delivery of educational material as a result of the public health implications of Covid-19. For the foreseeable future, all of AMI’s classes and session will be online. To retain the aspect of  “human touch element,” AMI will be conducting webinars and video conferencing where participants will have the opportunity to role play and network with other members in their cohort. For businesses struggling to adjust to new financial burdens and changing work environments, AMI is now offering a free ‘Covid-19 virtual business survival bootcamp. Through this bootcamp, entrepreneurs can learn how to manage remote teams, lead in a crisis, optimize  health and hygiene at work, and financial forecast  in an economic slowdown.

In these uncertain times, the need for SMEs to learn, adapt and thrive is paramount for the global economy to rebound. Over the next few years, ConsumerCentriX looks forward to partnering  with AMI on developing scalable solutions that will equip SMEs across Africa with the right practices and habits to grow their business and create economic stability for their families and communities.

To learn more about AMI's COVID-19 bootcamp click here

Anna and Rebecca after wrapping up the interview


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