Sunday
July 30, all roads led to Royal Event Centre, Ikeja, Lagos, venue of the
prestigious 2017 Prestige Excellence Award where leaders and champions in
various areas of human Endeavour were honored and recognized.
Top technocrat, Mr. Bola Akindele emerged as Most Outstanding Entrepreneur and Corporate
Strategist of the Year.
The glamorous event is powered by Prestige International Magazine, a fast
growing celebrity journal.
According
to Mr. Wale Abiodun, Publisher of the magazine, in his speech the event was put
together to give accolades to the deserving. Awardees are drawn from various sectors
like education, banking, hospitality, politics, religion, business, law,
security and so on.
Bola
Akindele has since become a role model, corporate strategist and entrepreneur
per excellence. Since his foray into entrepreneurship he has been a shining
light to young and prospective entrepreneurs.
The astute board room guru is
the Founder and Group Managing Director of Courteville Business Solutions Plc,
a business process outsourcing and information technology solutions company. He
has over three decades of professional experience spanning audit, banking,
business development, and information technology. His leadership assets have
strengthened Courteville’s culture of innovation, expanded the company into new
markets, and extended its product portfolio. In 2008-9, he led the company’s
initial public offering and listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, setting a
record as the first business process outsourcing and e-business solutions
development company to go public in Nigeria
Undoubtedly, Bola Akindele is a shining light
for young entrepreneurs. He has the passion to always mentor young
entrepreneurs to success.
Bola Akindele, is an entrepreneur and
corporate strategist per excellence. He is a thorough bred professional with
over three decades of professional experience spanning audit, banking,
e-commerce, entrepreneurship, and technology. For more than 20 years,
Akindele was living the dream of an aspiring business executive. After
graduating with a B.Agric in Animal Science from the University of Ife (now
Obafemi Awolowo University), and earned an M.Sc. in Banking and Finance from
the University of Lagos, Akindele started his professional career as an audit
intern at KPMG Peat Marwick, Ani Ogunde & Co. in 1987.
He later landed a job at the Central
Bank of Nigeria(CBN) where he rose to become Treasurer/Financial Controller of
the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme (ACGS). While at the CBN, he also
served as a Bank Examiner on various occasions. He kept climbing the industry
ladder.
He moved to the defunct Oceanic Bank
where he worked on several high-profile transactions and market deals.
The world of banking was filled with
high-energy, ambitious, and untiring hotshots like him. But all his hard work
paid off. He stood out from the rest and landed the most-coveted positions.
This tremendous exposure gave him
what he needed to become an entrepreneur. Consequently, he incorporated
Courteville Investment Limited, in 2004. The firm went public in 2009; in 2011,
it underwent a name change to become Courteville Business Solutions.
The firm is key e-business solutions
and advisory provider and the first in its sector to be listed on the Nigerian
Stock Exchange (NSE), with shareholders’ funds in excess of $20million.
On the company various services he
told The Business Year in an
interview that: “Courteville
Business Solutions (CBS) offers services aimed at improving process
efficiencies for the private and public sectors. This provides us with
opportunities to look at gaps and overlaps in how things are done. We can then
decide whether to apply a system to walk a firm through the development of a
web or application processing system.
“We choose to go with mobile web or
application services to help companies deliver their products and services to
the satisfaction of all stakeholders. AutoReg is our flagship tool, while the
other new one is Egole Shopping, an online shopping site that I am proud to say
is the only profitable e-commerce site in the whole of West Africa. There are
over 250 merchants on Egole Shopping that have been provided with virtual
office suites and shops through which they can sell their goods. That is what
we do. We help buyers get onto the site, and help companies to sell their
products. However, you cannot always successfully copy and paste a model that
apparently works well in the West into the Nigerian Market. You have to take
culture into consideration, which is what we have done with Egole, a shopping
platform that allows over 10,000 users, on a daily basis, to visit the site and
browse for goods”.
On various tools Courteville offer to
different industries, the top corporate strategist told The Business Year that:
“We have a relationship with the Nigerian
Insurance Association, whereby we designed, developed, and manage the entire
database management system for insurance policy issuance on motor vehicles
across the whole of Nigeria on behalf of the Association. And now, we are in
the process of adding marine insurance policy documentation to that. Thanks to
practices like this, every single motor vehicle in Nigeria is now authentically
insured.
“I would hope to see a model like this not
only implemented by Courteville, but also by the insurance industry as a whole.
It would contribute greatly to the way the general tariff is structured in
Nigeria. It would also help insurance companies in confirming when the customer
signs a policy with them. It allows the regulators of the industry to get a
clearer sense of the kind of business that is happening in the industry, and
this has been a major issue in the past. We also work with the National Agency
for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) by providing a system
that has allowed it to reduce the processing period for the approval of
certification processes of all manufactured products or imported/exported goods
from what used to
Meanwhile, the company was recently
rated as the second best company to work in Nigeria. Undoubtedly, Courteville
sterling performance under the leadership of Bola Akindele fetched the company
such feat. On the recent award for the company, Akindele said in an interview
with The Business Year:
“The
difference is that we are unique. As a company, we are known for our unique
performance in service delivery. We are known for being unique in the kind of
people we employ, the people we build capacity in and the kind of culture that
we proclaim for ourselves. We try to do things differently, not just different
to make it sensible and very seamless to achieving corporate goals and
objectives, but also personal goals.
“We started by getting people that
we are sure can grow with us, can understand us and add value to what we have
created. We come together as a family at least three times a year to fashion
out ways of creating the goals, objectives, company strategy and our culture;
and we monitor ourselves within and from the outside. Everywhere you see a member of staff of Courtville, it is the same
culture you see, the same relationship you feel and the same quality of service
delivery that you get as well as the same sense of belonging. We create leaders
of everyone that we bring in no matter the level at which you were recruited”.
