LAGOS, Nigeria — Rising operating costs, shrinking profit margins and the need for faster decision-making are increasingly challenging productivity in Nigeria’s private sector, the Managing Director of Radiant diGiLog, Mrs Tayo Babatunde, has said.
Babatunde, in a statement issued in Lagos on Monday, said the challenges were compounded by the growing complexity of managing distributed teams operating across different locations, shifts, projects and countries.
She said the increasing pressure on businesses to remain competitive had made operational visibility a critical leadership capability rather than merely a back-office function.
According to her, many business leaders still struggle to obtain timely answers to basic operational questions, including which employees are available, what tasks have been completed, which teams require support and where delays are occurring.
She said the speed at which organisations could obtain and act on such information would increasingly determine their ability to compete effectively.
“For years, organisations have invested in hiring talented people, improving customer experience and expanding into new markets. However, one challenge continues to surface across businesses of every size: leaders struggle to answer what should be simple operational questions,” she said.
Babatunde noted that as companies expanded, work had become more distributed, with managers increasingly relying on meetings, telephone calls, spreadsheets, emails and messaging platforms to gather information before making decisions.
She said the problem was often not that employees were unwilling to work, but that managers lacked timely visibility into what was happening across their operations.
“It is rare that people are not working hard. The issue is that more often, leaders lack timely visibility into what is happening across their operations,” she said.
The managing director said Radiant diGiLog had, in recent months, engaged organisations across logistics, hospitality, manufacturing, professional services and retail, with the engagements revealing a common operational challenge.
She said businesses were not necessarily suffering from a lack of information, but from the difficulty of bringing the right information together at the right time to enable managers to act confidently.
Babatunde said Radiant diGiLog, an Artificial Intelligence-powered workforce management and employee productivity platform, was developed to help businesses eliminate manual record-keeping, streamline task execution and strengthen operational visibility.
According to her, better visibility could improve communication, strengthen accountability and reduce the amount of time managers spend searching for updates, allowing them to focus more on supporting their teams.
She added that improved operational visibility could also help employees understand their responsibilities and expectations more clearly, thereby shifting workplace management from a reactive to a proactive approach.
“Technology alone does not create these outcomes. People do, but technology gives people the clarity they need to make better decisions, collaborate more effectively and focus on the work that creates value,” she said.
Babatunde also cautioned against viewing operational visibility as a form of employee surveillance, saying its purpose should be to provide leaders with the confidence to make timely decisions while giving employees the clarity needed to perform effectively.
She said the company approached workforce management as a connected operating system rather than a collection of isolated tools.
“This is why we approach workforce management as a connected operating system rather than a collection of isolated tools through our digital platform, Radiant diGiLog,” she said.
Babatunde explained that scheduling could be connected with attendance, attendance with task execution, and field activities with live location visibility where appropriate.
She added that communication, leave requests, approvals, forms and reporting could also be integrated into the same operational environment to provide a single view of how an organisation was functioning.
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The managing director said disconnected business activities forced leaders to spend valuable time searching for information, while connected systems enabled them to devote more time to leadership and strategic decision-making.
“When they are connected, leaders spend more time leading,” she said.This version keeps the focus on the rising cost of doing business and productivity pressures, while retaining the technology angle as the solution rather than allowing it to overshadow the main news point.
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