The critical role of leadership in supporting a remote team.

Nine months ago I stepped into a leadership role at Sava that would allow me to strategically work with an executive team of three. I found the ideation and concept development foundation already laid, and my initial primary duty was to support their individual functions from an operations lens. This meant I had to first take time to understand the full scope of the company offerings to identify profitable business opportunities, then assess the competitive landscape and zero in on the best practices of global players in the fintech space. The subsequent step wasdesigning and implementing business strategies, plans and procedures. <br/> Within a few weeks, it was evident that Sava was gradually starting to have legs and it was time to source additional talent that would help us take greater strides towards our vision of supporting African businesses stay afloat and scale. <br/> We started hiring for crucial roles — so the team was expanding fairly quickly. The catch was that the existing team was not in one location — and even the consultants we were having initial conversations with were in different parts of the continent. So I had to maintain precision in keeping track of individual schedules and timezones to efficiently set up virtual and some in-person meetings. As I sat in on these introductory calls to listen and learn about the person potentially joining us, I soon realised that we didn’t have a structured onboarding process and this would eventually affect team motivation and productivity short-term. And because we were on stealth mode, I knew we could easily fall into the trap of squandering those precious moments of welcoming our new hires. I decided that as Chief of Staff I would devise a clear-cut onboarding process, and I was ready to take on the extra hours to offer introductory support, guided by Sava’s vision. <br/>As I near my tenth month, I’ve realised that my role has become multifaceted, now that I’m working with the different teams that make up this business. From a sturdy tech team, to a creative and strategic marketing team, to a top tier growth team, I have my feet deep in the ground in all departments as well as all aspects of Sava. <br/>A large percentage of the work I do daily involves leadership. To constructively ensure all teams are aligned and satisfied, I’ve leaned on a quote I hold highly: “You don’t manage people; you lead them.” But to serve as a leader, I’ve had to first understand my team. This has looked like designing the onboarding process to include sharing and learning; essentially active listening to understand how each person joining the team thinks, their ways of working, and even their strengths. Emotional intelligence has also been instrumental whenever challenges arise and are being addressed. For this I’ve borrowed from my educational background in engineering where one of the key pillars in projects has been to bravely take on a solution-oriented approach. <br/>Having previously worked with a remote team to coordinate the development and subsequent launch of a product with Econet wireless under Cummi Technologies, I have structured my managerial plan to fit within the Sava culture, which includes teamwork. This has allowed the entire team to not just understand who is part of the team and what their strengths are, but also believe in and embrace the end goal. <br/> Everything has built up to this stage — which is one where we’re in the final loop to the launch. Having taken stock of my time in this role and the work I’ve done, I’m happy with the mileage we’ve covered collectively. And I’ve now deliberately set a routine to take time to think through how we can be consistently efficient as more processes are set. By doing this, my work has taken on another facet, which involves giving feedback to all levels of the internal team. <br/> I don’t restrict the definition of leadership into a single bracket because it’s a function that comprises many things. But being an effective leader is what I aim to continuously practise within this role as the business continues to grow. <br/> <i>Get to experience how Sava is designed to simplify and transform the way you manage your finances. Book a demo today and start your journey to growth. </i> <br/> <a href="https://sava.africa/">https://sava.africa/</a>

Navigating the Future of Banking with Advanced Design Patterns: A Journey from the 90s to Now

The recent situation between Mercury and Synapse has stirred up quite the conversation in the fintech community, and understandably so. Banking and fintech relationships are intricate, and the choice to build or rely on third-party providers can have significant implications. Last year, we at Sava found ourselves in a strikingly similar position. We had partnered with a Banking-as-a-Service provider, fully expecting to harness their solutions to catapult our platform to the forefront. However, as we delved deeper, it became abundantly clear that they could not deliver on the expected product proposition. <br/> This revelation was a defining moment for us. While the easy route would have been to search for another third-party provider, we decided to confront the challenge head-on. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Synapse, we embarked on the ambitious journey of building our own in-house BaaS solution. This decision came with its set of sacrifices – it pushed our launch timeline back by a year. But looking back now, that decision was pivotal. Not only did it grant us greater control and flexibility over our platform, but it also allowed us to ensure we could deliver the seamless experience we envisioned for our users and control our costs as we scale. <br/> At Sava, we deliberately charted a distinct path. Our strategy was rooted in constructing from the foundation upwards, with an emphasis on self-reliance and nurturing our in-house expertise. This endeavor saw us internally developing three pivotal components of our tech stack: <b>core banking</b>, <b>card issuance</b>, and <b>spend management<b/>. Through this approach, our primary objective was to maintain control of our stack, ensuring we reduce turbulence and navigate more smoothly as we ascend to our envisioned altitude. <br/> The lessons from our journey, and those of Mercury and Synapse, serve as a reminder. In the rapidly evolving world of fintech, adaptability, resilience, and a clear vision are more than just buzzwords – they're the foundation upon which sustainable and robust platforms are built. <br/> In the ever-evolving landscape of fintech, embracing forward-thinking technology while integrating with legacy banking systems can be both a challenge and a thrill. As we embarked on our journey at Sava, one of the pivotal decisions we made was to utilize NATS (a connective technology) and an event-driven technology stack. This choice wasn't just about being avant-garde; it was a deliberate step to shape the future of banking. <br/> The decision came with its set of challenges. Building directly into a bank's tech stack feels like taking a leap back in time. Suddenly, you're face-to-face with SIS extensions, legacy ftp, deciphering and interfacing with technologies from the 90s. For me, this has been a stretch experience, akin to a developer's version of time-travel. On one hand, you're diving deep into the annals of banking tech, and on the other, you're ensuring that the solutions you create are fit for the future. <br/> Today's business banking platforms primarily focus on transactions, credit and account management. The current inflexibility inherent in core banking infrastructure constrains the capacity to craft truly personalized experiences for businesses. The future of business banking envisions a unified network of platforms designed to empower businesses to realize their full potential. This includes: <br/> <ul><li>The capability to establish customized spending management solutions tailored to each organization. (e.g as a business with sales teams around the continent, I want location, budget and time based restrictions on their allocated cards and digital wallets)</li><li>An open-source, intelligent loyalty and rewards framework adaptable to evolving business demands (e.g as an education business, I am more interested in book purchase rewards than additional flight miles)</li><li>Embedded interfaces that seamlessly integrate business banking functions into our daily touch points (e.g easier e-commerce checkout experience)</li><li>Dynamic dashboards that respond to your business's health (e.g., automatically offering support during slow revenue months).</li><li>Enhanced integrations with invoice management, service providers, accounting systems and payroll services. (e.g integrate with my email to schedule my invoices and payment reminders based on my cashflow)</li></ul><br/><b>But why NATS and why an event-driven stack?</b> Traditional methods often fall short in providing the real-time responsiveness and scalability that modern banking requires and these restrictions drove our search for a connective technology that will power the modern distributed systems of the future. With NATS, we've harnessed a messaging system that's not just high-performance but also resilient. Coupled with our event-driven architecture, it ensures that our platform is always responsive, dynamic, and real-time by default.<br/>Our strategic collaboration with Mastercard necessitates the implementation of intricate spending rules on millions of transactions, along with the ability to swiftly make organization-specific determinations in real-time, all while maintaining a high-quality user experience with zero downtime. An off-the-shelf core banking solution would not have met these rigorous requirements.<br/>However, innovation isn't just about speed and agility; it's also about the design. At Sava, we are pioneering the use of advanced design patterns that promise a robust future for banking:<br/><ol><li><b>Agnostic Data Structures:</b> This ensures that our system can interface with a wide range of data formats, future-proofing our integration capabilities.</li><li><b>API First:</b> By designing with APIs at the forefront, we ensure flexibility, interoperability, and scalability.</li><li><b>Modular Platform:</b> Modularity allows for easier updates, integrations, and ensures that our system can evolve without becoming unwieldy.</li><li><b>Global Deployments:</b> SAVA's infrastructure is designed to be compatible with any cloud platform, allowing us to leverage the optimal hosting and deployment solutions from a variety of options.</li><li><b>Decentralised Security:</b> The Zero trust environment enabled by PKI ensures that private keys are never exchanged between parties, enabling a more secure distributed security mechanism.</li><li><b>Disaster Recovery:</b> The self-healing nature of NATS coupled with support for multi-geolocation deployments via superclusters provides SAVA the freedom to migrate data between providers with ease, enabling use to create a modern distributed system with durability guarantees and eventual consistency.</li></ol><br/>Lastly, security is paramount. As we innovate, we are ever-conscious of the need to protect our systems and the data within them. To this end, our APIs are shielded with multiple layers of security. Frontend clients will benefit from the protection of opaque session tokens, while backend service communication will be fortified using short-lived JWTs. This strategy ensures minimal exposure for each request, upholding the integrity and safety of our platform.<br/>Here are a few companies building with NATS<br/>It's a thrilling time to be at the intersection of legacy banking and cutting-edge fintech. At Sava, we're not just building a product; we're weaving the tapestry of the next era of banking.

How Google AdWords payment reminders led me to Sava!

I've been fortunate to discover business opportunities through solving my own problems. In 2017, a colleague and I set up Workstyle Africa to create a comfortable, professional and flexible workspace that spoke to our needs as entrepreneurs in Kenya. Workstyle had a stellar kick off within the first year; however, spend management on the backend quickly became a forestalling hurdle. <br/> Our business bank didn’t have a live transaction tracking feature. This meant we didn’t have clarity on how much was on our business card at any given time, and often we’d only find out the card needed a top up whenever Google alert told us the card payment declined for our AdWords subscription. With both myself and my business partner preoccupied with other tasks, we’d often lose a few days of social media ad coverage each month before we got around to topping up the account. This was a tangible hindrance to our growth marketing efforts that we needed to resolve. <br/> Then on multiple occasions our staff went out-of-pocket for unexpected business expenses while I was out of town. To reimburse our staff as soon as possible, our in-house accountant spent a few days each month on tedious, time consuming expense reconciliations. But despite all his effort, it remained difficult to fully reconcile all the expenses. In one instance, after days of reconciling the costs of launching our second office, we discovered that 30% of the spend had been labelled as miscellaneous! <br/> We needed a solution that empowered our employees to spend directly on the business account but still gave us control and real-time visibility on all the spend. Sharing my frustrations with Yoeal and Kola, I realised they too faced similar challenges in their businesses which were in completely different industries and locations. We quickly realised this was a significant issue for SMEs across Africa and we resolved to build a solution. <br/> Fast forward to 2022: we’ve launched Sava, a spend management platform that solves inadequate spend controls, manual and time-consuming expense reconciliations, and delayed visibility on a company’s true cash flow position. Sava streamlines this entire process by enabling SMEs to issue an unlimited number of cards for staff while <b>controlling spend before it happens</b>. Additionally, Sava’s dashboard offers <b>real-time visibility</b> on company spend, and automates the expense reconciliations process ultimately <b>freeing up time for higher-value tasks!</b><br/>I’m grateful to have developed a solution to solve my own business challenges — but more importantly, I’m excited to see how it will empower Africa’s SME to take charge of their growth!

The expense management solution for entrepreneurs running businesses remotely

Having a small business outside of a full-time job is nothing new in today's business environment. I've worked with some consultants who openly share that they have more than one stream of income, and some have even taken active strides to start their own businesses while in employment. Brian is a friend and business colleague who falls within this group.<br/>I previously worked with him and we’ve maintained a great relationship as we’ve both progressed in our respective professional interests. So when he decided to start a business during the pandemic, I was happy to know that he had also taken up the entrepreneurial hat.<br/>He had identified a gap in his community, and took up the mantle to build a water depot that would serve informal settlements. With specific, strategic systems in place, he successfully sourced staff who would offer customer support, manage dispatch, and complete deliveries.<br/>Brian’s now been in business for almost two years and has opened three more depots. A recent catch up with him helped me understand his developments as well as the areas he’s still working to strengthen. On the latter, he shared: “Managing how much the business is spending is consistently proving to be difficult. I’m sometimes forced to use my personal mobile money or bank, and then I have to stop what I’m doing to note down these expense reports.” From our conversation I was reminded that business isn’t always a clearly defined path, but this facet of business finances continues to frustrate entrepreneurs across different industries. The challenge here is Brian doesn’t have the time to track and compile all these reports, then follow up on receipts or payment confirmations.<br/>When I shared my own similar challenges in previous businesses and how these informed the decision to create Sava, I could tell he was interested in learning how it would work to his advantage. For a business like his, where he still wants complete control without feeling overly consumed in mundane admin tasks, Sava’s expense management feature makes the most sense.<br/>The decision to include this feature took into consideration entrepreneurs like Brian. It’s a digital dashboard that offers a business owner a 360 degree view on all the money going out of their business and what it’s being spent on. This helps oversee and understand all the business expenses, and have a central place to view them at their convenience.<br/>If, like Brian you have a notebook that you’ve previously used to note down reports, with Sava you can now use it for notes on business ideas and progressions. And whether you’re managing your business remotely or on the fly, you get to have complete control with no stress whatsoever.<br/>Book a demo with Sava today to experience the expense management software and discover other spend management tools that are guaranteed to improve productivity while saving you money and retaining your control.

Building relationships from a customer-centred and value-focused perspective

There’s something many people don’t know about marketing, and that’s that it is most successful when well-built, structured systems are in place. These systems define processes and strategies to be followed or implemented with the goal of building clients’ trust. I both learned this and made it the basis of my work when I was developing brand strategies at Centum Investment Company Ltd for the organisation’s subsidiaries and working at Sendy.<br/> The more known and talked about side of marketing is customer acquisition — and even this is founded on the right systems. However, after that, comes retention — which is only successful once trust has been built. This is where marketing becomes nurturing. In early stage startups, this requires user research.<br/>Since joining Sava as Growth Manager for Kenya, my work has encompassed building funnels, crafting clear and compelling messages, collaborating with various departments, and nurturing relationships with potential users. By exploring the various fintech needs across the continent as our starting point, we have been able to make significant strides in the South Africa market. And to refine the product for the Kenya market, I have had to exchange notes and ideas with the executive team on the possible similarities and disparities between Southern Africa and East Africa markets. For instance, across the board, managing business spending is something that needs improvement; however, corporate cards are popular among businesses in S.A., but Kenyans practically live off of M-Pesa (a mobile money service).<br/>So with this information, the question then becomes… which of our products strongly speaks to this market? A question like this informs three things: the analysis of continuous pain points of businesses of different sizes in Kenya, which features we market to these businesses, and how we do it.<br/>With more than 90% of our processes and strategies complete or underway, it’s now time for business owners and finance managers to experience it. By signing up for a Sava product demo, you get to actually see the simple side of controlling how much your business is spending while using automated controls to save time on finance-related tasks and in turn saving much more money than you anticipated.

Continuous lessons in creative-solving for SMBs’ financial setbacks

Understanding customer pain points to improve products and processes has guided my work for the past seven years. I started my career at Ernst & Young where I consulted on initiatives focused on the delivery of large-scale operational and technological transformation for EY clients across the financial services industry.<br/>At EY, I sought opportunities to nurture my interest in payments by aligning to the Banking and Payments Practice. I was called upon to grow my passion further and get closer to this industry by joining American Express.<br/>When I transitioned from Ernst and Young to Strategy roles at American Express, I had the opportunity to be part of the Strategic Initiatives team in Global Finance Organisation, and in the Global Merchant and Network Services (GMNS) team. The latter worked with cross-functional organisations to help grow AmEx better serve its customers and grow its purchase volume.<br/>In Summer 2020, AmEx acquired <b>Kabbage</b>, an SMB-focused lender. In the US, AmEx is the corporate credit card provider for 60% of Fortune 500 companies and has historically dominated the corporate credit business. As such, this was an exciting time for AmEx as the acquisition was part of the company’s strategy to service small and business customers and to continue growing this customer base.<br/>One of the key technology transformation projects I worked on at the time was the decommissioning of legacy credit underwriting platforms at AmEx and migrating customers into a new platform. This migration also involved adopting a new strategy for data sourcing and credit underwriting of a broader range of customer base. As part of this effort, our team needed to consider the implications of working not just with corporate fortune 500 companies, but also with smaller businesses for which we needed to deploy different data sourcing strategies for varying customer bases with very different needs.<br/>“How can we better serve businesses with a wide range of attributes with our business offering?” was the question that was top of mind.<br/>Fast forward to my work at Sava. My role in growth & strategy is guided by a straightforward question: “How can we build offerings that solve the problems of customers that have been traditionally left out by the incumbents?”<br/>Fortunately, I don’t answer this question alone. Together with the team, we use the voice of the customer and incorporate the customer’s feedback in our product development. After continuous phases of product improvements based on feedback we’ve gathered from users, we’ve been able to validate several assumptions that we initially had about the customers’ problems.This stage is equally challenging and exciting for Sava. As we acquire our first customers, we’ve adopted a product-led growth model. In order to do so, we strive to eliminate unnecessary friction in the customer journey and maximise the customer delight.<br/>What’s most exciting is the result: a customer who initially had issues with different facets of spend management finally seeing that they can use one platform to resolve and simplify financial management. It all goes back to studying a segment and creatively developing or improving a solution for them.<br/><i>Get to experience how Sava is designed to simplify and transform the way you manage your finances. Book a demo today and start your journey to growth!</i><br/><a href="https://sava.africa/">#GetSava</a>