Contributed by Farzana Rasheed and Haresh Karamchandani
2012 has been a tremendous year for NATC.
 |
| Welcome to NATC! |
We would like to take the time to
reminisce and mull over our successes, challenges and plans. Bear
with us as we walk down memory lane and, we hope you enjoy reading our latest
blog post.
Below
are some of the significant highlights of this past year:
New
office!
We
shifted to a swanky new office which
our
friends and clients upon entering exclaim is the
nicest one in Monrovia. Wooden floors, high
ceilings and a funky open layout, our office which
we affectionately refer to as ‘THE
LOFT’ is our pride and joy. We commissioned a design and oversaw
its implementation over six months. An Office Warming party was held on 28 March and you can see the fabulous photos on our Facebook page.
It truly reflects our image as a
modern company dedicated to bringing world-class IT services and
products in a challenging
and exciting environment like Liberia.
We
look forward to welcoming you into our office for an espresso and a
chat about your IT needs.
 |
CEO, Farzana Rasheed, and Head of Operations, Haresh Karamchandani,
share a friendly cup of tea. |
New
position!
A
new position was added to our team - that of a marketing consultant.
This position is intended to manage our social media presence, jazz
up our templates and forms, and interact with our clients to ensure
we are constantly aware of their satisfaction levels.
This
position was firstly filled by Guillaume Foutry who did a
fantastic job of capturing the work of our techies through his
concise nerdy writing style for our blog; updated our tired-looking
templates; edited our techies' reports; updated our website; built a
website for a client; brought us new clients; accompanied our techies
on out-of-town missions; and, stepped in whenever management was out
of town. We were extremely sorry to see him go but wish him the best
in his future endeavours. We will always appreciate his consistent
efforts to help us with innovative ideas on how to have more
efficient internal procedures which would help us deliver better
service to our clients.
The
marketing consultant is now Corinna Bordewieck. We are extremely
happy to have her on board since December 2012. We are grateful to
her for quickly stepping up to the plate and, in fact, acting like an
Office Manager plus Marketing Consultant since the CEO is away on
maternity-leave and, the Head
of Operations is also away for moral support.
New
website!
NATC
is proud to announce that we have refurbished our website.
There was a dire need to update our web address since so many
excellent new developments have taken place since 2010 that needed to
be effectively shown off!
Guillaume
Foutry will be contributing a post shortly to capture how he created it.
First
V-sat deal!
Internet
is famously slow and expensive in Liberia. Although the fiber optic
cable landed on Liberian shores, it is still to be deployed and
commercialized. It is still difficult to estimate as to when
broadband will become a reality.
Meanwhile,
internet is available through GSM, fixed wireless or V-SAT.
NATC
has been quite keen on entering the V-SAT market after gaining an
excellent command of on ground IT services such as networking,
regular maintenance of hardware and software, diagnosis and repairs
of hardware, and ad hoc tech support. After submission of countless
proposals and proforma invoices, we finally made a breakthrough!
We
are providing internet services to our client via V-sat on the
DVB-SCPC platform using the State of the Art Datum Modem and DVB
receiver. This technology enables us to keep the prices at nearly 50%
lower than that of the regular iDirect platform that other V-sat
providers have implemented. Please feel free to contact us for a
quote and a demo.
Finally
found a great banking partner!
Businesses
need capital to invest and grow. Businesses need a reliable and
efficient banking partner. For around 2 years, we were constantly
frustrated with our bank (which was more like a crowded bus-stop
always) which we shall not name for sake of diplomacy.
We
finally came across a bank which finally understands and appreciates
the needs of growing business in Liberia. In fact, it is worth
mentioning of when
and how
we came across our bank: during one of our famous evening walks
around central Monrovia when the CEO and Head
of Operations unwind and excite ourselves by coming up with new
business ideas to take over West Africa. We were walking on Crown
Hill
when we came across a new building and what seemed to be the
impending opening of a new bank. We eventually got a meeting with the
dynamic Managing Director of the bank who was as excited as us in
exploring mutually beneficial opportunities.
We
have managed to secure capital for our business through some very
innovative flexible facilities which has helped us with much needed
finance and taken our cash flow to another level.
A
Great Team
 |
| Jonathan Barwon |
It
would be unfair to mention our significant highlights of the year
without celebrating the everyday work accomplished by our hardworking
staff: Jonathan Barwon, Head
of IT; Patience Nyepanh, Finance and Administration; Daniel Collins,
IT Trainee; Cheayee Gee, IT Trainee; Alex Baryou, Printer
Wizard, and,
Emmanuel Jacobs, Messenger.
Jonathan
is our senior IT staff who is most responsible for all our clients'
IT needs. He
has hardly missed a day since he joined us in 2010. He
never gives up until he solves the problem. And, he does it with
utmost humility.
The
rest of our IT Trainees are eager to learn and contribute.
Patience
is the beautiful face on our blog. She is our dedicated finance and
administrative officer who does our banking, chases payments,
maintains our records, and does all our taxes and permits. And she
does it with style and elegance that is admirable for a young lady
for her age.
 |
| Patience Nyepanh |
Last
but not least, Emmanuel brings his untiring enthusiasm and smile to
our office every day.
Like any business, there are continuing
challenges:
Finding
an international level IT Engineer
As
much as we are proud of our local team's excellent work in providing IT
services to our clients, we now need to take our game to the next
level. We feel we will only be able to do this by hiring an IT
Engineer with more international exposure and skills in newer
technologies so we are in a prime position to support our clients in
the near future.
It
has been a difficult proposition to attract and hire such a
professional, probably because Liberia may not seem like an IT
destination to most IT professionals.
We
are now exploring advertising the position through Escape the City and, possibly hiring an HR
Company. We were under the impression that merely spreading our
requirement through word of mouth, a forum like Google Expats Group
and such would solve our problem but after all, you need
professionals to do a good job. We should know since we also depend
on our clients understanding this fine point.
We
hope to find the right person very soon.
Shipping
blues:
Yes,
all was not rosy. We did encounter a very serious debacle recently with one of
our inbound shipments on Fedex. We received purchase orders from our
clients for supplies of genuine toners and other IT related equipment
which was promptly handled by our overseas supplier in Houston,
Texas, USA. Unfortunately the complete consignment went “missing”
in transit, and all efforts (including a trip to Kenya and Accra to
personally locate the boxes by our Head of Operations) have failed.
We have had to write off this consignment and re-order the same goods
in order to deliver the purchase orders.
Finally, we
have some future plans.
Our
immediate plan for 2013 is to open a fully fledged and equipped
branch office and workshop stocked with genuine supplies and equipped
with necessary diagnostic and repair tools in the very fast growing
city of Buchanan. This move has been encouraged due to the movement
of one of our major clients to Buchannan and in keeping with our
commitment of providing best services and prompt supplies we feel
that this move is very important. We are on the lookout for a
suitable location at Buchanan and should be able to complete the
formalities before March 2013.
We
also are seriously considering a plan to open an office in the newest
country – South Sudan, watch this space!
We wish everyone a prosperous and successful 2013!
