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Ms Njeri Rionge at a past function. She has set up Insite Ltd to offer
SMEs cloud-based applications priced at Sh1,000 per month. Photo/FILE
By DAVID HERBLING, hdavid@ke.nationmedia.com
In Summary
- Njeri Rionge has set up Insite Ltd which offers businesses applications priced at as low as Sh1,000 per month.
Njeri Rionge, one of Kenya’s pioneer internet
entrepreneurs, has turned to developing software targeted at digitising
the running of small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Ms Rionge, the founder of Wananchi Online and who
also served as chief executive until 2006, has set up Insite Ltd to
offer SMEs cloud-based applications priced at Sh1,000 a month.
The 48-year-old techie said that her business
technology solution targets the mass market to computerise aspects such
as accounting, payroll, e-commerce, and customer relationship
management.
Ms Rionge said that the pricing and design of the
range of business management software she is offering will disrupt
Kenya’s tech space and hopes to replicate the success of Wananchi which
her team built from scratch to a cable, broadband and internet-based
telephone provider.
Ms Rionge has effectively put on notice the big
boys in the business software market such as Sage Pastel, SAP and Oracle
that she is determined to win a big chunk of the industry.
“We are creating solutions for businesses to
automate their operations and help create value rather than work in
chaos,” Ms Rionge said in an interview with the Business Daily.
“There is need to develop content to get SMEs to
use cloud-based apps. If we get businesses to use online solutions, the
price of Internet will go down as there will be higher uptake of
bandwidth.”
Ms Rionge, who serves as a director at Wananchi
Group, said that Kenyan businesses stand to reap huge benefits by
signing up to online solutions to store data, upload documents, make
payments and manage staff records.
Ms Rionge said the idea to form an SME-focused
tech start-up was conceived when she got into business consultancy after
quitting Wananchi’s corner office in 2006.
She formed Ignite Consulting to advise businesses on strategy execution, organisational effectiveness and skills training.
“I realised most businesses had not integrated
their operations hence it was a challenge to execute strategies across
departments.”
Birth of Insite
This led to the birth of Insite in January 2010.
Two years later, Ms Rionge brought in David Ngugi, the brains behind
NyeriOnline.com — a portal for all news and information regarding Nyeri
County.
Insite’s flagship cloud app is dubbed Peach CRM, a
customer relationship management software that helps businesses manage
client data and customer interaction, automates sales, marketing and
contacts management.
The solution has a ticketing function which helps
companies prioritise and sort out e-mail enquiries to the right
departments and monitor if customer enquiries have been attended to.
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