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InterviewsOctober 12, 2022

Nicholas Bortey Presents Liranz Limited: The Premier IT Support and Outsourcing Provider in Ghana

Nicholas Bortey, CEO of Liranz Limited
Nicholas Bortey, CEO of Liranz Limited
Written by Sandra Francisco
Published: October 12, 2022

Interview with Nicholas Bortey, CEO of Liranz Limited

What are the sectors and clients that you serve?

We are the lead in managed IT services in the country. We serve Tullow Ghana in the oil field, both online and offshore. We serve New York University in Ghana. 80% of our client base is multinational. We do international projects. We have just set up with Seva Foundation in the UK. I normally serve as the virtual CIO for a lot of clients.

How many people work in the company now?

Currently, we have 22 permanent employees and 5 employees on a part time basis.

Are you open to investors?

First of all, I always believe in one thing: if you invest money in your business and you get the resources and logistics to work, the logistics need business to be able to survive. You have to know where to invest your money and when you need investment. I want to do certain ideas so, I need to have that very strategic goal that if I invest a certain amount of money, I am going to get the money back. So, yes, I am looking for investment, but I am not in a rush. I am taking it step by step.

What are your competitive advantages? Where do you stand out?

One of my ambitions is to turn Liranz into a global IT consultancy and outsourcing firm where we can have a call center with seven or eight other countries.

Our industry experience makes us unique. I was born and raised here. I know the issues that businesses experience in this country. The main reason why this business was established was because I wanted to have an impact on technology. I saw that the professionalism in terms of how people relate to technology professionals was not there. There was this whole mistrust in terms of who the technology person is. We were still not really moving to the next stage in terms of joining the table. It was terrible as a technician. You are only called when there is a problem. We started the business to bridge the gap between the break and fix. You need a human relationship. There is more of a human factor than just fixing the technology and that is what we have. It is the same with the industrial experience. We have done so well with the human relationships as a key factor. We have a customer centric approach in anything that we do. Our service model is more of a contract basis. Instead of agr eements, now we become a partner. As a partner, it has given us the edge. I always tell people, when I give you an IT service and you leave my space and you go to another company, you will run back because it is not about the technology, it is about human relations and customer approach. We personalize clients' projects.

How is the market reacting to that? Do you find that you are easily accepted in Ghana?

In our space, people prefer to pay other bills over technology. When we were coming in, trying to introduce the idea that it is better to partner with us and pay us a retainer fee to solve your problem before it happens was a big issue. It took us a long while and even now we have only a few clients because it is still not something that companies believe. A lot of SMEs have not really been established. If you are going to run your business and serve SMEs, it means that you have to be mindful that you might have a client today, but in the next three months, the client is not there anymore. You can have six or seven or twenty clients, but only five of them pay you consistently. All these are things that you have to consider when you are going to provide a service and the service requires a retainer. The chances of you having a lot of companies onboard is going to be very difficult. It has taken us nine years to have 20 clients that pay us consistently. When the wind blows in crisis, you lose clients because the SMEs are not very stable. When you get one client, then you lose another one. It has never been easy. That is why we say that for the clients that we have, we have to work hard for them.

How has your business model changed and adapted?

As an organization, what we started with was more of supporting our sources and then slowly we added some services. Last year, we realized that we wanted to incorporate more into IT consultancy and management and have IT support become part of the solution. We have IT consulting on projects and infrastructure management. We also added procurement because we realized that people deal with us on a day to day support basis, but when they are going to buy equipment or IT products, they go to another company. So, we try to make it a bouquet organization. That is why this year, we changed the company into IT consultancy and management which means that we have procurement and management, we have the infrastructure and communication, we have the IT support. That is how we can sustain. We have clients that we do major infrastructure projects for once in a while, but 70% are clients that pay us monthly on a daily support basis.

What is your international reach?

We have worked in the Caribbean, Liberia, South Africa. Currently, we are trying to enter Ethiopia. For example, we just signed with Seva Foundation which is a UK firm. As a company, we have been privileged to work with multinationals which allows us to work in different African countries.

What sectors are you active in?

Oil and gas is one of our major clients and we have served the sector for five years now. We have been deeply involved in activities in terms of rigging, drilling oil from offshore, and we were their IT support from day one. We serve other sectors like farming, pharmaceuticals, energy, mining, and many other industries.

Looking at the development of Liranz Limited, its structure, how open are you to technological partnerships, financial partnerships, etc.?

Before, I was holding back a little bit because I wanted to develop the business. At this moment, I am very open. It depends on what is on the table. I need to listen to who is coming in, their intention, if we have the same ideology, the same vision as what I have of where to take this business. We have to sit around a table, look at the kind of investments you can have, what they are expecting, what I am expecting. If we are going the same way, especially if they bring in new technology and we will be able to execute major enterprise projects, I would be open. It is something that I have been looking for, but it needs to be the right partner and the two of us must want to achieve the same agenda.

You have recently won the Best Innovative Business Award by the American International Theology University, also the Ghana Information Technology and Telecom award for IT Consulting Firm of the Year, and the IT Managed Services Provider of the Year. What do these awards mean to you?

I think it means fulfillment. I normally am very reserved. I was a young man deciding to set up a business to find a solution to a problem. When you set up a business to this level, to the point that people recognize you as one of the top people in Ghana and then reward you for what you do, it is fulfilling. We have capable people in this organization. I always tell my staff that they should all take the hours and enjoy it because we do it together.

What has been your inspiration? What drives you to do what you do?

What pushes me and motivates me is to see something happen. Now, I find myself in the technology space. If it is not the technology space, I might be in something else, but I will still have to let something happen. I identified the weakness in our space nine years ago. Today, I look back and I feel like that I have done so well in terms of promoting technology in Ghana. Even though I did not bring IT support to Ghana or IT outsourcing, I brought it to life in terms of cataloging the break and fix. I wrote a few articles about outsourcing and one university doctor contacted me to do an interview about six years ago. So, it shows that I have had a huge impact. The fulfillment of being involved and making things happen is what drives me. It is my nature to make things happen and I love it when things happen. People even think the company is a foreign company because of the way we handle ourselves.

Project yourself towards the future, three years' time. What would you like to have achieved in the medium term? What is your vision?

One of my ambitions is to turn Liranz into a global IT consultancy and outsourcing firm where we can have a call center with seven or eight other countries. We want to also be able to penetrate into the government sector, to give them a new leverage in terms of IT support. They need to find a way to start outsourcing the ministries to companies like us and that is one of our targets. I want to make sure that we get them to be more in touch, like what we do for the private businesses. We want to give the government the quality of technology that it needs to be able to function. So, we have a high ambition.

 

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