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Mr. Tam George is the Director Finance and Administration, Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON). He has specialty in finding solution to business, being the brain behind the Electronic Demand Note and Electronic Receipts (EDER) established by SON. He spoke to Daily Sun’s Walter Ukaegbu on the development of the scheme. Excerpts!
Benefits of Electronic Demand Note and Electronic Receipts (EDER)
EDER is the digitisation of the process of payment and collection of receipt already in place.
The process is for SON to give you any service, the prices are there so they issue you a demand. After the demand, the Demand Note instead of manual receipts it will be electronic. That electronic platform is then linked to Remita, so before anybody goes to the bank, the bank is already aware of what you paid for. So, from there, Remita platform will send a message to the electronic receipt platform and the receipt will be issued to you electronically.
The prices are standardised and there is no room for leakages.
The customer/client that will be coming will no longer move from office to office to collect receipt. For instance, in Apapa (Lagos) your services will be provided, you get there to get a Demand Note, go to the bank to pay and get back to the same office which is cumbersome. But now, the Demand Note will be issued to you in the comfort of your home, you will make payment electronically from the comfort of your home, you will receive the receipt from the comfort of your home, then your goods or services will be delivered. This innovation which is an electronically ONE-STOP-SHOP is to make transactions simple for people doing business with SON. There are back ends to it because you will also have a charter to it.
For instance, you ask for a service in SON, you pay for the service, you will be able to immediately identify and track the process because, there are prices that are not automatically fixed as they are function of range. As a function of range, you need to upload the subsidiary documentation that would warrant that price. So, somebody needs to check the user department to be sure that what he puts in is correct.
If it is correct and genuine, it will be allowed to be checked, approval given and then be returned to you. With this process, you will be able to know when your Demand Note and Receipt will be given to you. It will not be like a forever transaction.
How Eder enhances Ease of Doing Business
The essence of Ease of Doing Business is for things to be processed at a determined period of time. With this electronic process, you are able to know who is holding it, when he is holding it and when the process will be completed. It shows Ease of Doing Business through transparency and accountability. You will see that with the electronic system, we are introducing. It is transparent and accountable.
How EDER can boost Nigeria’s involvement in AfCFTA
The major role EDER will play is first, as a supporting service to the certification process. So, it will make the certification process in Nigeria for the goods that SON regulates to be made easy because we do not know how many other time we are going to compete with the people on the other end as it would mean commonality of standards and commonality of certification. What is certified overseas like Ghana is automatically certified in Nigeria. If we do not have our processes streamlined to shorten it electronically, we will not be able to compete with people who already have the process in place. So, it will be an advantage to our certification process.
Measures to ensure EDER Is not compromised
The checks and balances of EDER is that we are using the very best languages, that is the technicality in it. It has a strong electronic security system which we subscribed from Israel. However, despite the system being hacker proof, there is no electronic process and system that you can say is 100 per cent secure even in overseas, but what we are doing is, the level of security, it will take and we will keep improving on it to make sure that new technology that will keep on securing the platform is attached to it.
How EDER will benefit Nigerian citizens
The average Nigerian will benefit from it because the major problem we have in Nigeria is unemployment. Our youths are many so, the electronic process we are using is an indigenous one as the contractors are indigenous.
It will also reduce the cost of production, cost of certification. For instance, if we are doing factory inspection and the results come out very often, it will make Nigerians understand the cost of production and the timing for production is less. Because, certification is a very fundamental aspect of the value chain.
How soon will SON start implementing EDER?
It is like a normal electronic process. We will not launch or deploy it once. It will be product by product so that we will also understand the pitfalls that will emanate from it in order to manage the crisis that might come from it. But I believe that by the month of NOVEMBER we should have finished this process.
We will stagger it process by process. We will take SONCAP, MANCAP then PORTS & BORDER. We will take a week to resolve all the problems that will emanate from SONCAP and another week to resolve that of MANCAP then same to PORTS & BORDER. At the end of it all, as we are deploying, we are also solving the sparks that would come from solving such introduction. Because to introduce such things normally, you have to have a war room.
Challenges encountered while setting up platform
The challenges are that of stiff resistance to change which is normal to a system because people don’t understand how to manage change. It took us time to bring all the people onboard. To electronise a system of payment that has been manual for a long period of time since the creation of SON is not a day’s effort. You have to have a buy in from a lot of people to get it done.
The other aspect of it that I see, this change is going to affect people but they don’t know the dimension it will affect them because to electronise a system means you are blocking leakages which translates to blocking corruption. It is very difficult to remove a meal that someone is use to which led to perceived resistance. Everybody wants it just on the lips but internally they are resisting it but I think the management entirely has a buy in. If not anything, COVID-19 thought us the lesson that we must work from our homes. This is one of the good lessons from COVID. So if you want to do a transaction for SON, you do not need to come to our office to physically do anything. You will see that people will work from their different homes and the work of Nigeria will still be going on.
How Is It in Terms Of Cost Effective To Your Clients?
It has nothing to do with extra charges, there is no extra charge. We are just replicating what we do manually, electronically, it has nothing to do with charges, we are not introducing new charges.
