Application Modernization

Jumia and Wragby enhance digital operations for Nigerian SMEs through Cloud Marketplace

 

Wragby partners with Jumia Nigeria as it sought to consolidate its e-commerce marketplace across Africa through a co-sell ready cloud marketplace solution to curb sales and promotions of  pirated software.

 

As a market leader, sellers were offering Microsoft office licenses whose authenticity Jumia could not verify, and occasionally, customers report negative experiences, negatively impacting Jumia’s brand promise.

 

The Business Challenge

 

The SMEs on Jumia are unique with respect to bootleg software. They are often unknowing victims, who make their purchases mainly because that is the known trusted alternative that allows their cluster to pay in Naira. Regardless of how they got the pirated versions, the SMEs are exposed to one or all of viruses, ransomware, identity theft, lack of support, software crashes, and data loss.

 

With locations across Africa, Jumia is Nigeria’s biggest e-commerce platform, with 6.1 million active customers, including over one million registered SMEs. Jumia’s marketplace strategy means that it has little direct control over the 15million SKUs in its mall, and manual vetting can only go so far. The potential for growth of Nigerian SMEs thus makes a compelling case for removing every barrier to productivity, innovation, and growth, whether these be finance or technology.

 

Besides, most of the listings are for the Student and Home editions of Office applications, A double jeopardy for businesses as they forego access to the business-enabling tools in O365 for Business. What they miss out on includes meetings via Teams, the credibility of having emails in their custom domains – free, Planner, Sharepoint. They could have automated their workflows using Power Automate or to build their apps code-free with Power Apps. They also miss out on the 1TB OneDrive, an essential defense against ransomware.

 

The Engagement

 

Jumia approached Microsoft Nigeria through the 4Afrika program for a capability that allows SME customers to subscribe to Microsoft products in local currencies, paying from Jumia wallets or any other e-payment channel. Wragby has in the last years built a Microsoft cloud marketplace code base and the experience to support the long-term resolution of the kind of problem Jumia confronts. Aided by a clear grasp of the business landscape, and experience gained from a strong business portfolio, Wragby software engineers worked with Jumia developers to deploy its Co-sell ready cloud marketplace solution in Nigeria and later Kenya, within four months.

 

For Wragby, the motivation for developing these marketplaces clusters is strong. Firstly, Microsoft Office continues to enjoy preference in Africa, enabling unhindered access to genuine O365 has the potential of shutting down the pirates and capturing well-earned licenses, while providing a massive boost of productivity and peace of mind to SMEs. Secondly, by working with existing SME clusters, we could reach these SMEs in their native watering holes, one million at a time.

 

For Jumia, the Microsoft cloud marketplace is a verified source for authentic Office applications and the end of suspect licenses. It also builds trust and goodwill for Jumia among SMEs.

 

Before the deployment of the cloud marketplace, Jumia and the SMEs that patronize them did not have:

• An official store for Microsoft software tools, with accompanying support,
• The ease to pay for these tools in the local currencies,
• Where available, the SMEs could not enjoy the subscription offerings and were mostly limited to making one-off payments for Office Students and Home,
• SMEs often had to inadvertently purchase pirate versions which put their data at risk to Virus,
• The SMEs lacked productivity tools, while Jumia lost valuable goodwill and patronage.

 

The Jumia cloud marketplace was built between July and October 2019, allowing Jumia to retail Microsoft communication and collaboration tools based on Office 365 business plans. The delivery was carried out by Wragby’s software engineering team working in conjunction with Jumia developers.

 

Planning the development of the solution, the team utilized Azure DevOps Services for the solution planning, Development, Automated Build and testing to deployment and monitoring of the solution in various environments (Dev. and Production) in Azure App Service.

Using Open-Source technology (.Net Core) with Azure DevOps and MSSQL DB, the team was able to deliver a secure world-class solution. In addition to Azure DevOps, we employed Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to deliver the Cloud Marketplace to Jumia in record time.

 

The Result

 

The solution enhanced the ease of subscription for Microsoft products on the Jumia Platform in both Nigeria and Kenya. It also enabled an hourly cleanout of counterfeit O365 on Jumia, securing their platform against bootleggers and their cronies.

 

With the Solution, Jumia SMEs can renew the subscription in a local currency, and at a discounted rate, ensured business continuity during COVID-19 lockdown, limiting the business impact with smart collaboration tools.

 

Using Microsoft technologies has enabled this platform to work across multiple devices, which is essential for reaching the highly mobile SMEs who are closer to the bottom of the pyramid.