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COURE Software & Systems Limited (COURE), an indigenous IT firm located in Lagos, will be marking 25 years of existence. About 15 of those years have been spent deploying IT solutions and services in Nigeria and other African countries.
From telecoms to financial to the public sector, the company has made tremendous strides in various sectors of the economy. Speaking to the media, COURE’s CEO, Uche Onwudiwe described the company as, “a platform services provider with a focus on the provision of accurate, secure and relevant data to improve its clients’ business processes and operations.”
He reflected on the journey so far, noting that the company “started out in the US in 1998 at a time when the internet and modern technology, as we know it, were taking off. At that time, we were focused on networking and physical systems integration.
“Over the years, the shifts in technology and the need to be scalable beyond billing for individual man hours caused us to migrate our technology services first to web and application development, then to what we currently provide today, which are platforms that leverage standardized and aggregated data to enable and enhance the operational efficiency of our clients.
“It has been an exciting 25-year journey of change and transformation! Our flagship solutions, ANQ and HUB, have been enabling the telecom, fintech, banking and various other sectors to increase their value to their customers. Our development teams consist of analysts, UI/UX experts, programmers, product managers and network engineers all of whom have many years of experience in the design, development and support of clean, functional and aesthetically appealing applications and solutions.”
On their strides in many critical sectors, Onwudiwe added that “COURE has established key partnerships in the telco, banking, fintech, payments and public sector spaces. Through our platforms, we are able to aggregate various types of data, analyze the data, and create services that provide value to these organizations and generate revenue for them. This makes us an enabler of fintech firms as opposed to being one ourselves.”
He added: “Our ANQ (All Number Query) is a lookup platform that provides quick and easy access to information which enables our clients support their customers in areas such as Fraud prevention, Routing and KYC (Know Your Customer) using various number and data sources. Our partnership with data owners and access to large volumes of diversified data along with our processing capacity and intelligent algorithms enables us apply real-time analytics to data that is being searched against and provide information to businesses to aid their decision-making.
“Our HUB platform is what is called a CPaaS – Communication Platform as a Service. It enables aggregators and value-added service (VAS) providers in the telecom industry to integrate with the telcos, then safely and accurately deliver messages between the applications through the telcos and onward to the end customer and back. Message types include Bulk SMS, USSD, Whatsapp and RCS (Rich Communication Services). It also addresses a number of industry issues and concerns such as the management of Sender IDs and Short codes. HUB is a ready-to-use platform for SMEs to create and manage their services, content, and subscriptions. It is convenient and requires no local installation.”
Throughout the years, the IT organization has faced various challenges. Onwudiwe commented on some of these challenges, citing as an example, the loss of talented IT resources across the sector. He stated that due to the insecurity and economic hardships in the country, the technology sector has experienced a loss of talent, many of whom have fled the country in search of supposedly greener pastures. This has made it crucial for COURE to implement a proactive recruitment and talent retention strategy to prevent the negative effects of this trend from affecting its business.
The organization has grown in leaps and bounds, having extended its partnership reach to many African countries. Onwudiwe noted that, “Our routing services are present in most African countries including Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Côte D’Ivoire, Benin, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. Our 2023 roll-out plan includes expansion to key regions within the continent with a focus on Ghana, Uganda and South Africa.”
In addition to its expansion plans, COURE will be adding a third platform to its suite, the OpenBanking platform, in alignment with the Open Banking Initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The OpenBanking platform offers financial data owners the opportunity to monetize their data by making it available to third-party financial services securely and efficiently via APIs. He noted that they have already partnered with some banks to pilot the solution and are excited about the ease and convenience that customers will enjoy when they use applications that leverage these services. He expressed optimism about the future, noting that they “expect great times ahead.”
