Juhudi Kilimo works with rural smallholder farmers and micro-entrepreneurs largely in rural Kenya.

Digicloud Africa partner Incentro Africa has helped a fast-growing Kenyan agricultural micro-financier boost productivity and improve customer experience by working with the organisation to optimise its use of Google Workspace.

Incentro Africa, which holds a Google Specialization in Work Transformation, partnered with micro-financier Juhudi Kilimo to help the organisation achieve the full transformational value of Google Workspace solutions.

Juhudi Kilimo works with rural smallholder farmers and micro-entrepreneurs largely in rural Kenya, offering products such as loans for farm equipment and inputs, animals, energy solutions and other assets that offer growth and income opportunities for farmers. Its loans are largely disbursed via the Juhudika mobile application, with most customers also making mobile repayments. The organisation has 52 branches in 33 counties, and has directly or indirectly benefited over 500 000 people with its financial solutions, training interventions and social and environmental management.

Because a large proportion of Juhudi Kilimo team members work in the field, they require easy mobile access to head office applications, and all team members need simple and efficient collaboration tools. Importantly, all data must be secure and protected.

Juhudi Kilimo enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to enhance operational efficiency in the dynamic technological landscape through a robust collaboration platform. Recognising the potential of Google Workspace, a versatile suite of cloud-based collaboration tools, Juhudi Kilimo adopted it to transform and redefine its operations. The goal was to fully maximise its capabilities to propel the organisation towards greater collaboration, productivity and success. Having previously identified Google Workspace as the tool of choice to achieve this goal – the next step in their digital transformation was to expand its uses and train administrators on how to achieve the most out of this solution. In came Incentro.

Elizabeth Akinyi, Head of Work Transformation for Africa at Incentro, says: “Their visionary CTOs opted to move to Google Workspace, and Incentro Africa was selected as the partner to manage the change and give strategic guidance and training.”

Incentro Africa’s recipe for success

Akinyi notes that ongoing change management, guidance and training is important to help organisations optimise their Google Workspace solutions. Incentro Africa’s pre- and post- engagement assessments typically indicate a 35%-50% improvement in adoption, she says.

“We find that customer success is greatly enhanced by change management,” she says. “In many organisations, there may be internal resistance because of staff familiarity with the solutions they were using previously. Our role is to provide training and help them understand the value of the Google Workspace products to enhance productivity. Our initial engagement with Juhudi Kilimo spanned around eight months, beginning with admin enablement sessions. We also introduced ‘Google Guides’ – ambassadors within the organisations, followed by departmental level training and then training of frontline teams.”

Incentro Africa’s change management and training models enhance customer success, Akinyi says. “For large organisations like Juhudi Kilimo, we go the extra mile to create custom plans, working closely with them throughout the migration phase and post go-live. Our customer service teams and account managers continue to serve as trusted advisors to customers to make them aware of Google product updates and help them take advantage of new features,” she says.

The change management and training programme helped Juhudi Kilimo to transform and redefine its internal and outward-facing operations. Akinyi says: “Internally, collaboration has been streamlined, decision-making is faster and the organisation has the peace of mind that data is protected. In the field, they are empowered to serve customers faster.” The organisation now relies on tools such as Gmail, Google Drive and Google Meet for collaboration and is able to continually explore additional tools and functionalities they may not have fully utilised before, uncovering new possibilities for innovation and efficiency.

“For us, working with customers is never transactional. It’s a collaboration driven by shared values, to ensure they optimise and get full use of the platform to improve their business,” Akinyi says.