Improving Governance - Sharp Cents

By Cytonn Technologies

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Board Management System:

Improving Governance Innovative Technology

Business Intelligence

Customized Solutions

Cytonn Data Centre

Revamping Security

Magazine showcases Cytonn Technologies achievements. Our people are dedicated to provide technology solutions that assist your business growth.

www.cytonntechnologies.com

Business Opportunities

Our Mission

Our Vision

To offer clients a competitive edge using innovation technology solutions that speak to their objectives

Become a global technology company offering differentiated and innovative solutions

We learn what you do and use technology to make it better than anyone else

Delivery Focus

PURPOSE

STRATEGY

It is Cytonn Technologies purpose to help clients perform efficiently by constantly providing innovative solutions to their business problems

Cytonn Technologies strategy is to deliever an excellent client experience based on great service and long term relationships

SERVICE FOCUS:

Smart Real Estate Solutions Business Applications

AIM Cytonn Technologies aims to achieve this objective by offering transparent products and services that serve clients’ lifetime needs and deliver excellent customer service

Product Design & Branding Strategy Business Systems Analysis


Photography 2017 brought with it a ton of opportunities. We started a photography service which was informed by market trends and the growing need for businesses to use photography as a means by which they introduce their brand and products to the world. CYTONN TECHNOLOGIES | FOCUS 04

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DATA CENTRE

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e deployed our data centre infrastructure this year, which has automated, transformed and greatly improved the IT experience in Cytonn. We run a virtual environment which hosts our servers and applications. This works by virtualizing physical server infrastructure and hosting the storage appliances. Adequate security measures have been put in place to protect from external and internal threats. Apart from this, we went live on our disaster recovery site, which runs a setup that is similar to our primary data centre. Our data centres meet the necessary conditions and standards such as: uninterruptible power supply systems and air conditioning to ensure that our systems run optimally.

NETAPP & FILE SHARE Before our data centre infrastructure was set up, we relied on DropBox for file sharing. This was expensive, and we did not have full control of permissions. Dropbox stores files on the user’s PC and this clogs up the limited hard disk capacity that the laptops have. To solve these issues, we bought NetApp storage appliances. There is an instance of this in our primary and backup data centres. These store all our data, and offer us the necessary controls and expansion change to that will be needed in future. Additionally, we deployed an internal file share and de-commissioned Dropbox, thereby saving costs and getting full control of our data. The file share is mapped automatically to user computers hence easy to access and use. With adequate training and support, this has been well received by our staff, and is in active use. We continue to improve on it and automate some functions so that we can better utilize it.

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Ensuring our systems are running under the required conditions.

CYTONN TECHNOLOGIES | FOCUS 05

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SAP We use SAP Business One on HANA as our ERP System. This was deployed this year, and has automated our Finance and Procurement functions.

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AP has improved business efficiency by providing us a unified information console that houses all of Cytonn’s financial information, thereby saving time and assisting in making business decisions. It has also improved business controls by providing us a fully customizable dashboards to manage and control activities and to receive alerts whenever an approval is needed. The reporting module has come in handy by providing us various forms of reports to suit different needs. So far, the benefits of SAP are being realized, and we continue to automate and add other functions to it, as well as integrate it to our existing applications. SAP fitted well into our infrastructure during the deployment process because it was designed to be compatible with the data centre infrastructure.

SAP has improved the business efficiency by saving time and assisting in making business decisions.


UNIFIED COMMUNICATION SYSTEM The implementation of an integrated system catering for both telephony and video into Cytonn has had its highlights and challenges. Chief amongst them is improved efficiency in client servicing especially through the utilization of the video conferencing where we have face to face interactions with clients via the video component. It has also reduced office to office movements of staff as meetings can now be held virtually.

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SINGLE SIGN-ON (SSO)

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dentity management is key to the security of software applications. As our user base grew, we saw it paramount to focus on how to secure our systems from unauthorized access. The solution to this presented itself in combining the identity management of our applications into one platform that is able to do detailed control of how users authenticate into applications. The platform has made it easy for users to login to systems since they just need to remember one password, while at the same time allowing us to enforce more secure passwords and controls such as two-factor authentication. In the next year, this platform will receive significant updates to enhance user experience and security.

SHARPCENTS NEWSLETTER Sharp Cents newsletter is aimed at sharing ideas that shape your journey on the path to financial freedom. In 2017, our team managed to come up with four issues of well-crafted elucidative newsletter, one for each quarter of the year. Visit: www.thesharpcents.com for more information


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MIDDLEWARE SERVING DIFFERENT AREAS WITHIN THE SAME BUSINESS In the course of building our software applications to provide solutions to different business domains, we encountered a unique problem which our conventional solutions couldn’t solve.

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t some point within business operations, we realized that it was necessary for the different systems to exchange information. Hence, we built a middleware platform to solve this specific need, while taking care of our constraints in security and scalability. The middleware platform is built on top of the AMQP 0-9- 1 standard to be able to pass messages between two or more applications.


The same platform can be used to integrate any two applications, without limits on the technologies used to develop the systems. Thanks to this middleware, our applications serve different areas within the same business. Since its deployment, sharing data between systems has become incredibly easy and fast, giving our engineers time to focus on their specific domain problems and not integration.

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CYTONN INVESTMENTS WEBSITE With a professional new look to the corporate website, Cytonn is accessible around the clock, conveniently at the comfort of your home, office or wherever you are. It not only makes Cytonn visible to the world but also avails a marketing tool that communicates to the clients in an effective manner. The website also provides a platform through which clients can find relevant news and publications, contact the team easily and even have a one-on-one chat with the client services team.

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Providing a platform that clients will easily navigate and save time.

Visit: www.cytonn.com for more information CYTONN TECHNOLOGIES | FOCUS 10

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NAIROBITS This year saw us sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Nairobits Trust. Nairobits is an organization that offers training to coders, designers and general information technology practitioners. Through this MOU, Cytonn Technologies extends internship opportunities to students from Nairobits Trust.

CYTONN REAL ESTATE SYSTEM The project management module of the Cytonn Real Estate System (CREST), is a system that aims to automate the project management departmental processes. The system is currently under development and will consist of schedule management, budget and expenses, resource management, task management, agile project management, collaboration and unified project controls modules. By integrating all these modules in one system, the PM System will effectively handle all project management processes from start to finish while enabling collaboration, analysis and report generation.

RESEARCH & DEAL ORIGINATION SYSTEM The RDO system was developed for the Cytonn Real Estate’s Research and Deal Origination department (RDO) with the main objective of managing the market research and deal origination process. It enables the RDO team to add contacts, land deals and market research details in the system, and then track follow up activities. The system will also provide useful analytics to the RDO team such as lead summaries per analyst and focus areas, market research analytics, and reminders when key tasks such as meetings are due.


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BOARD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM - IMPROVING GOVERNANCE The Board Management System is an innovative system that helps you run the entire board operations from meeting management, event planning and board evaluation, all in one place It is aimed at helping Cytonn’s Board members to manage their Board meetings and events better by coordinating schedules, viewing Board packs, voting on issues raised and action points and receiving reminders on action items. The system allows users to have agendas and minutes online, get various reports, view unresolved issues and access member profiles and contacts. It also has an online storage for accessing documents. With this new system, we aim to improve our corporate governance, productivity and transparency and serve our clients better.


Key Highlights

BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP WITH MMC AFRICA The Design team onboarded a new external client - MMC Africa Law, a full-service Kenyan law firm famed to be one of the largest indigenous law firms in East and Central Africa. We worked closely with MMC Africa Law team to create marketing materials for their various core offerings.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE When it comes to Technology, our philosophy is to build custom solutions focused on our specific business needs. Data is key and information is power. At Cytonn we collect a lot of data from staff, clients and our operations. As a result, we realized that we could extract a lot of insights from this data that could inform decisions to power our next phase of growth. Consequently, we recently on-boarded a business intelligence engineer to focus on the development of a business intelligence platform, which will collect and analyze data from our different software and present it in a manner that can support business decisions. We expect that in the next few months, users will be able to analyze data from different sources in the company, complete with visualizations that will help them understand this data and gain useful insights from it. This is an exciting phase for us, and a step in the right direction. We can’t wait to see it go live!


Key Highlights

SOCIETY FOR CONSERVATION GIS SCGIS is a US non-profit organization that assists conservationists worldwide in using GIS through communication, networking, scholarships and training. SCGIS has been our trusted partner for over two years. We maintain and support the SCGIS web infrastructure.

For the past year, we embarked on training all the key stakeholders regarding the various functions that the web application offers. This has helped the members to actively use the web application and ensure high levels of participation in enriching the website content. We also revamped their payment platform by adding features such as PayPal payments, which increased their payment options thus giving members a wide range to choose from. We provided round the clock support to ensure we promptly resolved any issues the members faced while using the web application. In the coming year, we aim to


embark on further generating more activity in the web application which would in turn contribute to SCGIS’s success. This will be achieved through a planned redesign of the web application to upgrade the current user interface to a modern look thus improving the user experience. We will also implement a new science section that will encourage more diverse and differentiated projects which is a key focus of interest for the members. This will encourage dynamic member-generated content which would further entice the members to actively use the web application.

Article by: George Kinuthia

AUTOMATING CYTONN REAL ESTATE ONE PROCESS AT A TIME 2017 has been a big year for automation. It’s the year we’ve seen driverless cars hit the streets of the US, hotels being run entirely by robots in Japan and the ‘internet of trashcans’ in Asian cities; trashcans with sensors that notify garbage collectors when full thus preventing overflowing. Organizations have also taken note of the benefits that automation of processes offers such as a reduction in operating costs, enhancing performance, and boosting employee productivity among other benefits. Cytonn Real Estate(CRE) has not been left behind. In conjunction with Cytonn Technologies, the firm has been at the forefront of spearheading automation of its processes all dedicated to the ultimate goal of delivering quality real estate products. Below are some of the ways that CRE has automated its processes in 2017;

Improved Document Management with File share.

As a result, the Research team is able to faster analyze arising land opportunities as well as File share is a file storage and sharing platform that is maintain relationships with their contacts. While plans are underway to ensure full automation of the dedicated to ensuring all of CRE documents are easily accessible to its staff members. At Cytonn, you CRE processes, the following lessons and successes have been noted. Firstly, when don’t have to constantly nag your colleague for that important presentation. Simply access file share and embarking on automation, focus on understanding one key process at a time. This enables you to get get the file. The immediate benefit of file share has a deeper understanding of the process, the key been faster access to information among staff actors and their roles. You are then able to offer members that leads to timely decision making, viable, beneficial and sustainable solutions. collaboration, and improved knowledge Secondly, involve all the stakeholders closely management. before any automation efforts commence as well as throughout the automation period. Enhanced monitoring of Cytonn Project Sites

with CCTV and Biometric logins. Cytonn Project sites have 24/7 CCTV monitoring of offices and biometric access to the site offices. Security on site is top notch. Our security engineers are able to check on the sites while kilometers away from their laptops. With our sites secure, staff on site are able to focus on delivering the best while our clients can rest assured that their investments are well-taken care of.

This can be done by regular updates through a preferred and agreed medium. Informed stakeholders are collaborative and this helps the automation move smoothly. Finally, the success of any automation is ultimately determined by user adoption. It is thus important to ensure that the users are adequately trained on how to use the system. Regular check-ups on the users and getting their feedback is also recommended.

Better Land Deal tracking with the Research and Deal Origination System.

Cytonn Technologies has implemented the above steps in all of its automation projects with The recently launched RDO system is meant to assist resounding success. Automation never stops. We the CRE Research team in tracking all the potential are always on the lookout to make our processes land deals that they receive as well as any follow-up more efficient and can confidently ascertain that activities from the deals. It allows the research team thanks to the automation efforts ongoing, Cytonn to keep a database of contact persons as well as Real Estate is well positioned to take the Real Estate providing google map locations of where the land is industry by storm in 2018. for further analysis, all in a few clicks.


Key Highlights

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

NETWORK EXPANSION

Knowledge Management(KM) is the systematic management of an organization and its knowledge assets for the purpose of creating value and meeting tactical and strategic requirements.

In order to provide an efficient browsing experience to all our staff members, we connected all our branches and site offices to our corporate network.

It consists of the initiatives, processes, strategies, and systems that sustain and enhance the storage, assessment, sharing, refinement, and creation of knowledge. We conducted a KM assessment of the Company and determined the areas that need more focus. We are also constantly training employees on the need and benefits of knowledge management.

This was achieved through engaging different Internet Service Providers who best suited the role. By connecting all our branch offices to our corporate network, we have eliminated the practice of having branches operating as silos. Thanks to this, all computing resources and services can be accessed from branches already connected to the grid and network management has never been easier!

Taking our clients to greater heights. Reliability, Efficiency & Trust is what every client desires. Join us & we will take you there...


Find out more: www.cytonntechnologies.com

Key Highlights

TEAM GROWTH Our team has continued to grow over the years. In 2017, we were joined by many new faces. In addition, the team has grown in experience and skill set and this has helped to expand our user base.

We pride ourselves in our talented team of Developers, Designers, Business System Analysts and IT Engineers, who work everyday to ensure that we deliver beyond our clients’ expectations. We are a well-knit family, which thrives on openness, professionalism and mutual respect. At CT, we work together to achieve goals, building each other and keeping our eye on the price. That’s the A team right there!


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