The past week working with AMI in Nairobi has been all about execution. As mentioned previously AMI has an extremely innovative online learning platform. The project we are working on is only a tiny piece of AMI’s business. If AMI is to touch one million managers by 2023 it must really scale by a combination of online learning and classroom based learning labs. The Franchise Model that we have been working on is only a small part of the expansion plans. However, in the future we would expect that our AMI agents would also sell the concept of online learning. We view the agents as the extended AMI team.
Some of the key areas we have reviewed and provided recommendations on are as follows:
- How to sell the AMI vision and concept to potential agents (Recruit, Empower and Retain).
- What type of facilitators should the agents recruit?
- To scale across Africa what type of Go-To-Market model will work?
- How should the franchise model flow (Process Flow)?
- What should AMI be responsible for compared to an agent?
- How does AMI ensure there is still quality control on a Franchise Model?
- What should the marketing strategy be?
- What should the AMI “Business in a Box” look like?
- What price point will make this training affordable for all African Managers and Entrepreneurs whilst still ensuring AMI is a sustainable business?
- How can we drive high engagement with our agents?
- Are intrinsic or extrinsic reward drivers best or a combination?
We have had numerous validation sessions with the AMI CEO (Rebecca Harrison) to ensure our prototype is refined and addressing AMI’s needs. In addition we have spent further time with our potential agents to ensure our key stakeholders are involved every step of the way.
At the end of the working week I was lucky enough to travel with six of the other international Social Sabbatical team members to Zanzibar, Tanzania. I have to say I don’t know that I could accurately describe how beautiful it is. Zanzibar is breathtaking. The sand on the beach is as white as the sand in the Whitsundays. The water has the most amazing variances of blue I have ever seen. The Tanzanian people are warm and friendly. Our hotel manager Ali was a real character. I had every intention of continuing a health kick on this trip but the food makes it extremely difficult!! The highlight for me was a day out on a dive boat and swimming with a large pod of wild Dolphins. The Dolphins were playing with us as a bunch of us would swim to them, they would swim around and under us and could go so fast that they would come up for air 50 metres away.
Check out the sand and water in this shot:
It was difficult to come back to Nairobi after a weekend like that; however, it was my birthday on Monday. Happy Birthday to me! The SAP Team arranged a lovely big chocolate cake and card. I never imagined that I would bond as much in a short time as what I have with my teammates here. We are most definitely making lasting friendships that will continue after we head back to our home countries.
At dinner for my birthday:
We participated in a press conference today. It was really exciting and our organisations gave really great feedback to the press about the help we have been giving them and the impact on Africa. I was extremely proud of my colleagues who acted as spokespeople and especially Celine who represented us from an AMI perspective. We all had to introduce ourselves in order to show the diversity of our group, however, Celine really delivered our sentiments and experience to the press. I'm looking forward to seeing the articles.
Photos from SAP Press Conference held today by Andrew Waititu (Managing Director of SAP East Africa):
The SAP team "frocked up" for the Press Conference:
Ciao for now. Too much to do in order to deliver our Scope of Work!