By Stanley Ongwae
For Cosgah Mamboleo, the journey of building one of the country’s fast-rising Enterprise Resource Planning solutions companies has been one of resilience and determination.
Though driven by passion and a talent for innovation, the great sacrifices and high-stakes risk-taking over the years are what have defined his more than two decades in the information technology industry.
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Mamboleo’s star began to shine while he was still a student at Moi University, where he studied Business Information Systems.
In his third year at the university, he was far ahead of his peers. While the rest of the pack was struggling financially through the hardships of campus life, Mamboleo was already earning an income from the very institution where he was studying.
At the time, he had started working as a casual employee in the university’s Finance Department, helping to run the institution’s information system, which he had assisted in developing.
By the time he secured the opportunity at the university, he had already established himself as a dependable IT specialist whom his lecturers, Prof Charles Yator and Prof Orinde, regularly engaged to assist with their consultancy assignments.
“I was contracted by the institution and my job specification was to develop an application that would help in the running of the Finance Department. I worked there until I graduated in 2008,” Mr Mamboleo says.
After graduation, the IT expert was poached from Moi University to its constituent college, Kabianga University, where he worked for two years before leaving to establish his own company, Optimum ERP Systems.
Today, Mamboleo’s Optimum ERP Systems is among the country’s leading technology solutions innovators, having earned an international reputation in finance, human resource management, customer relationship management, education and business management solutions.
Currently, Mamboleo serves a large client base comprising educational institutions, including Technical Training Institutions, teacher training colleges, numerous business organisations and government agencies through UltimateERP Solutions, the flagship innovation of his company.
The platform is now powering seamless digital transformation across 213 leading institutions, predominantly TVETs and TTCs, delivering integrated admissions, finance, academics, biometrics and Office of the Auditor-General-compliant reporting.
The solution continues to set the benchmark for efficiency, accountability and excellence in Kenya’s technical education landscape.
Another top-notch innovation developed by the IT specialist is a solution designed to help county governments improve efficiency in the management of medical supplies.
The solution, dubbed Medflow, is a management system that ensures efficiency in monitoring the flow of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical supplies in hospitals while helping management make informed decisions on procurement, redistribution and disposal of hospital resources.
The system is so comprehensive that wastage, pilferage and theft of supplies in hospitals can be effectively managed at the click of a button.
The application has addressed the challenge of a lack of transparency in the handling of drugs and other medical supplies within hospitals.
The system is designed in such a way that the entire health department hierarchy, including the county governor, can access information within the system, including financial monitoring data.
“With the system, stakeholders in the health department are able to make system-enhanced procurement decisions, including processing orders, updating stock records and receiving stock alerts,” Mamboleo says.
The system, which is virtually fool-proof if fully embraced, is set to eliminate cases associated with the theft of hospital drugs, while enabling health facilities to monitor drug stocks and assure the public of the availability of essential supplies.
Already, the system is operational in Elgeyo Marakwet County, where high performance has been recorded in the health sector.
Despite his huge success in the ICT sector, Mamboleo says persistent challenges continue to make the field more complex, requiring innovators to keep pace with the fast-moving world of technology.
However, user resistance remains one of the top challenges he faces, coupled with the absence of clear institutional policies.
“In many cases, this makes system implementation extremely difficult because different stakeholders expect the ERP to operate according to their individual preferences rather than following standardised processes,” Mamboleo says.
It also becomes a major challenge when an institution wants to deploy an ERP system but lacks adequate ICT infrastructure.
“As it is, many institutions operate with poor network connectivity and outdated computer hardware, yet they still expect the system to deliver optimal performance and seamless functionality right from the start,” he says.
More often than not, the ICT expert says, some clients fail to provide clear and detailed specifications of the required features during the initial stages, creating implementation challenges.
“This frequently leads to continuous customisations and scope creep within the same fixed budget, which ultimately erodes our profit margins and stretches project resources,” he adds.
However, the CEO who hails from Nyamira County says he is optimistic that the situation will improve, resulting in enhanced service delivery for end users.
