Transformation in Africa: Access Holdings, Nigeria. This is an industry insight drawn from public sources. It is not a Cufia client story.
Access Holdings did not start with the technology. It started with its people, and that shaped everything that followed.
The context
Access Holdings Plc, the Lagos-headquartered parent of Access Bank Group, operates in 18 countries and serves over 56 million customers. It wanted to address challenges in data management, meeting productivity and software development.
What they did
The group adopted Copilot for Microsoft 365, bringing generative AI into tools employees already used every day. Crucially, it started with people: executive directors were trained first, followed by general managers.
Internal surveys had shown some staff feared AI would threaten their jobs, and the training aimed to reassure them while gathering use cases from participants. The group also set up a dedicated, secured environment so data would not leak outside the organisation or between user groups.
The results reported (first three months)
- Coding tasks that took eight hours reduced to about two to three hours
- A chatbot project estimated at two to three months completed in about 10 days
- Investor presentation preparation cut from five or six hours to 45 minutes
- Meeting engagement up by about 25%, as AI summaries freed staff from note-taking
The lessons
- Start with leadership and address fear directly.
- Use training to surface use cases from the people who do the work.
- Put data security and governance in place from day one.
How Cufia helps
Our AI Readiness Assessment, AI Governance and AI Executive Training services help organisations follow the same path: prepare leaders, identify high-value use cases, and deploy AI safely.
Source
Note: The figures are the company’s own estimates as published by Microsoft, a vendor. They are reported figures and have not been independently verified.
