We’ve all faced this problem before: You have a problem with a room you’ve rented. You complain to the landlord/building manager. Usually, it might be a written complaint or filling out an official form.
The landlord/manager has to keep up with complaints/requests like yours as well as other tenants and assign technicians/workers to fix your problem. But all that can be cumbersome, time-consuming and frustrating especially in places like Ghana.
But there are always solutions for these kinds of problems and three gentlemen from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) have a solution to that problem.
Joshua Oguntade, Luqman Musah and David Kenechukwu Obi are the co-founders of a solution called Joluud. Joluud is a management platform which is aimed at helping managers better manage their hotels, apartments, and hostels.
Launched in August 2017 with some funding from MEST, Joluud has managed to gain traction by signing up some clients including the Meridian Group, Clifton Homes, Mena Court, Prime Wood Properties, Fairview Properties, and CPL Properties.
A Facility Management Solution For The African Market
Most facility managers in the market today rely on the same old spreadsheets to track and maintain upkeep at their facilities. Others might use third-party software which is more tailored to the western world and is likely to be more expensive. It may not seem like a big deal, but manual attempts at maintaining a facility can be time-consuming and opting for third-party solutions can increase costs.
The founders of Joluud decided to build a solution which was better suited to the African market, easier to use and is more affordable.
Facility managers can sign up with Joluud and access their web portal where they can perfect certain tasks like tracking and managing maintenance requests, collecting dues and payments from tenants and knowing tenancy rates.
Tenants would be able to access the Joluud platform and make a maintenance request through the application. The tenant manager would receive the request through the application and then assign his maintenance worker to complete the task.
Technicians and workers assigned to work on a tenant’s request would get an SMS message and at the end of the day, a tenant can “rate” the technician on work done which helps the facility manager gauge work performance.
Challenges And Focus
The Ghanaian market can be a hard nut to crack especially when it comes to adapting to technology use. Some would say that many Ghanaian businesses and individuals are averse to technology solutions built by Ghanaians especially when it comes to using it to enhance their businesses or enterprises. In Ghana, we still heavily rely on cash even though most of the world is slowly gravitating towards cashless systems.
But Joluud has managed to sign up some impressive clients with the likes of Clifton Homes and Meridian Group. Joluud has potential to evolve into a lot of things and the onus is on the founders to focus on what makes Joluud work well and not try to shoehorn too many features which may bloat the solution.
But having gotten endorsements from facility companies as well as the MEST who are currently using the software, it’s a good confidence boost for the young Joluud company.
Great Potential
There is a lot of potential for the Joluud solution to be a great success. With the platform, more features like monitoring room check-ins and check-outs can be built in future versions, which can enable facility managers to easily arrange cleanups of rooms or check unwanted guests.
For now, Joluud is focusing on officially launching their product either by the end of January or early February.
You can find more about Joluud on their website. You can follow them on Twitter as well as on Facebook.
