Enterprise IT
Beyond digitisation: The four vital cornerstones of excellent customer experience
By Prof. Yudhvir Seetharam: Head of Analytics, Insights and Research at FNB Commercial One of the most valuable contributions that data and data analytics have made to modern businesses is the ability that they offer to understand customers, engage meaningfully with them, and offer them the type of positive experience that keeps them coming back for more. But for all the value that data presents in terms of enhancing the customer experience, it also creates a significant risk for the business that doesn’t understand how to apply it to best effect when creating customer experiences. More often than not, that risk is manifested in organisations that suffer a misperception that customer experience (CX) is something that you ‘do’ for your customer. These businesses typically understand CX to b...
Open source provides the building blocks for future technology innovation
Sumit Kumar Sharma, Enterprise Architect, In2IT Technologies. Open source is by no means a new technology, but it has matured over the past 30 plus years and with the latest wave of digital transformation, its role has become increasingly prominent. In the everyday business sense, it is still a cost-effective option for operating systems, databases, and analytical tools. However, where the nature and benefits of open source are truly being realised is in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning spaces. The open, community-driven, and collaborative environment created by open source is the perfect ground for these new-age initiatives, fostering innovation while ensuring that there is no single entity driving the agenda around the technology that will shape our future. Still the...
5 methods for meeting customers at their pain points instead of just selling
Zuko Mdwaba, Area VP, Salesforce South Africa. Every business is founded to solve a customer problem, and the vast majority of products and services are designed to alleviate a specific customer pain point. But it is still important to let each customer know how their specific problems are being solved. One of the best ways to build brand credibility is to understand a customer’s journey and build long-term relationships with them. In this article, we ask industry professionals how they meet the needs of their customers. Always look for the next pain point – and solve it According to Aisha Pandor, co-founder of SweepSouth, Africa’s largest on-demand home services platform, if you truly want to make a difference with your business, you must always be on the lookout for the next ...
ONLYOFFICE Docs Review: A Reliable Document Collaboration Tool
The main reason why real-time document collaboration software is popular nowadays is that it allows several users to work on the same file together with the purpose of creating a single final version. During the collaborative editing process, all edits made by the co-authors are immediately synchronised, and the original file is automatically updated. Therefore, it’s not necessary to create separate document drafts, which allows the collaborators to save some time and stay more productive. Some of the most prominent examples of such software are Google Docs and Microsoft Office Online. These document collaboration tools are widely used by teams and companies of any size. However, there are less-known alternatives that are as collaborative as Google Docs and as powerful as Microsoft Office ...
Zoho One sees over 80% growth in South Africa
Andrew Bourne, Regional Manager, Zoho Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, announced today that Zoho One has achieved a new milestone, now supporting 50,000 organisations across more than 160 countries. Over the past two years, the platform has grown 150%, with 37.5% of new Zoho One customers coming from mid-market and enterprise businesses. License upgrades by customers who adopted Zoho One five years ago have increased 92%, contributing to this milestone growth. In South Africa alone, there has been an 81.4% growth from 2020 to 2021. These figures spotlight the market’s move away from static legacy applications and toward end-to-end solutions that empower organisations to be agile, scale, and adapt to changes in their industries. Launched in 2017 as a first-of-its-kind ...
How does a cyber criminal think?
Image sourced from Feed Navigator. How do cybercriminals think when they enter into your organisation? What do they look for? And how can you use this insight to protect your business? Hackers want in. They want into the business, its data and its details because cybercrime is a multi-billion-dollar business and there is plenty of profit in phishing, stolen data and ransomware. They dig into your business and they use every loophole and vulnerability they can find, whether that is your systems or your people. Their approaches follow several standard steps, although these can change depending on the target or the goal. After all, as Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy & Evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa, points out: “Cybercriminals do have several steps they usually follow, although the...
The Smart and Connected Factory is Made Possible by Automation
Phil Lewis, Senior Vice President of Solution Consulting, International, Infor Automation is complex – especially in the manufacturing industry. Will the automation trend continue to accelerate? Infor’s Phil Lewis looks at some examples of smart connected factories. The adoption of automation is one of the unexpected game-changers that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated in manufacturing. The impact is nowhere more robust than on the shop floor. Manufacturers placed their factories in less-developed countries with low labor costs. They employed, and are still stuck with, a geographic footprint for production that was driven by labor arbitrage around the globe, rather than by factors such as proximity to customers or ecological considerations. In fact, supply chains expanded with goo...
