Tag: Accenture Africa

While the general opinion by industry observers is that organisations will virtualise the majority of applications and workloads and move to the public cloud – with the public cloud representing up to 80% of companies' infrastructure footprints – most businesses have pivoted to a hybrid approach in response to the need for more balance.

Customers expect an easy, hassle-free omnichannel shopping experience; and digital innovation is the answer that retailers have been waiting for. It has been rapidly transforming retail value chains in recent years.

The stats speak for themselves. Firstly, there has been a 169% increase in online purchases from new or low-frequency online shoppers. Secondly, more than 80% of consumers who increased their omnichannel digital usage during the pandemic expect to continue with these.

In my previous article, I highlighted that cyber threat intelligence (CTI) offers improved visibility into overall network threats and informs decision-makers how to prioritise security around potential targets and threats. We have created relevant, timely and actionable threat intelligence for more than 20 years.

Although many retailers have successfully implemented omnichannel services like same-day shipping, in-store pickup or home delivery, research shows that only a third of retail executives said this was a regular service, while 62% said it was just for the 2021 holiday season.

In businesses the world over, phrases like 'time is of the essence' and 'time is money' are well-worn clichés. So why is it that some South African corporate decisions are unnecessarily delayed?

Sustainability is the new digital. Becoming sustainable as a business is not a matter of 'if' but 'when'. It requires demonstrating a purposeful approach to environmental, social, governance and technology issues, maintaining strong ethical standards, and operating responsibly.

Sustainability will permeate everything we do, driving new value and growth along the way. But most South African companies have been slow to adopt sustainability. So how can companies extend the capabilities of key technologies to enable sustainable practices?

Traditional cyber threat intelligence (CTI) provides information on threat actors targeting IT or OT but often only addresses edge device security during the deployment of highly specialised systems. We CTI take OT security a step further with critical vulnerability intelligence and monitors major edge devices, their vendors and their version numbers to make clients aware of threats to IT, OT and cloud environments.

Conventional wisdom suggests that leaders need to be constantly front and centre, on the field and in the thick of the action. That notion of course has changed in the past two years because of the physical constraints brought on by the pandemic.