Tag: COVID-19

Intelligent Automation (IA) is simply the use of new technologies to help organisations improve the way they operate. And it may be the ‘digital antidote’ to combating COVID-19 because it is so well suited to solving a number of the business challenges created by the pandemic.   

With the easing of the nationwide lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic through the Government's 'Risk Adjusted Strategy' (comprising of five lockdown levels), more and more business can lawfully operate again. As a result, employees will be returning to work and employers will be obliged to remunerate them again.

Despite the fact that South Africa’s COVID-19 numbers have continued to grow, the country is being forced to reopen businesses to allow millions to start earning a living again. Unfortunately, this is also going to mean the unavoidable increase in infections we have seen over the past few weeks, making it that much harder to contain the spread.

An interview with Kevin Black, Director, VAT Claims International, and Dr Ivor Blumenthal, CEO, ArkKonsult, discussing how COVID-19 and the lockdown has severely impacted business cash flows. Surviving the shock is challenging the resilience of enterprises and executives.

COVID-19 is a global pandemic, evolving at unprecedented speed and scale. It is creating a universal imperative for governments and organisations to take immediate action to protect their people. Self-quarantine. Social distancing. Community spread. These formerly obscure terms are now everyday words

As South Africa braces itself to reach the peak in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, Government statistics have shown that the country could reach 400,000 infections by mid-July. While lockdown conditions may have been eased to level 3 for now, South Africa, and much of the world, is nowhere near the end of the pandemic, and the economic and health repercussions of COVID-19 are going to persist for months to come.

The apparel sector has been fundamentally altered by the impact of COVID-19. The last number of months have seen increasing pressure on the sector due to abrupt order cancellations, halted payments for suppliers and workers along with enforced factory and store closures.

July is savings month in South Africa. This is a month where national savings awareness campaigns are run to look at fostering a culture of savings for South Africans. Historically, post the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, the South African household savings ratio (the income saved by households during a certain period of time), has also mostly remained in negative territory.

The economic impact of COVID-19 is being felt increasingly by individuals and businesses across the country. The simple fact that the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has been swamped with applications and already paid out well over R4 billion in UIF claims is clear evidence of the strain being felt by many households.

South Africa’s telecommunications (telcos) companies need to rapidly evolve by adding additional services for a new mobile working and learning world in order to stay relevant and profitable.  Their legacy business model of telcos which has long sold data and SMS packages to consumers, is no longer enough on its own - a fact that has been brought into stark relief throughout the lockdown period.