Tag: FNB Business

Accessing the right funding and financing, at the right time, can mean the difference between starting up, staying open, or shutting down. The economy is facing a challenging business environment, with slow global growth, economic volatility, and ongoing power supply issues. This means that many businesses in South Africa are still trying to find their financial footing

In this digital age, big data is no longer just a trendy term. Businesses of all sizes are pouring resources into big data projects to make smarter decisions, deliver personalised customer experiences, and accelerate innovation.

While digitisation and automation create many opportunities for businesses to streamline tasks and deliver benefits of ease and convenience to customers, this doesn’t automatically translate to good customer service. In fact, that assumption can create a significant risk for any business, because the simple truth is that you cannot entirely remove the human element from your business when you are dealing with customers who are human.

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) language model, is forcing a significant paradigm shift in the education sector, as educators at all levels, but particularly in tertiary institutions, grapple with the implications, the technology that has so much potential to do good, but also raises concerns about its impact on the validity of traditional student outputs like essays and tests.

Storing data securely and using it appropriately should not be merely a compliance-driven practice; it should be a cornerstone of any business. Not only does appropriate data protection and use protect your business from risk, but it is also key to building customer trust, without which, no business can survive for any reasonable length of time.

While COVID-19 is certainly not a thing of the past, as a society we appear to be starting to find ways of living with the virus and, for most people at least, taking the necessary precautions to protect ourselves from being infected by it. The same can be said for many businesses.

Nearly eleven months after South Africa’s lockdown was first declared, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about the effect that the coronavirus pandemic will continue to have on our society and economy in 2021. Nevertheless, it is worth considering how one particularly hard-hit industry is expected to evolve in the context of the continued pandemic and difficult economic outlook.

It’s universally agreed that one of the most significant changes that have been brought about by the COVID-19 is the shift in the way people will live and work in the years to come. Given that technology and digitisation will be central to this shifting dynamic, the role of data scientists in enabling and informing business strategy has never been bigger or more important.

COVID-19 has made it infinitely more difficult for most companies to do business. Apart from the financial challenges created by the widespread lockdowns, the requirement for social distancing and remote working, relationships has made it very difficult for prospective parties in a business transaction to comprehensively assess the companies they intend doing business with, including the vital requirement to check on their creditworthiness.

Despite the country falling into recession, coupled with a dim economic outlook, it is not all doom and gloom for small businesses. For many small businesses the outlook for the year ahead seems bleak due to a lower forecast for economic growth globally, challenging local trading conditions owing to inconsistent power supply, currency volatility and rising operating costs, amongst several factors. However, opportunities still exist for SMEs who are agile.