Tag: key performance indicator (KPI)

2021 marks a year which should be characterised by transformative change and reinvention. 2020 was a uniquely challenging year, which tested companies and their boards, demanding rapid responses to new challenges, and decision-making with a far wider ambit of influence.

Almost a year into the global COVID-19 pandemic, most organisations have settled into new, more digital ways of working and collaborating. Even though the crisis is not yet behind us, businesses should seize this chance to evaluate their performance through a new lens – and to reshape themselves into more resilient, flexible and productive organisations.

It’s been a stark and dramatic change in work environment and responsibility. People are working from kitchen counters, home studies and lounge suites. They’re waking up and heading into the virtual office in pyjamas. The world is online, and organisations that resisted remote working for years are living out their worst fears – will the work get done? Will the employee deliver? How do I know they’re not watching Netflix?

Business resilience remains one of the most important and relevant ways for organisations to bypass legacy challenges and to explore new opportunities. The recent months have likely been the biggest challenge for all organisations across the continent.

The media landscape continues to shift, with consumer expectations driving innovation and new players disrupting traditional ways of broadcasting. Modern consumers now also connect with brands at an average of four to six touchpoints and they migrate from traditional platforms to digital devices to generate deeper insights before they take the desired action1.

Thanks to automated software, we have a wealth of real-time business data right at our fingertips. The result is that it’s all too easy for a medium business or scale-up to become too obsessed with the wrong metrics, and often at the expense of measuring and managing the things that really matter.

Digital innovation is accelerating in South Africa - from call centres using chatbots and automatic transcription to improve customer service, to financial advisors harnessing machine learning and data analytics, rapidly matching client and solution, and emerging use cases of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and AR/VR training in the mining and manufacturing sectors.  

Changing consumer behaviour and creating loyalty throughout the supply chain are areas every FMCG manufacturer is trying to achieve. However, these are the last links and typically the most difficult elements to manipulate. This is due to challenges around validating sales – you can only reward loyalty if you can verify the purchase. 

According to a report released in 2018 by the National Credit Regulator, of the 25 million ‘credit-active’ consumers in South Africa, a frightening 10 million were behind in their loan repayments.  Even the World Bank has deemed South Africa to be the most indebted country in the world.

The South African workforce is growing. The number of public university graduates continues to climb, with Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) reporting that 203,078 South Africans graduated in 2016, up from 165,995 in 2012. And with this year’s graduation ceremony season just passed, a fresh crop of young professionals is hungry to make their mark in the workplace.