Tag: remote working

With South Africa’s BPO industry voted the most favoured offshore CX delivery location in 2021 in the annual Ryan Strategic Advisory BPO Omnibus Survey, the burgeoning sector is well positioned to play a critical role in ‘Impact Sourcing’. 

While the importance of mental and physical wellbeing is widely acknowledged, recent events have driven the message home hard. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the link between wellness and productivity due to Working From Home (WFH).

Work from Home (WFH) is here to stay, and it has changed the way we access business data. The monolithic server structure has firmly given way to cloud-based storage systems that enable anytime, anywhere access, along with greater flexibility and agility – as well as new challenges.

A closer look at businesses who managed to pivot, highlighting the true resilience of South Africa’s SMEs. It has been more than a year since South Africa’s nationwide lockdown was implemented in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Rapid technological adoption offers possibilities alongside the responsibility to ensure that it is inclusive, not manipulated by bad actors and that it is used for the greater good of society. Today, the global pandemic has brought our inter-connectedness and humanity to the fore.

The Naspers Board is immensely proud of what our people achieved during the past year. They managed the pandemic, delivered powerful revenue growth and lifted profitability. Foundations were laid for future growth. The year ended 31 March 2021 (FY21) was an extraordinary period.

Most African business leaders are more optimistic about the strength of the global economy and their organisations’ ability to grow revenues in the next 12 months than they were a year ago. Although CEOs’ confidence in their own company’s revenue prospects has rebounded, they are anxious, too: policy uncertainty, tax policy, cyber threats and over-regulation are keeping them awake at night.

The normalisation of remote working and increased business adoption of cloud technologies have significantly increased the cyberattack surface putting every company at risk of compromise. With more than 10% of internet user computers worldwide experiencing at least one malware-class attack last year and Kaspersky solutions blocking over 665 million attacks launched from online resources in various countries, cybersecurity skills are now more in demand than ever.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is no flash-in-the-pan hyped-up tech, it’s the future of connectivity and collaboration in a freshly minted digital world. Digital transformation. Over the past year, this term has rapidly left behind its buzzword status to become a key business enabler in a world defined by pandemic restrictions and new requirements to monitor and manage systems and facilities remotely.  

Downsizing, remote working and interacting with customers online have become part of the daily grind. And with the Third Wave of infections upon us, those organisations who have not yet modernised their technology environments will find it increasingly difficult to survive.