Tag: user experience (UX)

3D Secure for online payments continues to gather momentum globally. However, for some industries, real-time authentication requirements can be a significant drawback, especially those that rely on recurring, subscription or instalment card-on-file transactions.

In recent years, South Africa has embraced the global phenomenon of Black Friday. While, for businesses in this country, it's tempting to focus solely on the immediate potential that this flurry of buying activity presents, small and medium enterprise (SME) should take a much longer-term view of Black Friday, understanding its real potential to underpin long-term growth.

Three years ago, we talked about the Renaissance of the PC. While the personal computer (PC) has always helped us connect and collaborate, in 2020, at the height of work-from-home and virtual learning, we saw just how critical the PC is to all aspects of our lives.

Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are changing every industry and sector, including education. If students are to take advantage of AI, it’s essential they are exposed to it early and taught how to harness it. The changing educational landscape, accelerated by the pandemic, offers an opportunity to enhance inclusion and accessibility through AI technology.

Undertaking high-impact change throughout the organisation can potentially create business opportunities while entrenching resilient and engaging customer experiences. Fast, agile and dominant. These are the terms used to describe technology companies and that McKinsey believes are key to the success of the organisation.

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.

Virtual reality (VR) technologies of today have their roots in ideas dating back to the 1800s, tracing back to the inception of practical photography. The concept began with the Sir Charles Wheatstone’s invention of the stereoscope in 1838, employing twin mirrors to project a unified image. This pioneering development later evolved into the patented View-Master in 1939, a device that remains in production even today.

As digital transformation increases at a dizzying pace, digital supply chain (DSC) management has become a business necessity. Software estates are ever-increasing, contracts and licences are becoming more complicated, and preventing wastage is more challenging than ever.

In this two-part series, I outline the skills that will be required by present-day HR Professionals – for now and into the future. Due to the increasing automated and digitised world in which HR professionals need to serve their stakeholders, as well as the added intricacy of a VUCA environment, all HR professionals will need to upskill and reskill themselves to meet the challenges of this Future World of Work. 

2022 was a rollercoaster - I don’t think any of us could have predicted what was to come. The constant through it all was the importance of technology to overcome our near-term obstacles and to realise our long-term opportunities.