Author: Contributor
by Angus Brown, co-founder of eBucks.com and MD of Banking Acumen Have we seen the peak of internet banking in South Africa? Although the banks are quite tight-lipped about their usage numbers, I suspect that the number of customers using a desktop computer to do their banking is declining. We know that the majority of logons come from office workers, but we also know that the number of employed people (including government workers) in South Africa is stagnant. While many up-market homes have a desktop PC or a laptop, and optical fibre services have been introduced in certain suburbs, the growth…
By Brett Parker, Managing Director – SAP Africa at SAP When you want to know the future, acknowledge the past. As citizens of a rapidly accelerated world, we are seduced by the idea that our situation is unique. In many ways, it is – not the least how the workplace is changing. But the change in the workplace itself is not new, nor is the regression invited by companies that do not heed this shift. Technology can rapidly alter how work gets done. When the steam engine started appearing in the late 1700s, many sectors were not enthusiastic. They couldn’t…
by Brett Parker, managing director at SAP Africa “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished,” said the wise Benjamin Franklin. But we don’t need to take his word for it: there are many inspired thoughts that punctuate the role of change in business. The more difficult question is when change should happen. This topic makes business leaders nervous. Change is good, but so is stability. The world does not comprise of only mavericks and trailblazers – and even those often reach their stature through steady determination, not constantly rocking the boat. Timing is important, as is a clear view of what…
When Facebook accidentally listed millions of users as “dead” in an embarrassing glitch it was a reminder that everyone needs to plan for their own digital death.
Many executives are realising that now is the time to start defining their analytics strategies, and start building the tools that enable their organisations to make sense of the masses of data streaming in.
There have been a number of suggestions to explain the slowdown in Netflix’s subscriber growth that resulted in its share price falling by 14.5%. By David Glance Netflix’s own theory is that users were put off by a price rise as Netflix phased out legacy price deals for early subscribers. Certainly, the press covered the impending rise extensively and so this may have caused people to cancel subscriptions. A second theory is that subscribers have abandoned the service because of the lack of content. Netflix has been spending its budget on its own content at the expense of licensing deals with…
In 2014, as part of its traditional April Fool’s pranks, Google released a video in which Google Maps VP Brian McClendon announced a job opening for a Pokémon Master. By Eduardo Velloso and Marcus Carter The video showed candidates travelling around the world, from the tallest mountains to the middle of the ocean in their search for the rarest creatures. Instead of pokéballs, they used their phones to capture them. Google’s prank captured viewers imaginations and became a reality. Fast forward two years and the video that started as a tongue-in-cheek prank became reality with the release of Pokémon GO, a…
Ask around – everyone has an opinion about their email and their inbox, and it’s not always positive. By Esther Milne and Scott Ewing From information overload, zero inbox and leaked email scandals to the much-hyped triumph of workflow software like Slack and Asana, email has certainly had a bad rap recently. Email has been with us for about 45 years, since the first such electronic message was sent in 1971. The death of email was first predicted in 1989. Back then, it was the fax that apparently signalled its ultimate end. Yet despite stories of its demise, virtually every internet user…
By Andy Tattersal To consider how being constantly connected through computers and mobile devices has encroached on our working lives, consider the experiment about the frog in a pan of boiling water. A frog in a pan of cold water that is gently heated will not realise it’s boiling to death if the change is sufficiently gradual. In the same way, the web has affected our attention span and so our productivity – slowly but surely the heat of distraction has increased as decades of internet evolution has added email, websites, instant messaging, forums, social media and video. Striving to…
By Tony Smith, CEO at Oxygen8 Traditional retailers are caught up in an intense battle against the world of online shopping in a desperate fight to save the high street. Right at the forefront of the battle is the mobile phone, and retail marketers and brand owners are just beginning to realise the key role it can play in reversing the trend of reduced store footfall and redressing the odds back in their favour. A key element in this fight back is harnessing the power of location-based marketing. By targetting mobile phones with relevant and personalised offers – location-based services…