“AI is making headlines all over the globe," says Kholiwe Makhohlosi, newly appointed MD of SAP Southern Africa. She opened Saphila 2023 in Sun City this morning. But AI is useless unless it is properly implemented. “SAP is looking to implement AI confidently, mindfully, and responsibly,” she says.
Sustainability is another major issue African companies grapple with, particularly whether it is relevant for organizations in the developing world. Our work to ensure a sustainable future is relevant for every business, but we need to consider that in the African context.
“Companies like SAP and its partners have a major role to play in these and other issues facing African businesses,” Mokhohlosi says. In his keynote address at Saphila 2023, entrepreneur Vusi Thembekwayo outlines the many challenges facing African businesses. He also outlines how to turn them into opportunities.
He points out that a number of major events have brought the world to the place it is now, including terrorism, war, a pandemic, and an extreme climate, among others. At the same time, there has never been a better time to be alive: people live longer and are wealthier than ever before.
South Africa's economy has shifted radically in the last couple of decades. This is from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, and now with services emerging. Technology, of course, plays a major role in changing business and economic models, as Thembekwayo points out.
“As we build the future of our businesses, we need to truly understand the context in which we operate,” he says. The next step is to recognize which competencies you need to retain within the organization and which should be stripped out.
Kholiwe Makhohlosi, newly-appointed MD of SAP southern Africa
Often, what holds us back in our business is that people and companies see what is in front of them. However, they don’t share the collective intelligence to see the full picture. This is why small businesses disrupt big organizations because they can see the big picture. "The solution is to build a system of collaborating collective intelligence. sharing and collaborating—but most importantly, trusting one another.”
To identify data that can be considered trustworthy, organizations need to shift from studying demographics to looking at psychographics. "Many still try to describe the customer in terms we understand.” They also need to understand that customer values are changing in terms of identity, wealth, and legacy.
For instance, Thembekwayo explains, many organizations are stuck in binary ideas. This means they have to challenge how they engage with this question. “The final move we need to make is to question what we are seeing.” Analytics will reflect what happened in the past, and this will become the standard. “We need to push beyond the standard concept, beyond what is past.
“We spend a lot of time looking at what we know about the past and extrapolating how this translates into insight. But what we need to do is gain insight." Thembekwayo says there are four laws for building an organization that will succeed. They are:
* Be obsessed with finding the truth, not a particular version of the truth;
* The aim should be to be the most successful at what you do, not necessarily the biggest.
* Vision excites people, not numbers; and
* Led by a business case, which can be challenging because it often stands against current practices.
