By Tjaart Malan, Head of Cloud Success Services Africa at SAP
Tjaart Malan, Head of Cloud Success Services Africa at SAP
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, 29 August 2022 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/- Since the start of the pandemic, digital transformation has become a core objective and top priority for nearly every business in the world.
From enabling remote and hybrid work environments to shifting customer-facing operations to digital channels and implementing data and analytics to better understand a volatile and highly unpredictable business environment, digital transformation has featured prominently in boardrooms over the past two years.
While the immediate task of adapting to disruptions and changes caused by the pandemic and a host of other factors remain the focus, all indications are that new digital technologies will feature prominently in future transformation initiatives.
For example, the same IDC report found that 90% of organisations worldwide are expected to prioritise investment in digital tools that augment physical spaces with digital experiences.
And considering the urgency of the fight against climate change, it’s no surprise that more than 90% of companies will use digital transformation to reduce their carbon footprints by 2023.
Every failed project costs the business money, resources, time, and opportunity. A failed digital transformation project undermines faith and confidence in future initiatives and increases organisational resistance toward further digital transformation efforts.
So, why is digital transformation success so important to building successful modern businesses?
The ‘why’ of digital transformation
For most companies, a digital transformation initiative will be rooted in either growth objectives or to protect the business against disruption.
A growth-based digital transformation may see the organisation adopt new technologies such as IoT to bring greater transparency to core business assets, for example sensors based in delivery vehicles tracking e-commerce fulfilment.
By integrating the data produced by sensors to a powerful analytics and business intelligence platform – and matching those insights to third-party data such as traffic and weather data – organisations could identify ways to optimise the delivery process and improve the customer experience.
A growth-based digital transformation initiative could also involve a re-engineering of customer experience processes, for example a retailer developing omni-channel customer experiences that deliver personalised offers at scale through a variety of digital and physical channels.
For companies wishing to utilise digital transformation to protect against disruption or risk, the use cases will be slightly different. For example, in light of ongoing supply chain issues, many organisations are seeking to digitally transform their supply chain processes to achieve greater transparency and predictability over such processes.
Building safe, accessible, and collaborative hybrid work models protects the organisation against the disruption of lockdowns and helps to future-proof their workforce engagement strategies by enabling much-needed flexibility.
A blueprint for successful digital transformation
Every digital transformation effort has three core elements: People, Processes, and Technology. Each of these elements need to be aligned to a clear, strategic vision and defined business objectives to ensure the digital transformation project delivers to actual business and customer needs.
One McKinsey survey found that companies believe their digital transformation initiatives were a success mainly when they improve performance and equip the organisation to sustain improvements over time.
What are the key ingredients to implementing a successful, value-generating digital transformation initiative?
Firstly, organisations need a sense of urgency about the transformation, driven from senior management throughout every layer of the organisation. Many of the most impactful digital transformation projects show quick time-to-value, which helps secure further support and buy-in for the project from the broader organisation.
Digital transformation projects should focus on simplification by means of standardisation and the use of templates. In most cases, the biggest cost of an implementation stems from the organisation’s nee to adapt systems to meet unique requirements. Leveraging a global services provider that can bring international best practices to a digital transformation initiative can significantly cut down on the project timeline and reduce associated costs.
Prioritisation is also essential. Digital transformation initiatives are meant to shape the future of the organisation. Companies should therefore commit their top talent and skills to seeing the project to a successful outcome.
This does raise the challenge of how to keep the business running optimally when some of the best teams and people are focused on the new initiative. Companies need to be clear on their current capacity and not take on too much, avoiding in particular large-scale once-off transformation initiatives. Finding the correct balance is key to a successful transformation project.
A sometimes-neglected but always critical element to any successful transformation initiative is the change management needed to embed new systems and processes within the organisation.
Digital transformation initiatives promise a new end-state for the organisation, one that features new and enhanced capabilities. But the implementation itself puts the organisation in an interim state between what was and what could be. Companies should be ready to navigate users through this interim phase and give the correct level of consideration to technical and change management elements, over and above successfully deploying the technology.
Once companies have established a suitably powerful technology platform, they can innovate across a broad range of business areas. Digital transformation is not about finding new tech to perform old functions better or faster: it’s about shifting mindsets to unlock greater innovation capacity that can help drive the organisation’s success for years to come.
SAP’s strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.
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WASHINGTON DC, United States of America, 20 March 2022, /African Media Agency/- Africa Fintech Summit is pleased to announce Prosper Africa as a Gold Sponsor for Africa Fintech Summit in 2023 to be held in Washington DC on the 12th April 2023 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Prosper Africa is the U.S. Government initiative to increase two-way trade and investment between the United States and African countries.
The sponsorship comes at the heels of the US-Africa Leadership Summit (ALS) and the U.S.-Africa Business Forum, held last December in Washington, D.C.
Recognizing the tremendous growth potential of Africa’s technology sector, President Joe Biden announced the launch of the White House’s Digital Transformation with Africa (DTA) initiative to expand digital access and literacy across the continent, and Prosper Africa announced the new Prosper Africa Tech for Trade Alliance, in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), at the Business Forum on December 14.
The Prosper Africa Tech for Trade Alliance will be officially launched at a special session during the Africa Fintech Summit. This tech alliance of major U.S. companies aims to accelerate e-commerce and digital trade in Africa and address legal, regulatory, and logistical bottlenecks across the continent.
“Africa’s digital ecosystem offers massive potential to spur economic recovery, promote opportunity, and create jobs,” said Scott Cameron, Acting Prosper Africa Coordinator. “We’re pleased to join the Africa Fintech Summit as a Gold Sponsor and partner for the upcoming 9th Summit here in Washington DC.”
Prosper Africa will be joined by other U.S. Government agencies to engage with the tech innovators, founders, and ecosystem players and showcase the full suite of U.S. Government services and resources to advance fintech growth and U.S.-Africa investment.
Since launching Prosper Africa in June 2019, the U.S. Government has helped close 1100 deals across 49 countries for a total estimated value of $65 billion in two-way trade and investment.
“It is with immense gratitude and great pleasure that we welcome Prosper Africa as our Gold Sponsor for our summit in Washington DC in April this year. We are keen to work with Prosper Africa and the initiative’s partner U.S. Government agencies to avail US’ innovation capital to the African Fintech and tech ecosystem through the various tools at hand and deepen the US-Africa tech and investment ties,” said Zekarias Amsalu, Co-Founder of AFTS and MD of Ibex Frontier.
Since its first summit in 2018, the Africa Fintech Summit has become the largest bi-annual financial technology gathering on the African continent. In addition to Prosper Africa’s Gold sponsorship, AFTS will be supported by a diverse cohort of partners and sponsors.
The 9th edition of AFTS will focus on US-Africa Tech connection, fintech regulatory best practices, diaspora banking & remittance, African fintechs expanding globally, cross border payment movements & use-cases for decentralized finance (Defi), fintech funding trends, cross-border payments under the AfCFTA, and numerous other spotlight topics.
AFTS ( https://africafintechsummit.com ) is the premier global initiative dedicated to the African fintech ecosystem. AFTS is traditionally hosted in Washington, D.C., each April during the World Bank/IFC annual meeting week and in a different African city each November (most recently Cape Town, Lagos, Addis Ababa and Cairo). The summit is being held in a hybrid format, in person in the selected Venue in compliance with COVID-19 protocol and global live virtual delegates.
Supported by an advisory board of thought leaders and fintech pioneers, AFTS is a unique space where innovative ideas are debated, investments mobilized, partnership deals signed, and collaborations formed across sectors and geographies. AFTS is organized in partnership between Washington, D.C. based firms, strategic advisory group, Dedalus Global, and Pan-African consultancy advisory firm, Ibex Frontier.
About Prosper Africa
Prosper Africa Prosper Africa is the White House initiative to increase two-way trade and investment between the United States and African countries. Prosper Africa brings together – and enhances – the full suite of U.S. Government services and resources to help companies and investors do business in U.S. and African markets. Through the initiative, the U.S. Government is launching innovative new tools to advance deals, unlock market opportunities, and strengthen business and investment climates.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, 16 March 2023 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/- Companies are in a race to achieve new digital capabilities as ongoing economic disruption and a changing business landscape drive the need for rapid innovation. African organisations are accelerating their adoption of cloud solutions to drive greater efficiency, scale into new markets, and meet changing customer demands.
Gartner predicts that worldwide spending on public cloud services will grow 20.7% to reach $591.8-billion in 2023, outpacing the 18.8% growth forecast for 2022.
However, says Cameron Beveridge, Regional Director for Southern Africa at SAP, moving to cloud environments requires effective change management to ensure digital transformation initiatives reach their objectives. “There is palpable excitement around cloud services in African markets, but there are still questions around how to effectively migrate and how to orchestrate multiple cloud solutions once the migration is complete. And while it’s true that one of the main benefits of cloud services is the ability to fail quickly without incurring huge cost or time overruns, you really don’t want your cloud initiative to fail due to poor change management.”
Methodology, Partners reduce perils of Cloud Migrations
Brent Flint, Head of Enterprise Applications at Dimension Data, believes part of the answer to effective change management during cloud transformation projects rests on an effective methodology. “Migrating core business processes from on-premise environments to the cloud requires a proven methodology to accelerate the transition and reduce associated risks. A repeatable methodology that incorporates automation to ensure aspects such as data integrity, for example, can ease data migration and speed up the time-to-value.”
SAP introduced RISE with SAP in 2021 to help companies get started with SAP cloud solutions, accelerate cloud adoption, and simplify the process of shifting core business processes to cloud environments. “Companies undertaking digital transformation initiatives that could benefit from RISE need to ensure their implementation partners are accredited and have the skills capacity to support the project throughout,” explains Flint.
Beveridge adds that companies that successfully leverage the insight, skills and experience of partner organisations can reduce risk and enhance the impact and business outcomes of their transformation efforts. “Companies are realising that cloud adoption is not a once-off event: it requires near-continuous refinement and evolution to deliver business value. This makes the role of expert partners, who have developed experience with specific use cases of cloud technologies and can guide organisations in their adoption of cloud solutions, critical to their success.”
Keys to cloud success
Understanding how and where the journey to the cloud should start remains among the biggest obstacles to the digital transformation efforts of African organisations.
Lauren Wortmann, Vice President: Applications at Dimension Data, says there’s still some resistance to the cloud among organisations limiting the success of cloud transformation projects. “Cloud adoption is a business-critical activity, but the optimal starting point is not always clear. Many organisations and their IT teams also acknowledge that the shift to cloud is coming, but there’s internal resistance due to fear about how it will affect the business and existing IT skills.”
Arguably the most important factor when developing a cloud strategy is defining a clear business case for cloud adoption. “Cloud is not just about cost efficiency,” says Wortmann. “It’s about modernising the business and its core processes, unlocking new opportunities, enhancing capabilities and achieving broader digital transformation. For this to be successful, there needs to be massive buy-in from the business at every layer, from the boardroom to the IT department and every end-user.”
The era of large on-premise deployments was typified by big winners and big losers, but the new era of cloud has changed the dynamic entirely. Flint explains: “In the old days, if you defined the scope of the project correctly upfront and quoted accurately, you could deliver a successful implementation that delivered new capabilities and was profitable to the technology provider and their implementation partner. The era of cloud requires a change of mindset. Today, tech vendors and partner organisations need to strive for near-continuous innovation, with KPIs around unlocking additional business value from existing technologies built into managed services contracts. It puts the onus on partners to unlock features and benefits from software, with the goal of ongoing value generation.”
Wortmann adds that companies should be smart when choosing how they start their cloud journey. “Aspects such as Human Capital Management are perfect starting points for cloud adoption, with solutions like SAP SuccessFactors offering a high-value, low-risk way to test how cloud migration plays out in the organisation. Larger, more critical business processes such as core finance, sales and logistics carry high degrees of risk due to fears of disruption and business continuity in the event of downtime.”
Flint believes one of the keys to successful cloud adoption is simplification. “Organisations should work with their partners to understand their application landscape and identify opportunities for simplification. Reducing customisation can also keep things simple while driving costs down. Partners need to avoid customisation to limit technical debt and achieve quicker time to value. Adopting best-practice standards for core business processes opens the door to incremental innovation which can suit cloud-first companies better.”
Beveridge says this requires a change in mindset to how digital transformation initiatives are approached, both by customers and partners. “The most successful tech partners will be the ones that develop strong commercial models that meet customers’ expectations of what value digital transformation projects should deliver. However, there’s no blueprint for how this should work. Organisations should work closely with tech providers and implementation partners to develop strong business use cases and change management programmes to ensure each initiative delivers business value and unlocks new capabilities, efficiencies and opportunities for growth.”
SAP’s strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.
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For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
The Republic of Congo’s oil-driven growth model has reached its limits, says a new World Bank report, titled The Republic of Congo’s Road to Prosperity: Building Foundations for Economic Diversification.
Sustainable development urgently requires efforts to diversify national assets, focusing on stronger institutions, development of human and physical capital, and a more balanced exploitation of natural resources.
The report identifies ways in which Congo can achieve its economic diversification objectives and recommends policy reforms and investments in several priority areas.
BRAZZAVILLE, March 15, 2023 – The World Bank issued today a new edition of the Country Economic Memorandum reportfor the Republic of Congo. The report, titled The Republic of Congo’s Road to Prosperity: Building Foundations for Economic Diversification.
Despite oil’s outsize role in the economy and the coun
try’s industry sector, it employs only a small percentage of the labor force, at 20%. In fact, about 75% of the Congolese workforce (including most youth) are employed in the informal sector, either self-employed or in low productivity jobs.
Congo’s current oil-dependent economic model is unlikely to deliver sustainable growth and productive jobs going forward, given the projected depletion of the country’s oil reserves and the global transition to a low carbon economy. The new report contributes to the Government’s diversification agenda by identifying key policies and reforms to build the foundations for more diversified development that will support long-term growth, increase productivity and improve life for the Congolese people.
The hydrocarbon sector plays a dominant role in the economy but offers fewer employment opportunities
2. Low and declining labor productivity
Congo faces low and declining labor productivity compared to peer countries, restricting economic growth. The decline in labor productivity is driving a drop in per capita income and rise in poverty. Using the international poverty line of $2.15 a day, the poverty rate in Congo rose to 52% in 2021, from 33% in 2014.
Increasing labor productivity is key to prosperity as productivity growth is the key driver of sustainable income growth and poverty reduction. The report analyzes firm-level labor productivity, for the first time in the Republic of Congo, with a focus on the non-oil sector. It finds that the average worker in Congo needs to work 2.6 times longer to produce the same output as a worker in a peer country. In 2019, Congo’s overall labor productivity, measured as value-added per worker, was only $4,500), compared to an average of $6,200 among regional peer countries.
Source: WDI and World Bank Staff Calculations. June 2022
3. Boosting productivity through competition
Competition is an essential driving force for boosting long-term productivity and private sector development. In Congo, the government plays a large role in the economy through state owned enterprises (SOEs) in the energy, transport, banking, and healthcare sectors. In some other sectors, initial success with market liberalization has fizzled in the last decade and, the telecommunication sector, for example, has been reduced to two market players. The lack of competition is reflected in the decline in growth of mobile use (see chart below).
The report recommends actions to enhance private sector entry and ensure a level playing field for private and public operators and modernizing competition regulation and establishing an independent national competition authority.
It also recommends pro-competitive regulation in selected sectors such as electricity and telecommunications, as both are vital for the efficient functioning of other industries and crucial to the digital economy, which Congo has recognized as a priority for economic diversification and growth. The lack of reliable electricity services undermines firms’ productivity. However, despite past attempts at reform, the power sector remains constrained by limited coordination and oversight, discouraging private investment. Similarly, the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, despite recent investments on optic fiber, suffers from inadequate infrastructure and high prices for internet services, constraining the productivity of Congo’s firms.
Mobile telephony penetration has faded after a decade sharp increase
Source: ITU/ICT Database. June 2022.
4. Trade competitiveness
International trade can help accelerate growth and improve living standards. Congo’s current trade is highly limited in both product range (mainly oil and minerals) and export market (mainly East Asia). Gas and agriculture sectors provide immediate opportunities for Congo to diversify its export basket. Congo has the fifth largest proven natural gas reserves in Sub-Saharan Africa, which remains largely unexploited. Similarly, the arable land for agriculture in Congo remains untapped and, as a result, Congo is a net importer of food products.
Congo’s exports are highly concentrated on oil and minerals
Source: World Bank Staff Calculations using data from BACI (CEPII). June 2022.
5. Logistics and eco-tourism
The report examines two key trade-related components that have the potential to significantly contribute to export growth and economic diversification in Congo: logistics or trade facilitation, and eco-tourism. Improved efficiency of logistics processes could reduce trade costs, including for key imports and increase exports of merchandise goods. Ecotourism, a sector with great unrealized potential in Congo, could make important contributions to job creation, rural development, and exports of services.
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