Businesses need to ‘remake themselves’
At the same time that Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba was issuing his bleak interim budget, the news was announced that SA’s private sector service delivery is at an all-time high.
Although the mood was celebratory at the opening of the 2017-18 Ask Afrika Orange Index Awards, held at The Venue at Melrose Arch on October 25, CEO Andrea Gevers referred to the finance minister’s address with a warning for businesses not to rest on their laurels.
In his speech Gigaba quoted Ben Okri’s poem Poetic Flight which offers the final refrain: “You can’t remake the world without remaking yourself” and issued a challenge for all South Africans to remake the world around us.
Similarly, Gevers said: “If they want to reap a [healthy] harvest, businesses need to remake themselves daily. Those businesses we see here this evening are the ones that have succeeded in continuously remaking themselves.”
The service sector is vital to the South African economy. It drives 60% of gross domestic product, accounts for 63% of employment and 74% of capital formation.
When Ask Afrika started the Orange Index 16 years ago, South African businesses started at a low base, but have steadily climbed year on year.
In the early stages of the benchmark, telecoms and banking were rated the highest; but they are now at the bottom end of the ranking. Meanwhile, the automotive and food retail industries have maintained top ranking status since 2012 and again held the top two spots, with food retail coming in ahead of the automotive industry for 2017-18.
“Service is a people business which makes it a moving target,” said Gevers.
“To be successful the sector needs to look at what is happening in society and to approach things from the consumers’ point of view.
“We’ve seen organisations that obsess about themselves or their immediate competitors will only ever edge forward, they will never leapfrog. We’ve seen this in business and we’ve seen this in politics.”