Becoming a digital doyen
The South African economy is likely to escape a recession and finish the year in positive territory. This may provide some respite for businesses, but economists agree it isn’t enough, as very strong growth for an extended period is needed to start chipping away at an official unemployment rate of 29%.
The National Development Plan, and many economic commentators, place small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurship at the centre of the medium to long-term recovery. But they need to be agile, profitable and digitally relevant.
Entrepreneur and renowned global speaker Vusi Thembekwayo believes there are simple, but profoundly effective things a business owner can do to make a business competitive in the digital age. Representing Intuit QuickBooks – the leading cloud accounting software – at the Cloud in Practice conference last month, Thembekwayo unveiled four laws to transform businesses into digital doyens.
Walk the aisles and find the truth
“Not a truth, not your truth, but the actual truth.”
He says all business areas have different versions of the truth. “When faced with a loss in market share, marketing will tell you the logo needs to be refreshed and IT will say this is due to the company being locked into legacy systems that aren’t performing at peak.
“Raymond Ackerman walked his aisles once a week, talking to customers, finding the truth,” says Thembekwayo, referring to the man who turned Pick n Pay into a giant retailer. “Businesses must find a way to walk their aisles and talk to their customers because when they find the truth, their path to success clears.”
Keep moving
“What made Nokia great? It was the QWERTY keyboard,” he says. “Nokia, in effect, created the ‘thumb generation’. And then they stopped moving.”
“Blackberry came in with a QWERTY of its own, as well as a communications platform that let you speak to anyone on the platform for free. And then they stopped moving. Samsung soon followed, along with the iPhone, and today it is Huawei leading the innovation charge.”
Companies that stop innovating, he says, stop being the best and will be ousted.
Treasure your vision
“Staff and customers don’t care about numbers, they care about the vision. Martin Luther King said he had a dream, not a spreadsheet, a standard set of operating procedures, financials, and a business model – he had a vision. Give your staff a dream.”
Listen to your staff
Staff give management very real feedback about their businesses every day, he says. “But if that person is a cashier the likelihood you’ll actually hear what they have to say is low. And these are the people who interact with your customers every day!”
Head of emerging markets at Intuit QuickBooks Jolawn Victor says once the mindset is right and the leaders are aligned, strategic partnerships are able to unleash immense potential.