Wednesday, November 20African Digital Business Magazine

Tag: data

10Nov By Africa BusinessNo Comments
Tech

Digital sovereignty: the key to data control, security, and independence

By Alex Galbraith, CTO, Cloud Services at SoftwareOne Working with data can be a blessing and a curse. While it is the definitive factor that empowers digital transformation efforts, aids decision-making and stores an organisation’s most valuable and confidential assets, dealing with data is often a business’ greatest challenge. As the world’s dependence on data grows and the threat of cyberattacks increases, businesses need solutions that will them manage, govern, and safeguard their data more efficiently – and this is where digital sovereignty comes in. Digital sovereignty helps people, businesses, and countries to stay in control of their digital assets and data. It goes beyond ownership of data – it means having full authority over everything from where and how data is stored and pro...
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14Oct By Africa BusinessNo Comments
Business, South Africa News

3 strategies to maximise your Return On Ad Spend this retail season

Use first-party data to get personal in all the right ways, says Flow founder South Africa’s year-end retail season has officially kicked off, and with Black Friday, the December holidays, and Back to School campaigns around the corner, brands are under pressure to cut through the digital noise. As global giants with enormous advertising budgets expand into the local market, it’s clear that old marketing strategies won’t cut it anymore. To stay competitive, local brands need to turn to a powerful tool – one that’s already at their fingertips, according to Daniel Levy, Co-Founder of ad and data-tech platform Flow. “When it comes to connecting directly with your customers,” he says, “first-party data is the biggest weapon in your arsenal.” What is first-party data and why is it gold? F...
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20Aug By Africa BusinessNo Comments
Tech

Cultivating a Culture of Data Quality in the Data Management Lifecycle

By Upuli de Abrew, Co-Founder and Director at Insight Consulting As it is in the natural world, data also experiences a lifecycle, from gestation through birth, metamorphosis, maturity and eventual death. Just as a young bird needs to be taught to fly and a lion cub must be taught to hunt, data also needs care and direction from custodians. However, unlike nature, data will rarely be able to stand on its own and instead need constant tending from its custodians, known as data stewards, throughout the entire data management lifecycle (DML). The data management lifecycle comprises data collection, data ingestion, data storage, data usage, data maintenance, data archiving and data destruction. Effective data stewards spend a great deal of time ensuring that data quality is maintained throu...
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22Jun By Africa BusinessNo Comments
South Africa News, Tech

What South Africans need to know about the TikTok debate

Privacy, data and safety concerns explained As the debate around TikTok continues to unfold, social media users are grappling with the layers of issues surrounding the potential ban of the popular social media app in the United States and other countries. “From national security concerns to data privacy and children’s safety, the implications of greater scrutiny of TikTok, and other social media companies, are just as important in South Africa,” says Carey van Vlaanderen, CEO of ESET Southern Africa. The primary reason behind the U.S. government’s interest in banning TikTok revolves around national security. Lawmakers worry that the Chinese-owned app, developed by ByteDance, could be used to collect and share sensitive user data with the Chinese government. An investigation by Consumer R...
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Beyond bytes: A socio-technical approach to data management is crucial in our decentralised world
15Dec By Africa BusinessNo Comments
Business

Beyond bytes: A socio-technical approach to data management is crucial in our decentralised world

By Lee Wearne, Data Strategist at Insight Consulting The world is more polarised than ever before, with global conflict and geopolitical tensions drawing strong lines between regions and even within countries. Conflict, social unrest, inflation, climate change, and much more, are leading the world towards a trend of de-globalisation on a scale not many anticipated as recently as 10 or 20 years ago. The effect of this is that power and data are becoming fragmented. The result is that businesses may well be aware of data fabrics, data meshes and modern data stacks and may feel inclined to rush towards these technology solutions, but unless they address the cultural obstacles within their organisations and embrace a socio-technical approach, their investments and efforts are likely to be in...
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Using accurate forensic intelligence to combat serial and organised crime in South Africa
9Jan By Africa BusinessNo Comments
South Africa News, Tech

Using accurate forensic intelligence to combat serial and organised crime in South Africa

“When constructing any kind of civil or criminal case against an individual or corporation, it is imperative that all the evidence that is to be presented in a court of law be one hundred per cent accurate and verifiable,” says Sameer Kumandan, Managing Director of SearchWorks, South Africa’s largest and most innovative data aggregation platform. “False or inaccurate evidence can lead to the dismissal of charges and the release of dangerous criminals.” Lack of forensic capacity in SA It is no secret in South Africa that the capacity of the police service and their forensics departments are severely constrained, and that the burden of securing the convictions of criminals responsible for crimes ranging from murder and fraud to rhino poaching is a heavy one. Police resources are limited an...
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1Nov By Africa BusinessNo Comments
Tech

Half of enterprises cannot trust their CRM data for a single source of truth on customers

Independent research shows firms are lacking basic data management capabilities; CRM data is of limited use Half of large enterprises worldwide (47%) feel they cannot rely on their CRM data to provide a single source of truth regarding customer data, according to the State of Enterprise CRM Data Management: 2021 study released in October. Commissioned by Odaseva, the #1 enterprise data platform for Salesforce, the study reveals that high expectations for actionable insights from CRM data are rarely being met. Although over eight out of 10 organizations (85%) say they are prioritizing data insights for business decision-making, roughly half that number (44%) are unable to perform advanced customer analytics with CRM data. A similar number (40%) are unable to use CRM data to drive improve...
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22Sep By Africa BusinessNo Comments
Science, Tech

Partnership for data-driven early response to hunger launched

Leading research and humanitarian agencies have joined forces to harness data and technology in a bid to stop climate shocks resulting in hunger in vulnerable livestock farming communities. The Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action is being created to help tackle the growing threat to people in the world’s drylands posed by the increasing severity and frequency of climate-related disasters. The new venture will bring together the expertise of five partners – the University of Edinburgh, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Save the Children, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and Community Jameel. The partnership will connect cutting-edge technology and data surveillance on early warning signs of severe weather and systemic climate change wi...
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31Aug By Africa BusinessNo Comments
South Africa News

The Protection of Personal Information Act: How will it impact SA’s payments landscape?

The Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) came into full effect from 1 July 2021. The Act is the comprehensive data protection legislation that obliges organisations to lawfully process the personal information of data subjects (both natural and juristic persons) by applying specific principles and conditions. But how will it affect the payments space specifically? “As businesses in the payments industry process copious amounts of personal information, they now have to change many elements of the way they operate in order to accommodate the Act,” says Cecil Munsamy, Managing Director of AVeS Cyber Security and a consultant to Pay@ - a leading payment aggregator and provider of secure payment solutions. “These businesses now need to have extensive compliance programmes in p...
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24Mar By Africa BusinessNo Comments
Tech

AVEVA and OSIsoft Combine to Unlock the Potential of Data to Drive Increased Performance for Industrial Organizations

Industrial Software Market Leaders Introduce ‘Performance Intelligence’ to create Industrial Software and Data Leadership AVEVA, a global leader in engineering and industrial software, has joined forces with OSIsoft to meet the expanding information management needs of industrial companies and accelerate their digital transformation. The combined portfolio brings OSIsoft’s world-class data management together with AVEVA’s leading industrial software to unlock Performance Intelligence. Providing greater operational agility and resilience, Performance Intelligence connects information and artificial intelligence (AI) with human insight, to enable faster and more accurate decision making, helping industries boost sustainability. By pairing the trusted capabilities of OSIsoft’s PI System with ...
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