Wednesday, November 20African Digital Business Magazine

Tag: e4

Real Estate, South Africa News

Increased competition and bond switching set to shake up the SA property market

As interest rates remain stable against the backdrop of a challenging economic climate, banks are being pushed to innovate and offer more competitive home loan terms to attract customers. This environment has given rise to a practice widely adopted in the UK but is yet to reach a tipping point in South Africa: bond switching. Clive Bredenkamp, IT Executive at Proptech specialist e4, explains the potential shifts: “The property market is inherently sensitive to interest rate changes. While the rates are currently only marginally higher than in 2019, the market’s response to the current interest rate has been disproportionately severe due to the very low rates we experienced during the pandemic. However, with new players entering the market and offering up to a 1% discount on interest rates...
South Africa News

Managing IT in (literal) dark times

A CIO’s guide for doing business in South Africa Freshly out of a global pandemic, CIOs have had to think on their feet as loadshedding wrought new havoc on their teams and departments. As a software-on-demand company with software that needs to be available to customers 24/7, e4 understands the current business challenges better than most, says the company’s CIO, Fikile Sibiya. “But by being proactive, you can ensure that you’ll stay afloat when challenging circumstances threaten your business – whether now or in the future.” Here are her five top tips to navigate the biggest challenges CIOs are currently facing: 1. Diversify. “As loadshedding increased, companies had to diversify their electricity supply, either using backup power, renewables, or generators. This is a good prin...
Fintech, Tech

The CIO’s roadmap for digital transformation

As the pandemic dispersed the workforce, necessitating more sophisticated means to connect, collaborate and communicate, digital transformation became a business imperative. Fikile Sibiya, CIO at fintech specialist e4, explains why a roadmap for the future is essential in this transformation, and elaborates on what it should entail. Organisations in diverse industries are transforming their business models by embracing modern technologies to enhance their product offerings, client experiences and ways of doing business. Though this shift was already happening pre-pandemic, it has sped up considerably since 2019. As all this analogue-to-digital transformation is occurring, and occurring at a fast pace, the existing workforce often does not have the requisite skills to keep up with t...
Fintech, South Africa News

How business can harness the power of blockchain

By Andrea Tucker, Head of Research & Development and Strategic Projects at fintech specialist e4 In today’s digital world, where faxes have all but been replaced by email and landlines by smartphones, doesn’t it seem strange that we’re still signing contracts in person? That we’re driving hours to do so, creating mountains of paper trails, and storing them in lever arch files to gather dust, when the technology exists to eliminate this physical burden? Blockchain has been proven to solve this problem, yet its business adoption has been slow. The technology at the heart of bitcoin and other virtual currencies, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. It’s time for the way we do admini...
Main, Tech

Digital transformation should be about the customer, not the technology

Digital transformation alongside automation enablers like artificial intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), coupled with the responsible utilisation of data assets will be determining business success factors over the next five years, according to Grant Phillips, Group CEO at e4. While the landscape will be enormously different in the coming years, Phillips says that the brands who will succeed the most are those that move beyond a fascination with the technology itself but to understand how it can address ever changing customer needs and expectations, remembering that winning will be defined by how the technology capability has delivered a world class user experience. “Looking forward, increasing digital interactions, engagement, digital delivery of services or products w...
2021 will demand continued user experience and change management focus according to e4
Fintech, Tech

2021 will demand continued user experience and change management focus according to e4

A dogged commitment to change execution is how businesses will survive in 2021, according to Grant Phillips CEO of fintech specialist, e4. He says the Covid-19 pandemic wreaked industry-wide havoc, the headwinds of which will continue to blow for years to come, leaving businesses in an almost permanent state of evolution and change. “Despite the negative impact of Covid-19 we have seen several unique responses to the extraordinary challenge it created. This has led to many new opportunities and with it, ingenuity and creativity across several sectors. Macro-economic responses like interest rate management, changes in consumer buying behaviour, reduced local and global mobility, and a worldwide shift to low/no touch engagement all have very different, but marked impacts on many industries g...