Johannesburg, 07 Apr 2014
At an exclusive Software AG South Africa event held last week, Mohamed Cassoojee, Country Manager and Vice-President, said that customers are expecting more of technology today. This is the precedent of what South Africa's next generation will expect - technology that delivers innovative, creative solutions for needs the market doesn't yet realise it has.
South African businesses need to change the way they think about technology. The future is unpredictable but what is certain is that customers' expectation of the role technology plays in their everyday life will continue to rise. "Businesses need to get systems in place today, to anticipate the demanding needs of a connected society tomorrow," stated Cassoojee.
Businesses need to move away from the concept of mass production towards mass customisation. "The days of categorising customers in groups according to some common metric like their incomes, have passed. Clients must be seen as individuals and that is why the approach of segmentation must be replaced with the segmentation of one," explained Cassoojee. "There is no shortage of information to do this; there is shortage of insight from it."
South African businesses have reached the point where information is effectively extracted, but companies will only achieve competitive differentiation by distilling the information, creating automated responses and reacting in real-time.
Karl-Heinz Streibich, Software AG's CEO, shares Cassoojee's vision of the industrial Internet and how it will bring massive efficiencies across industries. In his recently published book, The Digital Enterprise: The Moves and Motives of Digital Leaders, Streibich gives tangible examples of global companies that innovatively met anticipated customer needs through a wide range of technologies. Because these companies had a vision of the future today, they are now at the forefront of transforming into digital enterprises.
"Software AG's mission is to provide South African businesses with systems of engagement," said Cassoojee. "We enable businesses that strive to be customer-centric tomorrow, today. If companies can dream it, Software AG can realise it."
If your business is interested in delving deeper into technological solutions for South Africa's next generation, you can look forward to Software AG South Africa's Innovation Live event that will be held in June at the Sandton Convention Centre.
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