Foundational capabilities such as cloud, business AI, and ERP running on clean-core data strategies will be measured not only by their adoption and use within the business, but how quickly and effectively they can be unleashed across the SME’s operations.

This vital sector accounts for nearly 95% of registered businesses in sub-Saharan Africa and generate roughly half of the region’s GDP, yet many remain under-digitised. A World Bank report found that����that have adopted digital technologies make intensive use of them to improve the running of their businesses.

The B20 South Africa 2025 Digital Transformation Task Force listed SME digitalisation and AI literacy as��. A separate report projected that��, creating 300��000 jobs and expanding access to essential services to millions.

However, this digitalisation is also introducing greater cyber risk.����revealed a continent-wide escalation of cybercrime,��with about one in 15 organisations in Africa facing a ransomware attempt each week – significantly higher than the global average.

SMEs seeking to scale their digital capabilities for greater efficiency, innovation and growth this year must take heed of the trends and forces shaping Africa’s digital economy, including:

Trend 1: Cloud as the default operating model

Cloud computing has crossed a tipping point among African businesses, with adoption growing across the continent. For SMEs, the attraction is straightforward. Cloud replaces large upfront capital costs with predictable subscriptions, supports hybrid and mobile work, and allows businesses to scale systems as they grow. Just as importantly, it reduces the operational burden of maintaining infrastructure, patching systems and managing uptime.

Simplified cloud adoption through offerings such as GROW with 51����for new ERP customers and RISE with 51����for those moving from on-premise systems to the cloud ease the path to adoption. The emphasis is not on infrastructure alone, but on packaged best practices, faster implementations and built-in compliance and security.

With hybrid and remote work now an established reality for SMEs, demand for cloud-based human capital management systems is surging. These systems��integrate payroll, performance, learning and workforce analytics, equipping even smaller firms with digital payslips, employee self-service, compliant payroll processing and basic people analytics.

Trend 2: Business AI moves from hype to habit

The most important AI trend for African SMEs is not experimentation with standalone tools, but the quiet embedding of AI into everyday business workflows. Finance, HR, supply chain and customer operations are increasingly augmented by AI that automates routine tasks, highlights risks, and supports better decisions.

The expected gains are practical rather than futuristic: faster invoice processing, improved cash-flow forecasting, better demand planning and more efficient HR administration. For example, SAP’s Joule AI copilot is being embedded across core business applications, enabling natural-language interaction with trusted enterprise data. Instead of building AI capabilities from scratch, SMEs consume intelligence directly through their ERP, HR and planning systems.

This matters in African contexts, where skills and budgets are constrained and trust in data is critical.����found that nine in ten African organisations were suffering from negative impacts due to a lack of AI-related skills, including delays in implementations, failed innovation initiatives and loss of clients.

Trend 3: ERP is the digital nerve centre

This year,��cloud ERP will be less about “modernisation” and more about survival. SMEs that remain on fragmented, on-premise systems will find it harder to compete on cost, speed and trust.

Once seen as too complex or expensive for smaller firms, modern ERP is increasingly modular, cloud-native, mobile-friendly and AI-enabled. It integrates finance, operations, people and partners into a single source of truth. For SMEs, ERP is no longer just a back-office system but a digital nerve centre that enables AI, supports compliance, strengthens security and connects businesses to wider ecosystems.

In 2026, African SMEs��that build capability stacks around cloud ERP, embedded AI, secure platforms and digital skills will be able to compete with far larger organisations. Those that delay risk being locked out of supply chains, talent pools and digital markets.

Trend 4: Cybersecurity becomes existential

Ransomware, business email compromise and data breaches are no longer rare events, and the financial impact can be devastating.����found that the global average cost of a data breach reached $4.4m in 2025. For many SMEs, such a breach represents an existential threat.

The volatile cyber threat landscape is shaping technology decisions. Cloud platforms can help reduce overall risk by consolidating��security, patching and monitoring into professionally managed environments. For example, SAP’s cloud ERP strategy emphasises secure-by-design architectures and shared responsibility models that reduce the burden on small IT teams.

This year,��cybersecurity will be firmly established as a board-level issue for African SMEs, on par with cash flow and regulatory compliance.

Enterprise technology is heading toward cloud, business AI and end-to-end solutions that improve planning, efficiency, execution and innovation capabilities. For African SMEs, the opportunity lies in adopting these capabilities pragmatically and early, turning global platforms into local competitive advantage.

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May 25th is Africa Day, a proud and symbolic day for all Africans, whether resident on the continent or part of the vast diaspora. It is a celebration of unity, resilience and rich cultural diversity. It is also a reminder of the persistent challenges – poverty, inequality, unemployment, access to healthcare and education – that still affect so many.

Organisations and governments across the continent are utilising rapid technological advances and powerful AI-enabled innovations to improve the lives of all who call Africa home. Africa’s digital transformation is in full swing.

But there are also emerging risks, especially with AI, the seminal technology of our time. The global AI narrative often excludes African languages, customs and cultural contexts. This is not only a significant missed opportunity, but also a real risk: without intentional inclusion, Africa’s rich diversity is at risk of being overlooked and could be lost forever in the fast-evolving digital age.

Africa’s Rich Tapestry

Africa consists of 54 countries and is home to 1.4 billion people – nearly 20% of the world’s population. More than 3000 distinct cultures speaking over 2000 languages call Africa home. To put this into perspective, Africa has double the population of Europe and more than ten times the number of languages, highlighting the continent’s immense cultural and linguistic diversity.

And yet this vast diversity is at risk of being lost in the Age of AI. Most generative AI models are trained on Western data sets, predominantly in English and other dominant global languages. As a result, these technologies often fail to accurately interpret African contexts, leading to the misrepresentation of names, accents, traditions, and everyday experiences of a fifth of the global population.

According to the US-based public policy think tank��Brookings Institution,��Generative AI tools are often trained on internet data, meaning access to these tools may be limited to those who speak a few data-rich languages like English, Spanish, and Mandarin.

Localisation Matters

In the context of Africa and AI, localisation is essential for both inclusion and relevance. When AI systems fail to understand the nuances of local languages and cultural norms, they risk excluding entire communities from the digital revolution.

A clear example of the need for greater localisation can be found in the financial sector. The absence of financial education tools and banking apps in indigenous languages remains a major barrier to financial inclusion for hundreds of millions across the continent.

A research paper on��Language Barriers in Financial Inclusion��emphasized that these language challenges significantly hinder access to financial services, noting that many digital platforms are not available in local languages. The study identified the lack of localisation in financial tools as a primary factor contributing to the systemic exclusion of non-English-speaking communities from essential financial services.

Equally concerning is the potential erosion or complete loss of languages and traditions, many of which are already under serious threat.

According to the��United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Africa is home to one-third of the world’s languages. Alarmingly, 15% of these are at risk of extinction. These include the��Khoi�����Ի���San��languages in Southern Africa,��El Molo��in Kenya, which is spoken by fewer than 500 people, and��Bangi Me��in Cameroon, which is spoken by fewer than 50 people.

In such extreme cases, generative AI could play a vital role in documenting, preserving, and even teaching these endangered languages to younger generations, helping to safeguard a critical part of our continent’s cultural heritage.

Supporting African AI innovation

We must acknowledge the encouraging rise of African-led innovation in this space, particularly the development of AI models trained in widely spoken African languages such as Swahili and isiZulu. We are also seeing the emergence of voice recognition tools tailored to African dialects and accents, as well as creative uses of AI to tell African stories and reflect local experiences. While these developments are promising, much work still lies ahead.

African governments, academic institutions, and global technology companies all have a critical role to play in accelerating this progress. In multilingual countries – which are commonplace across Africa – AI and technology can be powerful tools for closing communication gaps and enhancing inclusion and access.

The��United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)��highlights the importance of co-creating AI solutions that are representative of local priorities. It advocates for Africa to be not just a beneficiary, but an active partner in shaping the future of AI, ensuring that technological advancements align with the continent’s unique needs and development goals.

Localising tech is not just about translation, it’s about transformation. It’s about building digital tools and AI models that reflect African identities, cultures and values. It’s about ensuring that Africa isn’t just a consumer of global innovation, but a co-creator and co-innovator of it. In this regard, everyone needs to play a role, and the importance of Public-Private Partnerships cannot be emphasised enough.

On this Africa Day, let’s commit to shaping a digital future that doesn’t just include Africa, but is deeply and intentionally��influenced��by it. Let’s build AI that doesn’t just speak to us, but speaks��like��us — in our languages, through our stories, and with our spirit.

��is the Marketing Director at��

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AI is becoming increasingly pervasive. AI-powered innovations are seamlessly integrating into everyday products and services, from e-commerce and virtual assistants such as Siri to AI-driven healthcare and financial solutions, it’s becoming impossible to go through a day without interacting with some form of AI.

In business, AI offers significant benefits to organisations of all sizes, both in the private and public sectors. Many large companies already leverage the power of AI to drive business value, both internally and for their customers. One study predicts that , more than the economic output of China and India combined.

AI is enhancing efficiency and fostering innovation across industries, from automating routine tasks to enabling complex data analysis and providing predictive insights, while also improving decision-making and optimising business operations. Experts believe AI could add $1.5-trillion to Africa’s economy if the continent can capture even 10% of the global AI market by 2030.

Sectors like healthcare, agriculture, retail, and financial services can benefit significantly from AI specifically and digital technologies in general. In healthcare, innovations can address challenges like accessibility and resource management. In agriculture, tackle issues like climate change and food insecurity by improving crop yields and sustainability. In retail and e-commerce, drive hyper-personalisation and boost customer experiences. In financial services, promote financial inclusion, access and financial literacy, particularly for Africa’s unbanked population.

To understand AI’s potential impact, it’s important to differentiate between Business AI and the more mainstream application of Generative AI.

Understanding Business AI

For many people, the mention of AI often brings ChatGPT to mind, a Generative AI tool that launched in 2022 and quickly became one of the most rapidly adopted new technologies in history. However, Business AI encompasses much more than just Generative AI, which refers to AI systems designed to create and generate content.

Business AI is a more specialised application of AI that focuses on solving specific business challenges, such as optimising processes, enhancing customer experiences, and improving decision-making.

Generative AI uses Large Language Models (LLMs) trained on vast amounts of data to generate creative outputs based on patterns it has learned. In contrast, Business AI draws mostly relies on structured data and real-time inputs from internal and external business systems to deliver business value, for example by improving efficiency.

All business functions generate data – from HR and supply chains to CRM and ERP applications – that can be processed by AI-powered tools to reveal new insights or automate business processes. Organisations also draw on external, publicly available data, for example market data and social media analytics, to better understand their operating environment. When integrated to Business AI applications, the combination of internal business data and external public data provides a more holistic view of a company’s operations, enabling better, more informed and context-based decision-making.

The application of AI in Business

Broadly speaking, AI can deliver value for companies in three categories, namely: (1) automating business processes; (2) gaining valuable insights through the analysis of data; and (3) enhancing how businesses engage with both customers and employees.

In practice, the use of AI unlocks value for example through AI-driven inventory management that reduces wastage and boosts profitability, or through data-driven insights that enhance customer engagement and enables hyper-personalisation.

AI has the potential to transform a wide range of sectors, and the benefits span across multiple industries. In agriculture, emerging farmers leverage AI-powered tools to analyse soil conditions, weather patterns, and pest control, leading to higher crop yields. In supply chain management, AI helps optimise operations by predicting demand, efficiently managing logistics, and reducing costs. In retail, particularly in South Africa’s expanding e-commerce marketplace, AI applications like dynamic pricing and customer behaviour analysis enable businesses to effectively respond to rapidly changing market conditions.

The benefits of AI are not limited to enterprises. SMEs can leverage a growing range of AI use cases to unlock competitive advantages and power their growth and innovation. As AI continues to evolve, it’s evident that it has become a vital tool for sustainable growth and a powerful catalyst for competitive advantage in a fast-evolving digital marketplace.

Building a Strong Foundation for Effective AI Adoption

��Companies seeking to unlock the benefits of AI and other emerging technologies must develop a deep understanding of the complexities and potential pitfalls of adding them to their technology stack.

��Adopting technology should be focused on maximising business value while minimising complexity. Here, a solid data foundation and a single source of truth for operational data are essential starting points. This could involve implementing cloud-based ERP systems to manage transactional and operational data, CRM to track interactions with current and potential customers, and supply chain management systems to manage the flow of goods and services from suppliers to end customers. By ensuring accurate, real-time information, these systems provide AI tools with reliable data, establishing a single-source-of-truth across the business and creating a strong foundation for future AI-powered innovation.

Businesses should prioritise areas where AI can provide the most value, such as reducing operational costs, increasing revenue, or improving efficiency. Focusing on high-impact areas like automating repetitive tasks or leveraging AI-driven analytics for customer insights can deliver immediate benefits. This targeted approach enables businesses to achieve quick wins and build momentum for broader AI initiatives.

Throughout it all, it’s essential to drive adoption with sound integration and comprehensive change management efforts. By experimenting with simple automation before scaling to more complex AI applications, businesses can innovate without overwhelming complexity, ensuring long-term success and continuous improvement.

The time for AI in business is now

The rise of AI is comparable to the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, transforming and disrupting businesses across industries. With its ability to streamline operations and fuel innovation, AI is a powerful tool for business success. As the technology continues to advance and mature, it will unlock even more opportunities, particularly through automation and integration with other emerging technologies.

The key question is: Are businesses ready to embrace AI-powered solutions and challenge the status quo? The stakes are high—those that do will gain a competitive advantage in the rapidly evolving marketplace, while those that don’t risk being left behind.

In today’s dynamic world, business success hinges on innovation, and AI is leading that transformation.

The post Demystifying Artificial Intelligence for Business appeared first on 51����Africa News Center.

By leveraging AI technologies, SMEs can achieve performance and innovation boosts across multiple areas of the business, from financial management to sales and marketing to human capital management and product development.

The global AI market is expected to grow from $208-billion in 2023 . For SMEs, the growth of AI holds huge promise: one study found that .

However, AI is still in its relative infancy. While technology providers have made huge strides in the power and quality of their AI tools, the technology has not yet reached its full potential and can be prone to error if not deployed in an optimised environment.

The intelligent SME

The adoption of AI forms part of a broader shift among businesses to establish intelligent enterprise capabilities. An intelligent enterprise consistently applies advanced technologies and best practices��within agile, integrated business processes.

For SMEs, this means establishing a powerful core that links departments, integrates business processes, connects data, and embeds intelligence to accelerate innovation and growth. And AI is the latest essential technology in the intelligent enterprise mix.

However, a successful deployment of AI in an SME requires accurate, relevant and reliable data. The better the data, the better the AI-generated outcomes.

For example, deploying AI to make decisions based on unstructured third-party data – such as social media posts by potential customers – can lead to inaccurate or downright incorrect outcomes. In contrast, deploying AI to trusted business systems, such as an SME’s enterprise resource planning solution, means the algorithm is basing its recommendations and outcomes on data that is accurate, up-to-date, reliable and relevant, leading to higher-quality outcomes that can truly drive the business forward.

Practical applications of AI

Despite the technology still being in its relative infancy, AI holds huge potential to SMEs. Unlocking its value will be a critical aspect of the success of any business in the coming years.

For SMEs, the journey to value-generating AI for business really starts with a digital transformation process that establishes a single source of truth for all business data. Here, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are key: cloud ERP systems enable greater speed and predictability across all of an SME’s core business processes and can scale as the business grows or expands to new markets.

With the core ERP in place, SMEs can choose to deploy AI to a wide range of business processes to accelerate daily tasks, minimise human error, cut costs and boost innovation, including:

Human Capital Management: Generative AI integrated with human capital management software can streamline content creation and provide access to in-depth analytics that provide valuable insights into the talent management and hiring process.

Finance: SMEs can increase the performance of their finance operations by leveraging AI for expense management, invoicing, auditing, financial forecasting and payments. One of the biggest challenges for SMEs is managing cash flow. AI can reduce the sales outstanding days with intelligent invoice matching to improve cash flow and keep the balance sheet healthy.

Supply Chain: In the wake of ongoing supply chain challenges, SMEs may want to leverage AI to better predict customer demand and increase production efficiency with intelligent auto-dispatching. In the manufacturing sector, SMEs can mitigate risk with preventive maintenance guided by AI that is integrated to the core production systems.

Procurement: Buying and procurement can become more agile, with AI simplifying the buying process while maintaining compliance with various internal and external controls. The use of AI can also automate the creation of sourcing events, drawing on past successes and real-time business information to provide an intuitive automated sourcing capability.

Sales & Marketing: Considering the importance of customer engagement and CX in the sales process, SMEs may also want to leverage AI for hyper-personalised product recommendations across multiple channels, with AI predicting customer behaviour to enable companies to minimise costly customer churn.

Innovation: Finally, SMEs can accelerate their innovation efforts by deploying and running AI models at scale without compromising data privacy. By leveraging the work by leading technology providers such as SAP, SMEs can also build AI into their core business applications with a library of pretrained models, accelerating the time-to-value of new innovation projects.

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In today’s fiercely competitive retail landscape, prioritising customer experience has become crucial for attaining sustainable competitive advantages and ultimately ensuring long-term success.

This underscores the need for retailers now more than ever to prioritise customer engagement, and aim to enhance the overall customer experience and deliver unparalleled customer satisfaction.

Customer engagement has a direct impact on customer loyalty, revenue growth, and brand reputation. Engaged customers are likely to make repeat purchases and become brand advocates. Furthermore, customer feedback offers valuable insights for improvement, making a well-crafted engagement strategy essential for building and enhancing trust and credibility with customers.

AI presents retailers with the most significant opportunity to fundamentally reshape and elevate customer experiences. By facilitating customised and personalised customer interactions, AI-driven pricing strategies, streamlining processes for enhanced efficiency, and anticipating customer needs with greater certainty, AI stands out as a true game-changer.

Personalised and tailored customer interactions

��AI significantly enhances customer experience by empowering retailers to personalise their interactions with customers. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, businesses can meticulously analyse extensive customer data sets. This analysis delves into customer preferences, purchasing behaviours and purchase histories.

This comprehensive understanding empowers retailers to customise their interactions, offering customers tailored recommendations and personalised offers. As a result, customers receive a more individualised and relevant experience, fostering a deeper connection and satisfaction with the brand.

��An e-commerce app can enhance the shopping experience by utilising AI to suggest products tailored to a customer’s browsing history and purchase patterns. For example, if a customer searches for a pair of sneakers and their preferred colour is unavailable, the app can proactively prompt them to add it to their wish list. Subsequently, the app automatically notifies the customer when the desired colour becomes available, ensuring a seamless and personalised shopping journey.

��Streamlining processes for better efficiencies

Retailers can harness the power of AI to streamline workflows and inform data-driven decision-making. By drawing insights from historical data and adjusting to dynamic scenarios, they can automate repetitive tasks. This automation not only accelerates processes but also frees up valuable human resources, allowing them to focus on more complex, creative, and revenue-generating tasks.

Additionally, AI-driven predictive analytics helps in anticipating and predicting potential bottlenecks in processes, optimising resource allocation, and improving overall operational performance. Whether in manufacturing, finance, retail or other sectors, AI has the capacity to continuously learn and improve, enabling businesses to achieve higher levels of efficiency, productivity, and adaptability in an ever-evolving business environment.

In customer service environments, the transformation is underway with the integration of AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants. These intelligent systems adeptly manage routine or repetitive queries, delivering instant responses and providing uninterrupted support 24/7 without the need for human intervention. This not only improves response times but also frees up human resources to concentrate on tackling more complex and sensitive issues, culminating in customer service experiences that are both efficient and responsive.

Predicting customer needs and simplifying the buying process

Predictive analytics is another area where AI excels in enhancing customer experience by analysing historical data and predicting customer needs and preferences. This enables businesses to proactively address customer requirements, whether it’s restocking popular product lines, anticipating service issues, or offering timely and personalised promotions. This predictive prowess can help retailers stay one step ahead, fostering customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Through advanced analytics, AI can identify patterns in customer behaviour, preferences, and historical interactions and purchases. By tapping into this predictive power, retailers can accurately predict the changing needs of their customers. This foresight enables the tailoring of product recommendations and personalised offers, creating a more engaging and satisfying shopping experience.

Lastly, chatbots not only guide customers through the buying journey but also enhance the accuracy of inventory management, ensuring that products are readily available when customers search for them. This minimises delays and enhances customer satisfaction. In essence, AI not only predicts customer needs but also transforms the entire buying process into a more seamless and customer-centric endeavour.

��Driving the segment-of-one and cross-channel consistency

��Omnichannel encompasses both retail and e-commerce, representing a seamless and integrated approach to sales and customer service across various channels, including physical stores, online platforms, mobile apps, and other digital channels. Omnichannel recognises the interconnectedness of these channels, aiming to deliver a consistent and cohesive customer experience. It reflects the idea that modern businesses must operate across multiple channels to address diverse customer needs, preferences, and expectations.

On the other hand, segment-of-one refers to the idea of tailoring products, services, or marketing strategies to meet the specific needs and preferences of individual customers. The concept of segment-of-one underscores the move away from mass marketing strategies towards more targeted and personalised approaches. It aligns with the idea that treating each customer as a unique segment can lead to more effective and satisfying interactions, potentially enhancing customer loyalty and overall business success.

The seamless integration of omnichannel and segment-of-one approaches enhances customer engagement by delivering highly personalised interactions across various channels. Here the emphasis is on the use of data and transformative technologies such as AI to create a seamless experience tailored to individual preferences and characteristics of each customer.

AI stands out as a true game-changer for the retail sector

AI is indeed transforming customer engagement and redefining experiences. The real-time capabilities of AI empower retailers to promptly address customer needs and adapt their strategies in response to the ever-changing market dynamics.

By seamlessly integrating personalised recommendations, facilitating smooth interactions, and leveraging innovative technologies, AI emerges not only as a technological enabler but as a catalyst, ushering in a customer-centric revolution within the retail sector. Retailers that harness the power of AI will not only attain a competitive edge but also forge enduring and meaningful connections with their customers.

��AI is a powerful tool for retailers seeking to elevate their overall customer experience. The integration of AI technologies into customer engagement strategies is pivotal to unlocking unprecedented levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. As the retail sector continues to embrace AI, the future of customer experience looks increasingly intelligent and customer-centric.

��

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Today, businesses are increasingly turning to cognitive technologies to tackle complex challenges. AI is being harnessed not only for business purposes but also to address pressing global issues such as climate change — which positions it as a transformative technology poised to revolutionise the world.

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In comparison to other industries, the technology sector stands out for its unprecedented dynamism, continually leading the way in pioneering innovation and creative approaches to addressing business and societal challenges.

The tech industry is inherently transformative by nature, with disruption as a central theme in its evolution. As a result, the role of tech marketing differs fundamentally from marketing functions in other sectors. While marketing skills can indeed be transferable across various industries, the intricacies of the tech sector demand a distinct set of skills and competencies.

��Continuous learning, adaptation & evolution

��Whether it is discovering new ways of leveraging technological advancements to solve business problems, creating new products and markets, or helping businesses run more efficiently, one thing is certain, it is up to the marketeer to create, and craft a seamless synergy between the solutions they sell and the pressing business challenges that the market is trying to solve. Tech marketers must, therefore, possess a profound understanding of the current challenges and opportunities in the markets they serve.

Maintaining a strong commitment to learning and nurturing one’s curiosity is crucial in the fast-evolving tech industry. Staying current with the latest trends, tools, and strategies requires a proactive approach, and continuous self-development efforts.

To foster continuous learning and adaptability, it’s essential to thoroughly grasp your organisation’s solutions and value proposition. This involves immersing oneself in industry literature, attending webinars and conferences, and connecting with fellow tech professionals. These activities are crucial for staying up to date in our fast-paced world. Engaging in networking and collaborating with industry peers can lead to the exchange of innovative ideas, sharing practical knowledge, and valuable mentorship opportunities.

The tech community thrives on the spirit of sharing ideas, and active involvement in these interactions can greatly enhance personal and professional growth.

Skills in digital literacy & emerging technologies

To fully understand and leverage digital marketing skills, one needs to understand competencies such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Advertising, Content Marketing, and many other digital channels, techniques, and approaches.

Tech marketers must also adeptly analyse and interpret data since modern marketing decisions, including resource and budget allocation, rely heavily on data. Proficiency in analytics tools is also indispensable and leveraging emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation is no longer an exception but the norm.

Tech marketers must therefore understand the workings of these technologies, their potential to enhance marketing efficiency, and their revolutionary impact on campaign execution and optimisation, ultimately leading to superior outcomes and results.

��Aligning solutions with market needs through personalisation

Now, more than ever, customers in both Business-to-Customer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) settings demand tailored messaging that aligns with their industry-specific needs.

To effectively promote their organisation’s solution, tech marketers must fully grasp the significance of personalised marketing and delivering exceptional customer experiences. This entails customising messages, comprehending the anticipated user experience, and selecting the most suitable engagement channels. Focusing on creating relevant content and storytelling enhances personalisation and message effectiveness.

In my field for example, cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) stands out as one of our primary solutions. Marketers have two choices when promoting it: they can highlight technical aspects and competitive advantages, such as ERP modules for accounting, financial management, project management, materials, and procurement, to position their ERP solution. However, a more effective approach focuses on the business value that ERP offers to companies. This includes enhancing efficiency and productivity, improving the customer experience and profitability, and reducing costs.

The key is to enhance your content creation and storytelling skills as a tech marketer. Crafting exceptional content and compelling storytelling is the foundation of effective marketing, fostering a strong connection between your solutions and your customers’ critical business challenges.

��A global mindset with local ethics, regulation & culture

��Marketers must prioritise three key pillars: business ethics, regulatory and compliance laws and global cultural awareness. These elements are essential for responsible and ethical marketing strategies, shaping how tech marketers engage with customers both inside and outside their organisations, on local, regional, and global scales.

Business ethics act as a moral compass, steering marketers towards responsible decision-making in our ever-more socially, environmentally, and governance-aware world. Consider, for example, the significance of privacy laws like GDPR in Europe and POPIA in South Africa; these regulations are vital for protecting sensitive customer data, ensuring legal compliance, as well as fostering and nurturing customer trust.

The focus on cultural sensitivity and awareness is important for global or cross-border campaigns. Ethical considerations, especially regarding data privacy and transparency, are now paramount in marketing. Consumers are growing more apprehensive about data usage, and overlooking these factors can severely impact tech marketers and their organisations.

In a diverse global marketplace, a strong sense of diverse cultural awareness is crucial for marketers. It enables us to adeptly navigate different cultural norms and tailor our strategies to engage effectively with diverse audiences.

Essential skills – communication, adaptability & risk-taking

��Tech marketing involves challenging the status quo and implementing novel approaches and strategies that disrupt the norm. So effective communication, the art of persuasion, willingness to venture into uncharted territories, and a knack for taking calculated risks while staying within the bounds of business rules and priorities are the cornerstones of a tech marketer’s toolkit. Importantly, experimentation and taking calculated risks fosters innovation and adaptability.

Communication skills are fundamental for building relationships, resolving conflicts, conveying ideas clearly, and facilitating collaboration. Marketing often involves collaboration with various departments and agencies, therefore staying adaptable and open to new ideas are valuable assets.

In conclusion, this is not an exhaustive list of qualities for successful tech marketers but rather my personal experiences and lessons that I have gathered from my journey. I firmly believe that honing and harnessing these skills can empower marketers to excel in the tech industry.

Dumisani Moyo | Marketing Director | 51����Africa | dumisani.moyo@sap.com | @SAPAfrica |

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Following the devastation caused by the COVID pandemic, business leaders are now faced with navigating yet another set of disruptive market conditions.

Armed with valuable lessons from the chaos caused by COVID, the key question for business leaders in this ever-changing and challenging business environment is how they can future proof their organisations to survive current market disruptions while remaining focused on proactively sensing and responding to future market opportunities.

While COVID left us with many painful scars, it also taught us valuable lessons

While I recognise that the COVID example has been overused, it is still very relevant and serves as an excellent case study for understanding the importance of being agile and adaptable in business.

We went from the world we knew to operating under extremely restrictive lockdown conditions overnight in March 2020. These changes and their subsequent impact were abrupt and far-reaching, leaving business leaders with little time to prepare and pivot their strategies to deal with the ensuing disruption, which would devastate businesses for the next two years.

Before delving into pivoting business strategies and models, it’s worth noting that many business leaders struggled with issues such as ensuring their employees had access to the tools and resources they needed to do their work remotely, as well as how their employees would collaborate and maintain high levels of productivity while working from home.

Consider what most South African company executives went through on March 23, 2020, when the President declared that South Africa would go into full lockdown to contain the impending global coronavirus epidemic.

For many retail executives for example, the ability to quickly pivot their business models from brick-and-mortar operations that relied on customers walking through their front doors to those that could operate in lockdown conditions leveraging e-commerce or online platforms meant the difference between disaster and survival.

Furthermore, the ability to manage the complex processes of selling online suddenly became the most important priority for executives. Managing stock and secure payment processes, as well as ensuring that customers’ purchases were delivered in a reasonable and acceptable timeframe, added to the complexities.

As Charles Darwin argued in his famous Theory of Evolution in the 1800s, if an organism does not adapt to its environment, it will die. Only those who can adapt to their new environment��survive. COVID presented business leaders with a difficult choice: adapt or die.

The role of technology in driving business agility and adaptability

Much has been written about the many benefits of implementing and using technology in business, but is technology truly the panacea? Can it provide much-needed respite and act as a tailwind to assist businesses with overcoming market disruptions?

There are numerous examples of companies that have successfully used technology to overcome disruptive market conditions. Some have focused on simplifying their business processes and operations to improve efficiencies and reduce costs, while others have focused on accelerating their transformation and using technological advancements to better serve their markets and customers.

All these approaches have one thing in common: they use technology to implement agile and adaptive business models that leverage technological advancements such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics, to name a few. This use of technology enables these businesses to be more responsive and adaptable in dealing with sudden changes and disruptive market conditions.

Looking ahead — emphasising adaptability and agility while prioritising and securing the future through innovation

It goes without saying that businesses must develop resilience and adaptability to navigate market disruptions. However, as the saying goes, in adversity lies opportunity. Leaders must also focus on innovation, which is critical in driving growth and enabling businesses to capitalise on emerging opportunities.

Business leaders are increasingly looking to technology as the answer. According to IDC, digital spending in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) is expected to reach $897 billion by 2026, growing at a 15.5% CAGR over the next five years.

According to a survey of 1,200 CEOs worldwide conducted by on the business environment outlook for 2023, the majority of CEOs saw potential reward on the other side of the economic downturn and aimed to emerge stronger than their competitors. These CEOs agreed that to realign their operations and increase investment in their companies’ futures, they needed be agile and adaptable to changing market conditions and disruptions in the macroeconomic environment.

In the African context, technology is a powerful catalyst for innovation. It can help the continent address a wide range of challenges: from access to quality healthcare and education for its people to financial services and logistics networks that facilitate the movement of goods and services, allowing citizens to trade across borders within and beyond the continent.

Take heed of tech opportunity to improve chances at success

To summarise, there are valuable lessons that emerged from the COVID pandemic. I believe these lessons are still relevant and will be critical in assisting business leaders in navigating the current market headwinds. Business leaders must ensure that their organisations are agile and adaptable, and that they have the correct technology to do so.

Of equal importance is ensuring that they focus on innovation to capitalise on emerging opportunities. A titled “Uncertainty and innovation at speed; How digital maturity can boost the ability to innovate” asserted that “to thrive in an increasingly uncertain world, organisations need to be able to innovate quickly, not only now but after this crisis subsides. Those that are more digitally mature may have an edge”.

51����provides end-to-end technology solutions that help companies, large and small, private, and public, with the technology they need to drive agility, adaptability, and innovation. Our solutions address a wide range of business needs, including cloud ERP, digital supply chain, customer experience, procurement, human experience management and spend management to name a few.

51����will host the Africa leg of the Business Transformation Tour on March 16, 2023, at the Maslow Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, and online. Please using this and join us as we discuss the role of technology in navigating market disruptions.

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