Deloitte opens digital studio in South Africa

·9 Jul 2013

Financial services firm Deloitte has announced the opening of two South African digital studios in Johannesburg and Stellenbosch.

This, the group says, marks the fourth country after the US, UK, and Australia, to open studios since the launch of the Deloitte Digital brand in 2012.

“Launching Deloitte Digital has been brought about by the growth of the digital industry locally. South African business is embracing technology-based innovation, digital media, and social business,” said Andre Hugo, director at Deloitte Digital South Africa.

“This has fundamentally changed the nature of our business, which was originally led by strategic planning for clients.”

“The South African and African mobile landscape is significantly different from the rest of the world’s mobile landscape. The African continent has embraced ‘mobile first’ and is leading the charge towards ‘mobile only’,” he said.

Hugo says that the challenges and opportunities within Africa lie in the fact that smartphones are not as pervasive in Africa as they are in the rest of the world.

“Dumb” and feature phones account for more than 90% of the phones in use on the continent. “This means that if clients focus solely on smartphone applications, they will not be engaging the majority of their customers.”

Deloitte Digital South Africa aims to assist with accelerated digital strategies, mobility and application solutions, social business solutions, data visualisation, Digital ERP and turnkey digital solutions.

“Deloitte Digital in South Africa can uniquely help clients with the full suite of digital services – from strategy, creative, user experience (UX) to emerging technology engineering, back-end integration, and the core consulting skills to help drive organisational change – industry expertise, strategy and operations consulting, and a deep understanding of how to realise digital innovation built upon existing systems and data,” said Bill Briggs, global lead of Deloitte Digital.