{"id":472416,"date":"2021-03-03T11:01:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T09:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=472416"},"modified":"2021-03-03T11:01:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T09:01:58","slug":"data-insights-can-fuel-sustainable-growth-for-mid-size-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/industry-news\/472416\/data-insights-can-fuel-sustainable-growth-for-mid-size-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"Data insights can fuel sustainable growth for mid-size companies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Dumisani Moyo, Head of Mid-Market: Southern Africa at SAP<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Mid-sized companies tend to suffer more than their larger counterparts in tough economic times. The current state of disruption caused by COVID is no exception.<\/p>\n<p>In such times, the ability to see a business as an interconnected and coherent system is invaluable.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sap.com\/africa\/cmp\/dg\/interconnected-business\/index.html?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=SponsoredArticle&amp;utm_term=March2021\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Click here to download the Oxford Economics article on the interconnected business.<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A business is made up of a web of intricate relationships between customers, employees, suppliers and a multitude of processes that all need to work and function together in harmony.<\/p>\n<p>In order to fully understand the nuanced relationships between the different parts of the business, companies need to leverage data-driven technologies and approaches.<\/p>\n<p>This enables mid-sized companies to respond to a dynamic business environment, the ever-changing needs of customers and employees, as well as optimise relationships and processes to facilitate greater efficiency and collaboration, both inside and outside the company.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">SMEs turn to emerging technologies<\/h3>\n<p>A recent study by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sap.com\/africa\/cmp\/dg\/interconnected-business\/index.html?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=SponsoredArticle&amp;utm_term=March2021\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Oxford Economics and SAP<\/strong><\/a> into mid-sized companies revealed that increasing numbers recognise the value of prioritising technologies such as predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.<\/p>\n<p>These technologies are crucial to enhance the ability of mid-sized companies to remain competitive in tough times, improve their agility, increase visibility across all parts of the business, and develop close relationships with customers, employees and suppliers.<\/p>\n<p>Before companies can become data driven and make credible insight-driven decisions, they need to start by gaining the confidence of the primary users of information, their employees.<\/p>\n<p>To become true data driven organisations, mid-sized companies need a strong IT infrastructure that ensures that the data is accurate, complete and can be seamlessly and securely shared across functions and teams, including externally to customers and suppliers.<\/p>\n<p>This is a significant step towards building a data driven mindset amongst employees and to foster collaboration, transparency and predictability.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\"><strong>How to build data infrastructure that employees want to use<\/strong><\/h3>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">1. Make it easy-to-use for better, faster decision making<\/h3>\n<p>Mid-sized companies can leverage advances in technologies such as natural language processing, machine learning and predictive analytics to build out scenarios and predict future outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>This can aid decision making and provide a competitive advantage against others in the marketplace.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, such capabilities were only accessible to larger companies that could afford expensive deployments and specialised skills.<\/p>\n<p>This is now within the reach of mid-sized companies as well.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">2. Bring data management and analytics together<\/h3>\n<p>Reducing complexity should be a key consideration when deciding on IT systems.<\/p>\n<p>Bringing together data management and analytics not only reduces costs, but also drives efficiency and makes data processing and the extraction of insights in real time possible.<\/p>\n<p>This also goes a long way towards promoting the seamless sharing of data and collaboration with external partners, for example, the ability to integrate a company\u2019s operational data with that of external suppliers to improve efficiencies in the manufacturing process.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">3. Embed enterprise-class analytics to give a full view of the business<\/h3>\n<p>Mid-sized companies now have access to embedded analytics without the need to use multiple applications, enabling them to have a holistic view of the business.<\/p>\n<p>This capability combines the power of business intelligence, augmented analytics, and predictive analytics into one application, contributing to increased productivity, efficiency, and collaboration across different functions and teams.<\/p>\n<p>When all is said and done, the ability to connect every function in the business through data is a unique differentiator that mid-sized companies desperately need to level the playing field and to compete more aggressively with their larger peers.<\/p>\n<p>From improved customer outcomes, to empowered and satisfied employees, the benefits of efficiently leveraging data insights can fuel sustainable growth for mid-size companies.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sap.com\/africa\/cmp\/dg\/interconnected-business\/index.html?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=SponsoredArticle&amp;utm_term=March2021\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Click here to download the Oxford Economics article on the interconnected business.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mid-sized companies tend to suffer more than their larger counterparts in tough economic times. The current state of disruption caused by COVID is no exception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":472420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[1073],"class_list":["post-472416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-sap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":472422,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472416\/revisions\/472422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}