Power outages can mean big losses for companies of all sizes. Productivity in businesses comes to a grinding halt when there is a power cut and ultimately jobs are put at risk.<\/p>\n
Thus far, 2022 has been South Africa\u2019s most intensive load-shedding year to date, as Eskom\u2019s coal fleet continues to deteriorate.<\/p>\n
According to the CSIR<\/strong><\/a><\/strong>, Eskom had cut 2,276GWh of electricity in the first six months of 2022. That was more than 90% of the 2,521GWh it shed for the entire 2021.<\/p>\n The CSIR estimates that load shedding results in lost economic output<\/strong><\/a><\/strong> of about R700-million per load shedding stage per day.<\/p>\n In 2019 alone, the CSIR estimated that load shedding cost the economy between R60-billion and R120-billion.<\/p>\n Economists from Alexander Forbes have indicated that Stage 6 load shedding costs South Africa over R4 billion each day<\/strong><\/a><\/strong>, with productivity affected by lost data, failing internet connections, missed deadlines as employees aren\u2019t able to complete tasks on time, and disruptions to supply chains from the reduced manufacturing output.<\/p>\n Andre Adendorff, Director of Presales at Seidor Africa, says businesses can minimise the impact of load-shedding through cloud-based ERP solutions as these provide security, availability, and business continuity compliance.<\/p>\n Cloud ERP is accessible over the Internet and provides advanced functionalities for all the core processes in an organisation. Instead of onsite servers and other hardware, Cloud ERP enables users to access data and other computing services through the cloud.<\/p>\n World class technology solutions in line with a company\u2019s budget is enabled through cloud-based ERP. Hosted on a cloud provider\u2019s cloud computing platform, cloud ERP is typically delivered \u201cas a service\u201d, with customers paying a predictable monthly or annual subscription fee and without any significant capital investment.<\/p>\n In addition to cost-savings, management can focus on running their business, and scale up or down as customer or industry needs change. There are no upfront hardware costs and application maintenance, upgrades and innovations, data storage, and security are all managed by the vendor.<\/p>\n \u201cAll ERP data is hosted on the cloud provider\u2019s servers, including data backups, and data security\u201d says Adendorff.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen performing upgrades or installing new features, the provider typically works with the ERP vendor to ensure the best outcomes for the client. At a time when blackouts are part of daily life in South Africa and becoming more common around the world, cloud ERP offers many advantages.\u201d<\/p>\n When ERP data is in the cloud, this mitigates the risk of data loss, downtime from hardware failure, and malware attacks.<\/p>\n While power outages commonly cause hardware failures and data corruption for SMEs, cloud platforms are designed from the ground up for maximum data security.<\/p>\n Data is kept in two separate locations so that a copy, i.e., a backup, will give the customer the way to quickly restore from a disaster.<\/p>\n Public cloud offers high availability, which is one of the key goals of moving to the cloud. Cloud service providers store client data in multiple geographic locations and use redundant data backup to ensure data does not get lost.<\/p>\n Along with efficient incident management and reporting mechanisms, cloud services have a standard up-time rate of 99.9998%<\/strong><\/a><\/strong> on infrastructure.<\/p>\n Cloud providers tend to have high-level security technology and practices in place. These should include access-and identity management, multi-factor authentication, and Intrusion Detection.<\/p>\n Among the major advantages of ERP software is the customisable dashboards that provide an understanding of business operations.<\/p>\n With drag-and-drop visual elements, users can quickly interpret data to make informed decisions.<\/p>\n These dashboards are designed for business functions such as marketing and sales, finance, and operations and other data categories for quick analysis. Access to these dashboards is readily available and secure via a cloud connection.<\/p>\n1.\u00a0 Reduced risk of data loss
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n2.\u00a0 High availability<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3.\u00a0 A secure platform for business
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n4.\u00a0 Secure access to important data
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n5.\u00a0 Business continuity compliance
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n