Data analytics consultant stresses the importance of ecommerce in SA
CEO at Gauteng-based data analytics and consulting firm Moyo Business Advisory, Pierre le Roux has become the latest expert to call for digital transformation across South Africa’s markets in order for it to become internationally competitive, arguing particularly for a larger e-commerce market.
South Africa has the second largest GDP in Africa, and is amongst the region’s most rapidly developing and diversified economies. Nevertheless, the country’s business environment has lacked the innovative edge that it has required in recent times to remain internationally competitive.
A number of experts and senior executives in the country have called for more innovation in recent times, while some of the larger firms have begun targeted initiatives to facilitate an environment more conducive to innovative capabilities. According to Pierre le Roux, this trend needs to carry over into the country’s retail sector.
Despite a turbulent period over recent years, South Africa’s retail sector has remained particularly stable in recent years, driven by large retail chains active in the country. In order to meet the gap between a growing consumer market and underdeveloped retail infrastructure, retailers in the country have been turning to the digital sphere to remain operational.
Le Roux wishes to see an increasing trend towards developing ecommerce capabilities inspired by some of the largest retailers in the world such as Amazon and Takealot. This is increasingly possible in the contemporary market scenario, given that the ecommerce domain is increasingly accessible even to the smallest of players.
“It is vastly easier now to enter the field of e-commerce now than it was ten years ago. It has also become less capital intensive than it used to be with many software options that only have to be modified to a limited extent to get a new operation off the ground,” Says le Roux.
“We have seen companies on the brink of disaster turn their businesses models around and go from loss-making enterprises to becoming profitable thanks to the introduction of e-commerce and even more importantly, data analytics, in order to predict ahead of time which goods and services were in the greatest demand and to supply these timeously.”
He concludes, “Ranging from automated warehouses to ensuring adequate stock levels to supply the needs of consumers during peak time such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday as well as over the Christmas holidays, a data analytics model can precisely predict these spikes well before they take place.”
