Below, we highlight a few of the key areas on which African brick and mortar businesses should be focusing in order to fully embrace the power of IoT when it comes to their bottom line and overall growth potential.
E-Commerce and Digital Marketing
The first step for businesses looking to become smart retail businesses in Africa should be ensuring that they have a responsive website (responsive means that it adjusts according to what device is being used to browse in order to allow for the best possible user experience) that allows customers to purchase their goods online. The MyAfribox is an all-in-one solution for this, offering business owners the chance to register a domain, set up and save money on their web hosting and email hosting, and successfully sort out their SSL certificates. MyAfribox provides a platform for ISPs to offer Internet Value Added services to users.
AFR-IX telecom has done all the tasks to let ISPs sell, provision and bill the service and lets them offer a pure innovation new service with the best hosting in Africa. Users can allocate their data near their homes and feel high and redundant connectivity with our servers.
Loyalty Programmes
Building and nurturing customer loyalty play a leading role in the growth and sustainability of a business, regardless of its size. As such, business owners need to be dedicated to creating these loyalty programmes and actively managing them from day-to-day. The secret lies in utilizing a Cloud service to allow for real-time updates and management that makes it possible for the business to engage with their loyal customers before, during and after their purchases.
Real-Time Inventory Monitoring
Many African consumers are actively embracing the world of online shopping. In fact, research has shown that online shopping is rising steadily in various African countries, including Mauritius, Libya, Namibia, Kenya and South Africa. However, there is also a huge number of customers who prefer to do their research online ahead of visiting the store in-person to purchase the goods that they want. Some customers will go as far as to order their items online, but will still prefer to retrieve the goods themselves. This is the reason why effective, real-time inventory monitoring via the Cloud is of the utmost importance. There is nothing more damaging to a company’s reputation than when a customer comes all the way to the store only to be told that the items that they are looking for are sold out.
Along with remaining constantly aware of what inventory is in existence and where Cloud technology can take the realm of inventory optimization one step further. Nowadays, it is possible for Cloud technology to develop unique prescriptive and predictive inventory engines that can actively forecast changes in consumer behaviour and trends.
Ultimately, bricks and mortar businesses need to strive to adopt as much new technology as possible in order to not only remain ahead of the curve, but to also continuously provide their consumers with ‘more’ and ‘better’.
AFR-IX Telecom is here to assist you in this journey. Contact us today to find out how we can help you transform your African business for the future.
