FutureWorld chief executive Wolfgang Grulke and Anglo American corporate affairs chairman Clem Sunter were guest speakers for the Nortel Networks retail finance technology seminar at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton. Seen here with host Nortel Networks Enterprise Solutions regional director Doug Batchelor, both Grulke and Sunter spoke about the effects of technology on the global economy and individual economies.
Sunter stressed the critical need for South Africa to use technology to encourage, develop and support the SME business sector and for financial institutions to re-examine their loan criteria in order to make capital freely available to small business entrepreneurs.
He said the SME sector, properly supported with imaginative and innovative venture capital structures, would be instrumental in solving south Africa`s unemployment problem.
Grulke spoke about the Millenium and "10 lessons from the future", saying that technology had led to better products at less cost and now, through the Internet, was leading to the demise of the industrial economy and the emergence of an "information economy" where, because knowledge was freely available, skills and ideas would be valued above all else.
He said the world was developing a "digital skin", turning devices into services with an infrastructure providing everything off common bandwidth using smartcard technology.
By 2020, Grulke said the world would have 1000-million wired phones, 2000-million wireless phones (all digital), amounting to one telephone for every three people. By that time the key competency for individual and business success would be Internet literacy.
Don Scott, Nortel Networks finance marketing manager EMEA told the retail finance seminar that "today the network is the business". He also focused on how Nortel Networks technology could assist companies, banks and other financial institutions to meet the challenges posed by globalisation, increasing competition, product and market specialisation as well as the alignment of distribution channels and customer profiles.
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