Johannesburg, 01 Sep 2021
Digital transformation, and new approaches to innovation, reskilling and upskilling are all key to business progress and development in the post-pandemic new normal.
This is according to panellists taking part in a BlueSky virtual event, staged in partnership with ITWeb, on Deploying Digital for Competitive Advantage. BlueSky works with partners such as AWS, Salesforce and Tableau to deploy solutions to transform customer business.
Digital transformation becomes crucial
Mncedisi Mayekiso, chief revenue officer at BlueSky, said: “We are deep in the digital transformation era; in fact, a recent Economist report says senior executives in some of the world’s largest companies see digital transformation as one of their top priorities, especially in the wake of the pandemic.”
Matt Wright, CTO at BlueSky, said: “In the discussion around digitising the business, it isn’t so much about the case for doing it, but about the cost of not doing it. But digital transformation means many different things to different people, and it involves much more than just technology – factors such as how the technology is deployed, the platforms and ecosystems and the people are also important.”
Panellists addressed how modern digital businesses were being enabled through Salesforce and AWS.
Transforming across sectors
Outlining the positive impacts of a new storefront and 24/7 customer service platform at the start of the lockdown, Pumeza Mphuthi, GM of applications at Distell and Richard Fritz, ICT business partner at Distell, said they had worked with BlueSky and Salesforce to support their customer-centric digital strategy.
Distell outlined how it had launched a new digital interface at the start of the pandemic.
Mphuthi said: “The world is changing fast and because being customer centric is one of our strategic pillars, we wanted to serve our customers better. As part of our digital strategy, we are working with BlueSky to implement solutions that support customer centricity. We were using legacy CRM systems and needed something agile, and easy to use for our customers, which is why we chose Salesforce. Internally we had to look at the streamlining processes and bringing agile frameworks and DevOps into the mixture. Salesforce was able to give us all the benefits. We are maturing very well, due to our partnership with BlueSky.”
Jean Pierre Horne, Head of Healthcare at Amazon Web Services, said AWS was helping to drive transformation in patient-centric healthcare at lower cost through digitisation and better utilisation of healthcare data. “Our platform makes sure we can provide the full spectrum of services to the various role players in healthcare services – from policymakers to healthcare payers and IT and vendors in this space. This allows for customer obsession across the spectrum of research, therapeutics and patient care, with full security and compliance. The real value of the platform is being able to unlock the potential value of healthcare data through secure exchange of data across disparate systems. Another important benefit is being able to unlock clinical and operational efficiencies through a comprehensive set of services,” he said.
“Activating the healthcare partner network is important to us, we partner with organisations like BlueSky to leverage the depth and breadth of AWS solutions to address specific customer needs and use cases. AWS focuses on increasing the speed of innovation through our innovations, which help customers reduce time to market. Thousands of healthcare and life sciences customers – like the CDC and Pfizer are trusting AWS to get their infrastructure up at scale, especially during the pandemic. Locally, prominent brands like Medscheme, Discovery, CareConnect, the National Department of Health, govchat and the SANBS use AWS.”
Skills to support digital progress
Ursula Fear, Business Unit Manager: Learning and Development at BlueSky, outlined the work of the BlueSky Academy, saying skills should be a top priority as organisations focused on digital transformation. “We’re seeing youth unemployment edging up toward 60 percent, which is a ticking time bomb. At the same time, operating models and skills needs are shifting, and we are seeing that professionals should now be spending around 10 hours a week reskilling ourselves just so that we can remain relevant. With digitisation, we will see a shortage of the relevant, fit for purpose skills that go with it. We need significant investment to go into human capital in tandem with digital transformation,” she said.
Fear said BlueSky assisted customers in aligning their in-house skills retention, acquisition and talent management with trending technologies. “We welcome the opportunity to go and talk to your HR departments, and learning and development teams to assist,” she said.
For more information about BlueSky, visit https://bsky.co.za/
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