Traditionally, facilitated education in the marketing world has been favoured over other methods of learning.  The more time that you spent in a lecture theatre and the more money you spent on the course, the more highly the marketing qualification was regarded. Today, in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where technology has become an indispensable part of our everyday lives, online learning in the marketing industry has been embraced by reputable education providers and is changing the narrative. Good news for entrepreneurs who have to wear many hats in their business! “The main focus of entrepreneurs, whether they are selling a product or service,” says Lisa Schneider: Managing Director of the Digital School of Marketing (DSM), “is to attract customers and convince them to make a purchase. Being able to afford a marketing agency or full-time marketing manager could be a stretch at first and communicating brand messages to the public would be a necessity, so essentially en...

Christo Botes (Business Partners Limited), Khomotso Malakalaka (National Winner) and David Morobe (Business Partners Limited) Innovative techpreneur, Khomotso Malakalaka, was announced as the national winner of the 2018 SME Toolkit BUSINESS/PARTNERS Business Plan Competition for Aspiring Young Entrepreneurs – a competition that saw 800 young aspiring entrepreneurs attend business planning workshops across the country to equip them with the necessary skills and tools to turn their business idea into a reality. The competition aims to encourage, assist and inspire South Africa’s youth to start their own businesses as a means to reduce the country’s high unemployment rate by promoting entrepreneurship as a viable career choice. However, according to Petro Bothma, Enterprise Development Manager at Business Partners Limited (BUSINESS/PARTNERS), who was speaking at the awards ceremony held this morning in Johannesburg, in order to do this, it is crucial that aspiring entrepreneurs b...

Anton Roelofse Entrepreneurship at any age is key to minimising unemployment in SA Whilst the country continues to battle a high unemployment rate – which increased to 27,5 percent, according to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the Third Quarter of 2018 – the narrative of entrepreneurship as a viable career choice should be widely promoted and encouraged across all generations. However, according to Anton Roelofse, regional general manager at Business Partners Limited (BUSINESS/PARTERS), the recently released 2018 Real State of Entrepreneurship Survey, compiled by Seed Academy and Old Mutual, revealed that 80 percent of entrepreneurs in South Africa are under the age of 45, with the majority of entrepreneurs reported to be between the ages of 25 and 34. “In light of the high prevalence of unemployment, there is no reason that entrepreneurship should be reserved for the younger generation. Considering that only 20 percent of entrepreneurs are over 45, it is now more importa...

Gugu Mjadu Steps to building an ESG compliant business from the get-go Prioritising sustainability and socially responsible business practices has become increasingly important to potential investors when evaluating opportunities. According to the 2018 Schroders Global Investor Survey, a study by global asset-management company, Schroders, of more than 22 000 investors across 30 countries, 88% of South African investors indicated that sustainable investing is more important to them now than it was five years ago, compared with 76% of investors globally. It is for this reason that entrepreneurs should prioritise their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) score from the get-go to ensure investor interest down the line. An ESG framework is based on three central factors when measuring the sustainability and ethical impact of an investment. These three factors are categorised into Environmental (water usage and waste production), Social (treatment of employees in the workplac...

With the increased functionality offered by smartphones and the improvements in mobile accessibility, Franchisor Field Consultants can now be more productive while in the field. Until recently reports had to be filled in and then retyped and only once the photos has been manually added and the MS Word document saved to PDF, could the compiler email the report. A new future The MobiWork suite of products is a smartphone application that runs on the cloud which now affords small medium enterprises (SME’s) the opportunity to arm their mobile workforce with a cost effective, technologically advanced application that will improve their productivity, information exchange capability and customer satisfaction. The solution The MobiWork solution is a product of the Florida, USA based company, MobiWork LLC and is offered in South Africa by Caracal Software Solutions (Pty) Ltd, a Pretoria based company that specialise in Productivity improvement systems. The basic functionality avail...