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Harare - Companies and businesses in Africa need to take advantage of the growing uptake and usage of smartphones across the continent to enhance efficiencies and productivity, experts have said.
According to the Ericsson Mobility Report for 2015, there were about 910 million mobile subscribers in Africa by the end of the first quarter of 2015. Experts say a growing number of these mobile users have smartphones and other modern-day tech gadgets.
The increased uptake and growing usage of smartphones is also set to drive mobile internet connectivity across most African countries. Executives with mobile network companies say data-enabled smartphones are now leading the charge in the industry’s diversification away from traditional focus on the voice category.
“We’re seeing many organisations mobilise their enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Workers and managers are increasingly able to access ERP data on the road to serve customers, speed up decision-making and save time,” said Keith Fenner, vice-president at Sage ERP Africa.
Technology and smartphones now also enable workers across Africa to “use their time between meetings and at airports more productively” while they are also able to “access data on the spot so that they can react to opportunities and problems” more rapidly.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can use mobile applications such as accounting solutions, while smartphones enable employees to be more productive as they are able to work from outside the office.
“Employees with mobile devices can be productive many more hours a week because they can work from anywhere in the world and can maximise what might otherwise have been wasted time waiting in airports and reception rooms,” said Daryl Blundell, general manager for Sage Pastel Accounting.
Informa’s Africa Telecoms Outlook report last year projected that there will be about 334 million African smartphone connections by 2017. This will likely account for about 30% of the continent’s population.
Experts say there is immense potential for the continent to tap into the mobile scene, with applications being developed to help ease daily tasks. Platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp already allow companies and employees to communicate cheaply and bring their products and services to a greater African audience whose connectivity is growing.
“Smartphones are crucial in the day-to-day business cycle of a company and being able to link on the go is becoming a competitive advantage in enhancing efficiency and allowing people to undertake work while out of the office,” said economist Moses Moyo.
