Vodacom’s Fast Forward Series helps small businesses
MIDRAND – Vodacom held a series of workshops offering development to small-to-medium and large enterprises.
Midrand-based mobile communications company Vodacom launched a programme to empower local entrepreneurs and businesses.
The workshops, called the Fast Forward Series, were led by professional business developers on 11 March to educate and enable business people to broaden their horizons so they are equipped for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Fatima Hassim, managing executive for Vodacom Business, said that the Fast Forward Series workshops and interactive sessions were intended to drive significant growth and change within the South African business sector. “The series is aimed at small-to-medium enterprises (SME), large enterprises, public and global enterprises and offers everything from industry trend updates to innovation sprints, digital and small business development programmes and technology hackathons.
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“With the rise of the digital economy, comes the need for businesses, irrespective of size, to acquire key skills to stay relevant. The Vodacom Fast Forward Series’ focus is on creating a collaborative environment with its partners, to develop tailored solutions to help facilitate this skills development and information transfer that will enable business growth and strategic decision-making across all enterprises in an ever-changing market.”
Hassim added that small and medium-sized business owners can register to attend the business acceleration programmes in partnership with Startup Grind, Vodacom Digital Advertising and Business Doctors free of charge.
One of the speakers was a business consultant who helps with the growth of SMEs, Estelanie van der Merwe from Business Doctors. She added that their passion lies in making sure that business in South Africa grow and survive. “SME’s are the backbone of our economy and an initiative like this that Vodacom is offering kind of speaks to our values and what we are trying to achieve in the country as far as growing the SME market.”
Van der Merwe said that many businesses failed because of their strategies, “I think in South Africa you get a lot of craftsmen that start of their own businesses, which is great, but actually having a business strategy that would take the business further and grow to employ more people is sometimes overlooked which is one of the main issues. Therefore, as Business Doctors, we try to get that strategy in place, making sure that it gets implemented.”
Details: Khensani Mthombeni
Khensani.Mthombeni@vodacom.co.za
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