By Maria Macharia
Nairobi — AN expert is encouraged at the uptake of digital innovation in Kenya, among other East African countries. Gilbert Saggia, the Managing Director: East Africa at SAP Africa, pointed out Kenya has made a significant progress in areas like cloud adoption, which were beneficial to the economy. “Kenya, and East Africa in general, is enjoying the positive impact of digital innovation,” Saggia said. He said for example, companies like Kenya Electricity Transmission Company had automated their business processes by moving entire infrastructure transmission projects from manual to SAP HANA.
“This is a positive stance to demonstrate that the country need to run smarter and efficient,” Saggia said. On the other hand, Commercial Bank of Africa’s investment in its workforce is yielding high returns. It started with the integrated SAP SuccessFactors platform, which allows CBA to plan, reward and retain its human capital, track performance against targets and engage in continuous learning and development.
Roopa Karemungikar, Managing Director of Altura, an SAP partner, said the ability to align all business processes across different countries would help CBA reduce paperwork, increase productivity and automate the bank transfer of salaries. With the internet of things (IoT) disrupting the African market, industry analysts, Frost & Sullivan forecasted significant growth within Kenya’s ICT market in 2017.
This would be fuelled by connectivity and convergence. Services at the Mombasa port are improving and much faster following Kenya Ports Authority’s switch to a new operational system. This has placed the port at 70 percent in the journey towards becoming a paperless port. The African Digitalisation Maturity Report indicates that Kenya has an extensive ICT infrastructure including mobile internet access. The country is more diverse and services centric which helps drives the expansion of digital services. – CAJ News