Isn’t East Africa Social Enough Yet?
The CIO East Africa ‘Year Ahead’ forum in Nairobi was held yesterday at the Fairmont Norfolk Hotel and local SAP executives, government representatives and local enterpreneur spoke about their predictions for 2011. There were a few surprises and disappointments at the forum. I’ll pick just two.
A pleasant surprise was the Kenya government’s e-governance structure presented by the Cabinet Secretary. Apparently, the Government Information Technology Services unit reports directly to the cabinet. This is a positive step towards acheiving Gov2.0 in Kenya as roles are more clearly defined. Through the e-governance structures in place, it is now possible for GITS to ensure every government department is in sync with the rest. Could this be the first step to open data and a open-standards based data interchange framework? I sure hope so.
Most disappointing however was SAP’s apparent decision to ignore social CRM in the East African market. With close to 2 million consumers on Facebook alone, brands that extend the customer’s experience onto social platforms are bound to enjoy dominance and positive word of mouth. SAP already serves some of the largest retail businesses in the region and can provide the technology to make it happen. Despite the fact that they did mention social media as an emerging reality there was no mention of how their products will help their customers win on this side of the ‘new normal’.
There was little mention of what SAP’s platform allows its customers to do in growing engagement with customers on social spaces. In all fairness, I haven’t heard Oracle talk about social CRM much either in this region. And don’t get me started on Microsoft. All three have a presence in Nairobi. Beyond East Africa, none of the companies listed in Gartners Magic Quadrant for Social CRM (except Oracle) have a presence of any sort in the region.
Here are a few thoughts that came to mind during the forum;
- There will be considerable first-mover advantage for the vendor who deploys a social CRM solution that makes sense for the African market.
- Businesses in the region are now establishing a presence on social spaces as matter of fact. They are however struggling to demonstrate clear ROI on social efforts therefore choosing to keep their presence experimental at best.
- Social CRM vendors don’t seem to believe sub Sahara Africa is sufficiently present on the social web to warrant giving the market any considerable attention.
Hopefully, in 2011, we will see social media begin to influence business process especially as more people get access to data enabled handsets and establish their presence on social networking platforms. Maybe then, the vendors will find East Africa social enough.
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