South African business could take leaf out of the Wallaby book

Chris Welham of Space Age Technologies argues that South Africa still has a lot to learn from Australia despite our antipathy towards them.

Of all the nations in the world, the Australians are the ones we most love to hate. Some might say it's their arrogance on the sport field, their loud and abrasive ways and even their absolute belief that they are a cut above the rest. Others, however, might point out that South Africa's antipathy towards our archrivals has more to do with the fact that they have, over the years, proved to be the most difficult side to beat for many of our sports teams.

What we seem to forget, is that we actually have many things in common with the Aussies. More particularly, we have the opportunity to learn from them.

We share some of the same challenges

One of the most obvious challenges that we share is the vast landscape, with a few densely populated urban centres and many sparsely populated rural towns cut off from the national electricity and telecommunication grids.

The Australians have recognised the importance of broadband, going so far as to making a national broadband policy a political ticket in the previous elections.

Although the latest news from the coalition government speaks of small alterations to the published Broadband Strategy, soon homes, schools and workplaces will be connected with optical fibre (fibre to the premises or 'FTTP'), providing broadband services to Australians in urban and regional towns with speeds of 100 megabits per second - 100 times faster than those currently used.

Now, as many South Africans know, we are still a very long way from this sort of connectivity. While the plethora of undersea cables has delivered the theoretical capacity to do the same, our government continues to struggle with the concept of regulating to allow for competition in last mile connectivity.

Add to this the continued malaise that our universal access agency, USAASA, finds itself in and it is clear that our rural communities cannot look forward to broadband access any time soon.

There's no such thing as a free lunch - success certainly comes with a cost

The Australians have learned that if you want success you have to pay for it. Their Olympic gold medal hoard is testament to this. Over the past 20 years, the country has spent around A$40 million (about R260 million) for each of its gold medals won. And yet this astronomical figure is deemed acceptable by many of the Aussie public who not only recognise the knock-on benefits of sports development programmes, but are comfortable with the fact that the money is coming out of their taxes to achieve this.

A similar mentality is needed from the South African government when it comes to broadband delivery. Studies by the World Bank show that with just a 10% increase in high speed Internet connections, economic growth increases by 1.3%. Taking on the full responsibility of delivering Internet connectivity to the disconnected, should be viewed as a strategic economic investment.

But it's not just the public sector which can learn from our nemesis across the ocean.

New laws mean a new game plan

One of the key reasons that the Wallabies continue to outplay us is that they have adapted their game to accommodate the new laws. While the Boks continue to hammer their old-style rugby into the new set of rules, the Wallabies have learned to keep their game plan fluid. They are unafraid of changing tack midway through the game based on the way their opposition are playing. Quite simply they play Darwinian rugby, where the team most able to change and adapt wins.

A similar situation takes place in the boardroom where CIOs are realising that managed IT services can give their company a strategic advantage. Rather than plodding along at an operational level, Australian companies have embraced the added efficiencies delivered by managed services.

Admittedly coming off a low base, the managed IT services industry in Australia is growing quickly with between 15 and 20% of service providers now making use of it.

Look at your game plan - and change it if necessary

In South Africa, however the market remains small and many companies continue to grapple with the concept of allowing a third-party to deliver services which would ordinarily be handled in-house. Again, this is indicative of our lack of ability to change and adapt to situations.

This mentality is not doing us any favours on or off the field. Global indicators are pointing to a second recession, or at least a double dip, and while we were lucky enough to avoid the worst of the last one, there are no guarantees we will escape the next.

Management will need to examine their game plans most carefully if they want to stay competitive. They will need to look at ways of protecting profits by boosting efficiencies and this will certainly demand looking at the new rules of the business game and remaining flexible and open to change. An approach that would not go amiss by the Springbok coach either.