Is South Africa ready for the 4IR? This is a debate that countless professionals are currently having. Whether professionals believe the country is ready for the 4IR or not, now is not the time to ponder —   it’s time to prepare and plan for what this revolution is bound to bring. And the only way to do that is to learn from the best of the best! 

media update’s Talisa Jansen van Rensburg takes a look at some South African brands that are more than ready for the 4IR.

So what makes a company ready for 4IR?

The biggest thing that all companies should adopt is a mindset that can adjust easily and effortlessly change, since the 4IR will be bringing forth a lot of new opportunities and challenges. For example, a lot of manual work, normally done by humans, will now be done by computers and other machines.

Although there are a lot of big terms used when talking about the 4IR, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of things (IoT), grasping the entire concept can be challenging. That’s why it is important to remember that “digital transformation, at its core, is about helping our businesses spark new growth, relevance and viability into the future,” says Amity Millhiser, contributor at Forbes.

With technology advancing constantly, businesses are faced with "a now consumer”, which means that consumers want to buy now, recieve their delivery now and listen to the new song now — they don’t want to provide you with their details again because they have done this before.

This means that brands will need to get involved with everything tech-related because — sooner or later — consumers and employees will be wanting the same technological help that other employers provide their consumers and employees with.

Here are three brands that ready for the digital transformation that will be brought forth with the 4IR:

Newsclip Media Monitoring

Newsclip Media Monitoring, a brand tracking and media intelligence solution, makes use of automation and smart technology, which means that when tracking your brand, it makes use of AI and machine learning to ensure you get spot-on insights.

The fact that the company is already making use of this advanced technology means that it will be ready for the changes that 4IR brings. In fact, Newsclip’s in-house development team has been working with AI-technology for over 10 years.

They already have a taste for what this technology can bring to the table and the fact that they have been focused on technological innovation, year after year, means that they are more than ready for the 4IR.

What we can learn from Newsclip?
Newsclip is a 35-year-old company, yet it has changed and adapted as new technology has come forward. This is how all brands should look at 4IR; instead of being stuck in old ways, rather take new routes and ideas into consideration to become future-proof.

Focal Points

Focal Points, a media analysis and reporting company, makes use of natural language processing (NLP) and AI to assist with analysing clients’ media coverage and compiling insightful reports.

It also uses this technology to analyse the sentiment of editorial and social content — giving clients comprehensive, actionable insights in a flash.

Thanks to this technology, the company can analyse the sentiment of media clips with near-100% accuracy; pretty impressive when you consider that humans can only do it with about 70% accuracy. This makes Focal Points a truly reliable and effective brand to make use of because, not only can it provide clients with accurate analysis, but it can also actually prove these measurements.

What can we learn from Focal Points?
Just because AI technology can perform so many tasks doesn’t mean that humans are no longer needed. Focal Points uses a combination of AI power and human creativity to offer its clients the best possible solutions.

Brands can learn to embrace the change and make it work for you — just like Focal Points has.

amaSocial

amaSocial, the ultimate social media tracking and reporting service, makes use of an AI system that helps the team capture data from social media platforms. This information is then displayed on its live, interactive dashboard where it can report back to clients.

The service also makes use of NLP, which assists it in interpreting and analysing mentions of its clients on social media. Thanks to this technology, clients are able to see their brand mentions on social media in almost real-time.

It also offers a reaction list, where brands can be notified as soon as their brand is mentioned alongside words or phrases that have been identified. This is an extremely useful tool for spotting negative feedback and preventing crises. This allows its clients to stay on top of brand mentions on social media and allows them to place their focus on more important matters.

What can we learn from amaSocial?
amaSocial adapts to changes that are constantly thrown at the social media industry, as there are new updates for social apps almost monthly. amaSocial embraces industry changes as they come, and identifies the opportunities that can arise from change, rather than focusing on the difficulty of keeping up with each new iteration.

The brand is always working on new products and ways of doing things — for example, it saw an opportunity to help clients identify influencers that love their brand, making it easier for them to find brand advocates on social media.

Brands need to learn that, although there are constant changes within their industries, they need to adjust and learn new ways to deal with it — with the help of 4IR.

What are some other South African brands that you think are 4IR ready? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Still have a lot of questions about the 4IR? Be sure to read 10 FAQs answered about the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
*Image courtesy of Vecteezy