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At the moment, the Apple Vision Pro is probably the hottest topic in tech. Full disclosure, I hate VR. Actually, let me qualify: I don't like the idea of putting screens very close to your eyeballs in a headset or a pair of goggles that blocks humans off from the rest of the world. I don't see it as a value for society right now, but then I spoke to Mithum Singh, chief services officer at CCI and the MD of CareerBox, Lizelle Strydom.

“Personalisation is becoming a big thing around AI trends. So to give you an example, if you take the Nike business, you can buy sneakers today that are fully customised,” explains Singh. “You can customize it to your colours. You can put the tick in a specific, is a colour that you want.”

“You can put laces in that are specific to yourself. So very, very personalised. And I'll bring it into the contact centre is, and link that with VR just for a minute…”

“You've got a VR headset. And that kind of agent that we've got that Lizellel would recruit for us in the business would be an entry level individual that has never set on an aircraft, but has got to sell a business class seat to a American sitting in in Chicago. And all of a sudden, the customer says, ‘what does that business class seat look like on the A380? I've never sat on an A380’.”

“Perfect. Here it goes on this VR headset, and this agent is able to navigate through this and able to give you real life kind of view on it. You know, the fact that you can do VR glasses these days could be, you know and is a trend that needs to be looked at into it. We will then utilise some of those aspects to do training.”

The PC market is going through a time. They're losing market share to the Mac. Losing mind share because of a technology gap that is growing because they are relying on 3rd party suppliers like Intel and AMD. Who better than Yesh Sujedin, MD for HP South Africa to explain what the future of the PC looks like.

“I think that during the pandemic era, we had a lot of demand for devices that allowed people to be online, to socialize, to communicate, and to be in touch. So I think it's the right time for people to relook at their options available and to understand that the refresh cycle that's coming may include, a very informed decision.”

“The fact that you're having a product means that you're gonna dive into a lot more of the digital environment. Firstly, you're gonna be using a lot more applications. You're gonna be communicating far more effectively in the digital world. It was inevitable that we needed to have that digitization and that service level support. We accelerated having better options in terms of how you support it.”

“As an IT manager, you just don't wanna respond to the changes, you want to understand what is going on in your environment and be able to address problems before they happen.”

There’s a line in Redemption Song that goes “have no fear for atomic energy” and it speaks to a post-World War II mistrust of science. We’re in the moment right now with AI. GhostDraft has been automating customer communications since 1984 and the current CEO Wayne Toms thinks that 2024 is the year that AI gets elevated above the hype cycle as an integral communications tool.

"CCM is essentially the software that automates the production and delivery of all types of written documents, but especially these complex legal or contractual agreements."

"It differs from the document automation of the past in several ways, but perhaps most especially in how it can apply quite sophisticated business logic to generate documents on the fly with the appropriate clauses, words, pictures, and so on, in line with the specific customer requirements. And, you know, you might say that in some ways, CCM is becoming the glue between the digital customer And the digital business for these complex financial transactions."

You may think that emissions in mining are a problem and you'd be right because mining uses stupid amounts of energy. But curbing those emissions starts with the blasting process. So Nishan Hariparsad, general manager for technology and marketing at BME knows a little something about blasting and how the blasting industry is driving down emissions across the entire value chain.

“We acknowledge that the money industry is under pressure to not just prevent injuries, but also to deliver environmentally friendly solutions. So the technology that we have developed allows us to not just improve on toxic emissions generated on every blast, but also improve the mechanism of blasting and deliver on the customer's performance benefits.”

“We use renewable sources to power up our boilers. We have energy harvesting through some of our, equipment; and all of these talk to the decarbonisation journey.”

“Used oil initiatives in the industry consumes about 20% of the used oil in South Africa. This is a direct contribution to the circular economy of mineral oil in this country, and that alone provides a decarbonisation, benefit.”

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