South African companies have for a long time been laggards in adopting technologies to grow their businesses. There are many reasons for that. One trend we have been noticing is that all plans to become a digital-first company have been accelerated due to the shift to working from home and running a hybrid operation.
Deloitte recently published an article focused on why many companies are shifting to become a platform business, to cater for the a new wave of value exchange online.
What is a platform business?
“Traditional businesses have mostly used brick-and-mortar approach to enable interactions and to facilitate value exchanges. Nowadays platforms are increasingly supported by global digital technology infrastructures that help to scale participation and collaboration.”
A Technology idea to generate more revenue
With many businesses moving towards adopting a platform business approach to enabling improved customer interactions, we will explore the idea of what a platform business will look like for a business in the financial services space.
Sector: Financial Services
Company Size: Mid-Large
Approach:
To generate new ideas for a business we take two approaches, the first being focused on a segment in the market you would like to capture, the second approach being people you could collaborate with that are not direct competitors but can create visibility for your brand leading to a potential customer acquisition channel.
Idea:
Let’s take a traditional bank that wants to get access to the unbank/informal sector. The traditional approach has been to spend heavily on products and services to entice potential customers to bank with them. This is bundled with expensive advertising and marketing campaigns to explain the value proposition and educate them as to why they should adopt the product.
An alternative approach would be to find an existing technology company(2-sided marketplace or delivery type platform) that could leverage the financial service’s tooling, like their payment gateway, and integrate it for payments. The benefit of this is to build brand awareness through a partner that already has a relationship with the potential audience and later on explore how other products of the financial services company can be recommended to the potential customer.
This new relationship will benefit both parties, as the existing technology gains credibility through affiliating with a large bank and the bank gets exposure to the potential audience at a lower cost.
Try out Skywalk
Are you not happy with your team’s current approach to getting access to new markets? Give Skywalk a chance. Book a no-obligation session with our team and explore more ideas around technology to generate more revenue.
