Rukewe Joseph
Stage 6 load-shedding taught South African businesses a brutal lesson: manual processes don't just slow you down—they can completely halt your business when infrastructure fails. But here's what's interesting: the companies that weathered load-shedding best weren't necessarily the ones with the biggest generators. They were the ones who'd already automated their critical operations.
Walk into most South African businesses and you'll find processes that depend on someone being physically present. Someone needs to manually process orders. Someone needs to respond to customer queries. Someone needs to update inventory spreadsheets. When that someone can't get to the office because of traffic, load-shedding at home, or illness, everything stops.
Calculate the real cost: If your order processing person is unavailable for even half a day, how many orders go unfulfilled? How many customers get frustrated and go elsewhere? For a business doing R500,000 in monthly revenue, a single day of disruption can cost R15,000-R25,000. Multiply that across a year of disruptions, and you're looking at hundreds of thousands in lost revenue.
Smart businesses are flipping the script. Instead of viewing automation as a nice-to-have efficiency tool, they're treating it as essential business continuity infrastructure—just as important as backup power or insurance.
A Durban-based e-commerce company automated their order confirmation and tracking updates. Now, whether the power is on or off, whether staff are in the office or working from home on mobile data, customers get instant order confirmations via WhatsApp. The system runs 24/7 with zero human intervention. During Stage 6 load-shedding, while competitors went dark, they kept operating.
Not all automation is equal. Start with the processes that directly touch customers and have the highest frequency. For most South African businesses, these three should be priority:
First: Customer inquiry responses. Set up AI chatbots that can handle common questions about pricing, availability, operating hours, and order status. This covers 60-70% of inbound queries and works perfectly on mobile data when the power's out. Tools like Tidio or ManyChat integrate with WhatsApp Business and can be set up in a day.
Second: Order processing and confirmation. Automate the flow from order received to confirmation sent to fulfillment triggered. Remove human bottlenecks from this critical path. Even a basic setup using Zapier to connect your website or WhatsApp orders to your fulfillment system eliminates the 'someone needs to manually check and process' step.
Third: Appointment scheduling and reminders. No more phone tag, no more double bookings, no more missed appointments because someone forgot to send a reminder. Automated systems like Calendly or Acuity handle this completely, sending SMS or WhatsApp reminders automatically. For service businesses, this alone can reduce no-shows by 40-60%.
Here's the African advantage: we're already mobile-first by necessity. Your automation strategy should be too. Every automated system you implement should work flawlessly on a smartphone over mobile data. Why? Because when load-shedding hits, your team switches to phones and mobile data. If your automation only works on desktop with fiber connection, it's not really automation—it's just digitized manual work.
Test this: Can you monitor and manage your automated systems entirely from your phone during a power outage? If not, your automation isn't resilient enough for the South African context.
Let's talk real numbers from a Cape Town consulting firm that automated their client onboarding. Previously, onboarding a new client took 4-5 hours of admin time spread over three days—sending contracts, collecting documents, scheduling kickoff meetings. They automated it: contracts auto-send via email, document collection through an automated form, calendar integration auto-schedules meetings.
Time per onboarding dropped to 20 minutes of review time. That's 4+ hours saved per client. They onboard about 15 clients monthly. That's 60 hours freed up monthly—a full-time person. The automation tools cost R3,000/month. The salary of the admin person who could now focus on higher-value work? R25,000/month. ROI is obvious.
This is a real concern in a country with high unemployment. Here's the honest truth: automation doesn't eliminate positions—it eliminates tasks. The companies implementing automation successfully are redeploying their people to higher-value work, not cutting headcount.
That admin person who no longer manually processes orders? They're now handling customer relationships, solving complex issues, and improving processes. The receptionist freed from scheduling? They're now supporting sales and marketing. Automation handles the repetitive tasks so people can do the work that requires judgment, empathy, and creativity—the things AI can't replace.
Don't try to automate everything at once. Pick one process that meets these criteria: happens frequently, is highly repetitive, causes problems when it breaks, and doesn't require complex human judgment.
Map out the current manual steps. Identify the tool that can handle it—many are free or cheap to start. Implement it. Measure the time saved and error reduction. Once you see results, the next automation becomes easier to justify.
A Pretoria law firm started by automating appointment reminders. Just that one process reduced no-shows from 20% to 4%. The time saved by not having to manually call and remind clients? Three hours per week. They then automated document collection for new matters. Then contract template generation. Each win built momentum for the next.
Load-shedding won't last forever, but the lesson it taught us is permanent: businesses that depend on everything going right are vulnerable. Businesses that build resilience through automation can handle whatever comes next—whether that's infrastructure problems, pandemics, economic disruptions, or just the normal chaos of running a business in a dynamic market.
The South African businesses thriving right now aren't the ones waiting for perfect conditions. They're the ones building systems that work regardless of conditions. That's not just smart business—it's survival strategy. And automation is how you build it.