BY JONATHAN OAKER

As amendments to the small business laws of South Africa are considered, it is proposed that a Small Business Ombud be established to support small businesses with payment and contract disputes. Implementing modern digital solutions from the outset will be key to its success, such as the solutions listed below.

One of the first issues to raise is how entrepreneurs in South Africa’s remote rural areas could access Ombud’s services given limited internet connectivity. With 34% of the population still lacking internet access, supplementing digital channels with offline options will be critical. Potential solutions include having mobile Ombud units that could periodically visit these communities to intake complaints and provide assistance, or adding access points to existing state agency service points.

The Ombud could collect data and establish a code of conduct for how major companies engage small enterprises, ensuring reasonable payment terms, fair contract cancellation policies, and protections against abuse of bargaining power.

For small businesses everywhere, easy and efficient onboarding will be important. Clear instructions on the intake process, transparency on case status, and fast resolution times can make the Ombud more approachable, which may be achieved by adopting digital solutions.

Available 24/7

Self-service AI chatbots, available 24/7, could let entrepreneurs get answers to common questions without waiting for agents. Overall, human-centric design thinking is vital, delivering services tailored to small business workflows and needs by using the available digital solutions.

One major issue that small businesses confront is unfair account blacklisting practices by major banks, where a single late payment can lead to permanent credit downgrades and account restrictions. The Ombud could advocate for proportionate penalties and work to reform these banking policies that severely restrict entrepreneur access to capital. In  addition, widespread unfair contract and procurement practices also impact small suppliers dealing with large corporations. The Ombud could collect data and establish a code of conduct for how major companies engage small enterprises, ensuring reasonable payment terms, fair contract cancellation policies, and protections against abuse of bargaining power.

These are instances where systematic data collection by the Ombud may help in analysis for trends and for the Ombud to use the investigative mandate included in the current proposals.

High volume of inquiries

To achieve its mission, the Ombud will need to handle a high volume of inquiries and complaints in a timely manner. This is where technology like artificial intelligence and cloud automation come in. Conversational AI services like Amazon Lex may be used to build intelligent chatbots. These could understand natural language, provide answers to frequently asked questions, take initial information on complaints, and automatically route issues to the right internal teams. AI sentiment analysis could also help assess the urgency or emotions behind complaints.

Robotic process automation using AWS Step Functions would allow codifying workflows for common complaint scenarios. This could involve escalating high-risk complaints, gathering additional information, communicating with implicated parties, tracking investigations, and keeping complainants updated. Such automation enables responsive information sharing and case progression without everything needing manual agent intervention.

With large volumes of inquiries and complaint data, the Ombud will also need analytics capabilities. Services like Amazon QuickSight allow visualising trends across complaints, analysing peak complaint categories and service channels, and drilling down into root causes. This gives decision-makers data-driven insights on where to focus improvement efforts and resources. For example, identifying a spike in supplier contract cancellation complaints in the retail sector could flag a need for an investigation into unfair industry practises.

Confidential to Collaboration

As the Ombud handles confidential personal and business data, security is paramount. Solutions like AWS Key Management Service (KMS) allow encryption of sensitive information both at rest and in transit across Ombud’s digital systems. Granular access controls, multi-factor authentication, and comprehensive logging and monitoring are also critical. AWS services like Amazon Macie use machine learning to automatically scan systems for any mishandling of private data and Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and alert on potential compliance violations.

Collaboration with external partners will be essential to providing education and support programmes for small business entrepreneurs. For instance, public-private partnerships with organisations like DigiBiz that offer small business mentorship, skills training, and development resources could be considered. This can help improve the readiness of entrepreneurs to understand compliance, financing, operations, and more when launching and growing their enterprises.

Public communications are vital so entrepreneurs understand likely timelines, available services, and how to best maximise accessing the Ombud. Starting by focusing solutions on priority groups like township entrepreneurs was also recommended.

Holistic Approach

With a holistic approach leveraging cloud computing, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and inclusive design, South Africa’s Small Business Ombud has immense potential to accelerate assistance and advocacy for small businesses. By proactively identifying pain points together with entrepreneurs and implementing the right tools, it can drive digital transformation to better understand issues, resolve cases faster, tackle systemic problems, and connect more small enterprises to the support they need. 

Done right, the Small Business Ombud can become a benchmark for how digital solutions benefit citizens across sectors like education, healthcare, and more. \

South African small businesses represent a vital engine for growth and innovation. It is time to meet their needs by embracing technologies that enable accessibility, insights, automation, and customer-centric public services. The opportunity is now to leapfrog into an effective Ombud that serves entrepreneurs digitally and equitably across the nation.

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Jonathan Oaker is CEO of CloudZA
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