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Masks, sanitisers and Zoom – local team takes TV ad production to a new level

What did it take to shoot a TV ad during South Africa’s lockdown? Over 75 hours of Zoom meetings, 48 Skype casting calls and four remote callbacks, six hours of online cast rehearsals, five virtual location reccies, over 1500 WhatsApp messages, 200 emails, hundreds of phone calls, and a very unusual kind of shoot day. All this to bring the new A.Vogel Echinaforce TV commercial to screens in time for winter and generate much needed income for over 35 people, mostly freelance professionals whose earnings would be among those hardest hit by the lockdown. Initially as commercial director Dani…

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Coronavirus and the end of the global supply chain

Coffee illustrates how complex supply chains have become ©MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP/Getty Images Posted by Paul Simpson Coronavirus has shown how fragile our cost-driven, just-in-time processes really are. With practitioners adapting to survive while planning more resilient systems for the future, will procurement ever be the same? When the first container ship arriving from China at the port of Vancouver was cancelled in January this year, it didn’t seem particularly significant. By mid-March, when China’s struggle with Covid-19, aka coronavirus, had become so all-consuming that 30 more journeys had been cancelled, Vancouver’s port officials were facing a crisis of historic magnitude.

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Supply chains have been changed, possibly forever

The competition is no longer between brands or even between companies; it is between supply chains (networks). Supply chains in the time of coronavirus have changed, possibly forever. MARZIA STORPIOLI reports. Supply chain management has been likened to a philosophy, a concept rather than an essential service. Historically, companies relied on strong brands and good products to win over the consumer. Competitive advantage was gained by the organisation based on the strength of its brands and its reputation for quality products. But as the COVID-19 pandemic continues its inexorable march across the globe, supply chain management is no longer…

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Don’t be distracted by the ‘shiny new objects’ arising from the advance of technology

The ‘father of open innovation’, Henry Chesbrough, has just published a follow-up to his ground-breaking first book. He believes business must extend beyond the creation of new technologies, to also include their broad dissemination and deep absorption, in order to prosper from new technologies. GLENDA NEVILL reports. ‘Open innovation is a term used to promote an information age mind-set toward innovation that runs counter to the secrecy and silo mentality of traditional corporate research labs.’ ~ Wikipedia Right now, think tanks and scientists and researchers across the globe are collaborating in the search for a coronavirus vaccine (or cure). This…

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IMM Graduate School is offering fast-paced express courses that you can do in less than 1 week for just R475 per course while in lockdown

Covid-19 is here and it’s not going to disappear overnight. South Africans still have a long way to go in the fight against the corona virus before life returns back to normal. With the country in lockdown for 21 days, millions of South Africans are beginning to feel the pinch as businesses start to cut salaries and in some cases jobs. Tammyn Gregory shared her story with us: “I work in the hospitality industry. The emergence of Covid-19 in China and the steady spread across the globe already impacted our sector even before the first cases were reported in South…

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Supply Chain Management during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 virus has brought humanity, as we have come to know it, to its knees. Where kindness, sharing and caring once prevailed, now self-preservation reigns in shopping malls throughout the world as the “have’s” stockpile their larders with vitals at the expense of the poor, the needy, the aged and the sick. Shopping trolleys are filled to the brim not because there is a dire and urgent need to satisfy physiological needs but rather the wanton greed to plunder shopping shelves without giving any consideration for the shoppers in the queues behind them.  Imagine if the world did not…

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Distance Education Rises to the Occasion during the CoVID-19 lockdown

Distance Learning, the Keeper of Higher Education during a Worldwide Pandemic The challenges facing institutions of Higher Learning during the CoVID-19 lockdown have left many with no option but to turn to online learning to avoid disruptions to learning and teaching programmes across the globe.  Fortunately, the IMM Graduate School has not been caught off guard during the Coronavirus pandemic, nor has it been left scrambling to keep learning and teaching going. For the most part it is business as usual. We have already spent the past several years, implementing cutting edge online learning principles, and as such “going…

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