Eskom has warned us about load-shedding likely to be here for longer than we had anticipated and this is something we should be prepared for. A few things businesses are suffering due to load-shedding include but are not limited to spoilage of cold storage items, compromised [hysical security, and unhappy customers. Only businesses who make loadshedding work for them will gain a competitive edge, this will of course depend on what type of business you’re running. 

Here are a few things you can invest in:

Power bank: this is one of the most affordable and sustainable ways to keep your devices charged/on, including smartphones and card machines. This means you can still keep marketing and communicating with prospective customers, as well as accept card payments for those who don’t carry cash. 

Dongles and routers: an affordable and reliable option for mobile internet connection yet! You can connect multiple users at a time (e.g. your employees/digital marketing team), These devices use cellular data though, you can consult with your internet service provider to find out about affordable data costs. 

Generator: this can be a big cost for some businesses, but buying one can be intimidating. However, we have a few ideas that might help! Just like most things, you don’t have to totally buy a new one. You can either buy a second-hand generator from online markets and other avenues, or you can ease one. Just make sure you do your research here so you can get value for your money, calculate the numbers first and see if it makes sense. 

Other ways to stay ahead of the competition:

Give clients no excuses. Even though we’re all affected by load-shedding, no one really likes to hear “we can’t, we have load-shedding”. Give clients no reason to want to take business elsewhere but hurl their money at you!

Keep marketing so customers will never forget about you. You can do a month’s worth of work in just a few hours and schedule/automate. We wrote a full blog on this, take something from this: