Tips for trading during the World Cup

“Businesses in areas that will be affected need to ensure they have a schedule of events and they will need to understand what impact, if any, these will have on their business,” advises Peter McLaren-Kennedy, sales and marketing director at Metrofile.

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Road closures, traffic congestion, electricity disruptions and the lack of service from key FIFA providers such as Telkom, are merely a few of the concerns business will need to take cognisance of over this time. There is no doubt that traffic patterns will be affected on match days, particularly along primary routes, and in and around the stadiums, as well as the park and ride areas.

“We are, for example, planning to re-route many of our standard delivery schedules, bearing in mind that we cannot always delay the delivery given the urgent nature of the company’s business. The onus on ensuring that suppliers can deliver lies with the company affected by the transport restrictions. According to FIFA, permits and approvals will need to be applied for to ensure that required suppliers are given access to affected areas on match days,” he says.

Crime, and in particular business crime may also escalate as the police and security forces in our country turn to the protection of our international guests. With increased security at every one of our borders imports and exports are also going to take longer to process.

But it is not just congestion that needs to be taken into account. McLaren-Kennedy says that many businesses will be affected by the high number of staff that have or will take leave on and around match days. This situation will need to be taken into account by clients, particularly those who need critical information to be delivered at a time to suit their needs.

On a more sinister front IT Security companies have released figures that state that spam, phishing and security threats increase by a staggering 40% over the period of a large scale sporting event. Ensuring your data is backed up and that you have a disaster recovery plan in place is therefore quintessential.

“The best way to do this is to ensure your disaster recovery strategy is hardware independent in the event that you are unable to gain access to these systems over the time of the World Cup. Following an offsite or remote backup policy will ensure you are better prepared should a security breach befall your business,” he warns.

Companies also need to gear themselves for potential shortages of goods such as consumables, and they need to be acutely aware that access to “people” may be a problem. “Sales cycles may well also be protracted over this period as access to individuals and decision makers may be hampered.”