SA lures software company
Yet SA is alongside Scandinavia, the Netherlands, India and the US on the internationalisation map of AIM-listed financial services software company eg solutions, which floated in June last year to facilitate its expansion.
Founder and CEO Elizabeth Gooch says SA’s banks and insurance companies have been far more receptive to its overtures than financial services institutions in other markets and she holds out much hope for growth from here. She says that SA is "an emerging market receptive to new ideas that will help it".
Gooch says eg solutions guarantees cost savings of between 20% and 50% from its software, largely for the back offices of banks and insurance companies.
Eg solutions’ software is good, claims Gooch, because the company didn’t look at it just for technology’s sake. It’s been developed with a specific goal in mind – a focus on what it can actually do. "Most IT that you buy doesn’t actually work," says Gooch, adding that software solutions ordinarily need to be heavily tailored to specific businesses. Though its software does require a focused implementation, it doesn’t need to be rewritten in the process.
Key issues for financial services companies in Britain include staff attendance, prioritisation (are meetings more important than serving the customer?), re-evaluating the way work is allocated according to the skills available on any given day and enabling tasks to be implemented faster by eliminating paper handling, etc.
Gooch says though it does compete and sometimes overlaps with some companies, it’s forged an entirely new market and is working with global research house Gartner to characterise that space. In SA, as far as she can tell, there are no direct competitors.
Established in 1988, eg solutions relaunched in 2001 with a view to listing, which it did in mid-2005, raising ?2m to enable it to diversify into international markets. It had full-year sales of ?5,9m (R83,95m) and its current staff is just more than 50.
Though its investment in SA won’t be significant – Gooch says it will spend around R3,5m to get started – it will hire a few people here and send them for training in Britain. While conservative estimates are for turnover of between R42 and R57 from SA – the same as forecast for Scandinavia, the Netherlands and India – Gooch believes it could exceed that.
Although eg solutions sees potential for improvement in SA banks, Gooch wouldn’t be drawn on whether she holds a view similar to that of Virgin boss Richard Branson, who has been quoted many times saying banks in SA are ripping off their clients.
She refers back to the British market, where costs have spiralled due to financial institutions trying to comply with a more rigid regulatory environment. Hence, they’ve neglected to focus on the client.
Finweek
Loading ...