Top tips for tech business in Africa - 6 June 2007

Dave Paulding shares some valuable insights for doing business in the African IT market.

The boom in South Africa’s business process outsourcing market is well documented. Many international businesses are looking to SA for their outsource needs, and the country’s unique economic situation, coupled with the SA government’s focus on outsourcing and positioning the country as a contact centre hub is spurring the growth.

The demands from companies in the telecommunications, utilities (water, power, and gas) and banking industries also present significant opportunities for local and international IT players, and many international companies have made a considerable contribution to the local market.

Interactive Intelligence entered the SA market ten years ago. The company – then unknown and presenting a revolutionary approach – has made significant strides in SA and Africa offering contact centre and telephony products.

According to Interactive Intelligence’s regional sales manager for UK and Africa, Dave Paulding, companies need to be mindful of the continent’s unique challenges if they are to be successful in Africa. He shares some of the lessons Interactive Intelligence has learnt:

1. Understand Africa’s unique challenges

Logistically, Africa presents some unique challenges. Getting product into some countries presents problems due to limited transportation links. Supporting customers in Africa also presents some challenges. If an engineer needs to be dispatched to site, it is not always easy to jump on a plane and get there.

Poor infrastructure can also present some challenges. Consistent and regular electrical supply cannot always be guaranteed in certain locations and access to telecommunications links can be challenging. It is often necessary to come up with innovative solutions to problems.

It is also important to mindful of the political climate in certain countries. Guidance from local partners on these issues is key.

Unfortunately, getting payment for solutions is an issue sometimes as well.

2. Establish reseller relationships

As a new entrant to the market ten years ago, Interactive Intelligence was unknown as a vendor in SA. We did not have any existing installations to act as a reference and our approach and positioning went against everything the established vendors stood for. We truly believed there was a revolution coming in business communications.

The early years were tough. We were selling a Windows NT-based ‘unified’ communications system against Lucent, Nortel and the other legacy telecom giants. Back in ‘95, ‘96 and ‘97, people said it would never work and would never sell.

We were fortunate to sign a reseller agreement with Dimension Data. They actively marketed and promoted our Customer Interaction Center (CIC) solution and because of their credibility and trusted position with customers, they were able to convince organisations like Nashua Mobile and BMW to sign-up.

More than a decade later, the world looks a lot different! We’ve sold thousands of systems. Analysts have declared the PBX dead, and the telecom giants don’t look quite so tall. In fact, the same competitors that derided our system back then have been scrambling in an effort to piece together multi-vendor products and re-label them as ‘unified’ in a desperate attempt to play catch up.

3. Identify suitable channel partners to expand into Africa

One of Interactive Intelligence’s primary partners, ATIO, has been touted as a world leader in identifying suitable channel partners. ATIO has invested heavily in training and developing internal skills with our software based technology. In fact, they have the highest number of Interactive Intelligence certified engineers in EMEA.

They have also been awarded Interactive Intelligence’s highest level of partner status, Platinum Elite. This is only awarded to those organisations that have excelled within the entire scope of our partnership and there is only one other partner in EMEA and three more globally at this level.

ATIO has also worked to maintain very high levels of customer satisfaction and many of their customers have in turn become advocates, hosting reference visits, providing leads and recommending ATIO and Interactive Intelligence to other organisations.

4. Embrace leading-edge technology

One of the factors that propelled Interactive Intelligence’s success globally was our move to voice over IP, specifically using the SIP standard. This meant that we were able to move away from proprietary hardware and do everything in software. In the 90s, our approach represented a significant mind-shift but now more and more African companies are embracing an all software solution based on open standards and running on commodity hardware.

A bright future for IT in Africa

We are anticipating a steady increase in the African IT market over the next few years, and predict a growth of between 30-35% by 2009. In SA, the advent of the second network operator should increase competition, however we still have a way to go. SA organisations cannot fully exploit the possibilities of software-based technology until they can obtain plentiful and cost effective bandwidth.