Doing more with less

Companies seeking to maximise their IT investments isn`t a new trend, they`ve been doing it for years, says Thys Bruwer, MD of Ovations.

However, economic pressures have created a greater awareness among his clients of the need to structure their businesses more flexibly so that they can respond with speed and agility to an ever-changing business environment, he admits.

"Clients are looking to us to help them do more with less," says Bruwer.

Ten-year-old Ovations bills itself as a niche business transformation solutions provider that specialises in helping clients to design and implement business process management (BPM) and enterprise content management (ECM) services.

Bruwer maintains that the global demand for BPM, enterprise architecture (EA) and service oriented architecture (SOA) services is projected to continue for at least the next five years. He quotes Gartner`s prediction that, by 2009, 20% of business processes in the Global 2000 will be supported on BPMS.

MARKET OUTLINE

"The majority of our business is in the financial services sector. We have, however, had some success with penetrating the local government sector, where we have implemented projects for a state-owned development finance institution and the largest pension fund administrator in Africa.

We are also working with a financial institutions supervisory authority in Africa and with international telecoms operators on projects based in Dubai. While we will continue to take advantage of our strong footprint in financial services, telecoms and local government clients remain an area of key focus for the next few years."

Consulting services, that is performance improvement, architecture and people capital management, currently accounts for 70% of its revenue.

Ovations also offers development, solution support and educational services. Together with the sales of its work management framework, OvaFlo, and product maintenance and licence sales, these services account for the balance of its revenue.

The company has also recently appointed a reseller to spearhead sales of OvaFlo in the US.

"Although it is early days for this relationship, initial signs are encouraging, demand is growing and we look forward to increased sales over the coming months. We are also aggressively pursuing projects and partnerships in the UK and Middle East," notes Bruwer.

Ovations is also developing an educational services offering set to launch in early 2009.

CORE BUSINESS

At present, the company`s biggest clients are Mutual & Federal, Zurich SA and Isle of Man, Standard Bank and Absa. "All projects with these clients are multiphased, ongoing and expected to run for a number of years," says Bruwer.

At Mutual & Federal, Ovations is in the final implementation phase of the roll-out of its BPM initiative, and all branches are expected to be on the new platform by year-end.

At Zurich SA, it has assisted with the migration of its BPM and ECM to a sustainable technical platform. "We are now working closely with Zurich SA management to architect and implement a range of projects designed to bring about further process improvements. We also maintain and support Zurich SA`s business process management, document management and integration support environments on an outsourced basis," says Bruwer.

"We have assisted Zurich Isle of Man Financial Services with implementing a workflow and document management solution for policy administration. The solution has dramatically reduced their operational costs, turnaround times and assisted the business in doing more with less. We are currently working with them to move further areas of the business into the solution, and to achieve further process optimisation. We also support their BPM technology platforms."

Meanwhile, at Standard Bank, it designed and implemented an ECM solution for the Corporate division. This solution has been adopted by 12 businesses and Ovations provides project management, architecture, implementation, maintenance and support services. It is also providing architecture services to Standard Bank Retail and business process and document management services to Vehicle and Asset Finance.

And, it has re-engineered the acquisition process and sales engagement model within Absa Home Loans and is working with the bank on the roll-out of this initiative.

"We have seen greater interest from industries beyond financial services. Although budgets are under pressure, we are seeing that organisations are prepared to make sensible investments to ensure that their businesses are built  and run - following sound principles. We are also seeing more demand for shorter and smaller projects that deliver results in shorter timeframes," adds Bruwer.