Welcome And Guest Introductions

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Tech Unboxed with BBD. Welcome to another Tech Unboxed and live with me. I've got Liesel and GT. So can I maybe start with asking to introduce yourself and the company that you represent, as we are two of us. Well, three.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

Three. Well, for me, it's so good to be back, Kun. It's been a while since I've been on the podcast. But I'm Liesil from BBD Software, responsible for our European partnerships and growth. And I'm really excited to be here with JT today, one of our new partners in SETSIA.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

All right. Some nice things to unfold. But can I maybe start with you, JT? Who are you? Where do you work for?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Sure. It's very nice to meet you, Kun. I'm very excited to be on this podcast with you as well. We've got some exciting things that we're planning. I work for a company called Solar Growth, Solutions for Growth. We're a BPO also out of South Africa, focusing on finance and accounting, outsourcing specifically as a main. Yeah, and I'm looking after international business development specifically in UK and Europe. So that's my day job amongst a couple of others. And very excited to have this talk.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

No, absolutely. And there's a couple of things that sort of already come to the surface. So I heard you say SATSEA. And I think both of you have in common that you are from South Africa, but both very active in the European market. So can one of you bring those elements together?

SPEAKER_03 1:55

Sure. Maybe I'll maybe I'll just tell you what SATSIA even stands for, because it sounds like a military campaign, but it stands for South African Technology

What SATSIA Means And Why

SPEAKER_03 2:05

Services in Europe Alliance. And and why SATSIA? Because we have this wonderful African proverb that says, if you want to go go far, go if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. And that's the kind of principle. We know in BBD that uh it's super important for us and our growth to partner. And and this is an interesting way of partnering. And the hypothesis here is as a group of South African entities who are all growing into Europe, wouldn't it be bad if we go together? Because each of us are tiny fish in a very small market, but we're all selling the same story that South Africa is an incredible region for European companies to outsource to. And and so we're telling that story together. That's that's the sort of founding principles.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

How how do you guys select then the the organizations that are part of this association?

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Yeah. Uh it it kind of started organically. We began working with each other uh in projects where there were questions of maybe that's not our core capability, but we actually know people that we've worked with in the past on other projects that we can work together. And just through working together, we realized actually there's something in this because what what each of us does has slight overlaps, but not in our core. So the ecosystem starts to look very interesting. And there's a there's an ecosystem called the Lacca Network. I'm not kidding, Lacca Network, uh, which is a South African network of South Africans, expats all over the world. And that's almost accelerated the conversation as South African entities we're we're growing into into other countries, and that's really tough from right in the bottom of Africa to find your way into the world. And and of course, community makes that that easier, and we learn from each other. And so, yeah, it just started organically. Um, and the more we spoke, the more sense it made. And when we tested it with some of our clients, they were like, what a great idea! That will save us trying to join the dots. If you can join the dots for us, we only need to have one contact person to connect to a much bigger ecosystem um than just connecting to one of the partners at a time.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think you know, we're all passionate about South Africa service delivery. Um, and I think we're we're all passionate South Africans as well. And I think that's also important, you know, that the cultures need to fit between the companies. So it's not only the services side, but it's also the culture between the companies. They need to have the same similar type of value systems, um, because then it gives you that confidence to go to a client and to pitch something and know that you you can deliver on it and you can deliver in with the integrity, you know. And that is that's quite quite key for this thing to really, really work.

SPEAKER_03 5:17

I think that values thing is really important because the more we spoke to each other, the more we realized that, sure, of course, we want to grow our our individual businesses. That's really important. But it was more interesting than that. We we all had this desire to really satisfy our clients, to delight them, to give them exactly what they needed, and

Shared Values And Growing Jobs

SPEAKER_03 5:40

maybe we couldn't do all of that. That's number one. But number two, a lot of us as individual companies had realized that the story our clients were looking for was not necessarily have you got these great people in our region? It was that. But it was also actually the South African story is really interesting. And we had seen that theme come through from our different organizations, and the outsource story to South Africa as a new region is becoming interesting for Europe for so many reasons. But there was another value that really aligned. And for all of us, of course, we want to grow our companies. I mean, everyone does, but we all want to grow South Africa. South Africa needs employment. We all want to see more employment in our region that we love, even though we live in all these different countries. And that that also brings us together. You know, what if we can really change the economy of South Africa by creating employment through this European outsource reach? So, yeah, values are super important.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I guess as well. I guess so. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead. No, no worries. Go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Yeah, maybe I think yeah, to add, I mean, unemployment rate is around 35% officially um in South Africa, which is really, really high. Um, so and and we just felt that you know the South African story is not being told um on the platforms in the in Europe as it should. It's not it's it's really a best kept secret. Um, and the reason is it's it's also costly. You know, if you if you attend an event and you have a booth at events and so forth, it's very costly. As an individual company, you might be able to do one or two in a year. But as a consortium, we can now really get the word out of out there and we can be visible uh to companies to actually see and to come and experience our services, you know. So it's really, really exciting times.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, and and sorry that I interrupted you. That was not my purpose. But I guess the elephant, or should I say, the South African elephant in the room, is also for the audience to know a little bit more and and give us a little bit more insights on on what is that sort of magic and

The South Africa Outsourcing Advantage

SPEAKER_01 7:55

that that that that thing that attracts or make makes it for European companies so good and efficient to work with South African companies.

SPEAKER_03 8:05

I think there there are so many pieces, but the biggest one is quality versus cost ratio, right? So a deep pool of incredible talent, well trained, at a cost that is significantly lower than if you found that same person uh locally, number one, number two, same time zone.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

That's what a lot of people don't realize.

SPEAKER_03 8:34

It's it's unbelievable. Even just a two or three hour time difference makes a massive difference. But here we're same time zone, and in most of our European context, people are operating in second language, English second language. Um, and so having an English speaking supplier, so in other words, South Africa being English speaking, there's just that communication advantage that you get. Absolutely. Yeah, which is which is yeah, very valuable in the region. And then, of course, I want to say the problem-solving mindset that's just comes from living in an emerging market, the like can-do attitude solve at all c all costs, the the natural client service instinct that is so South African. I think those are some of the things. JT, what else do you think?

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Well, I mean, well said. Um, I think the one thing that I can quickly think of is also industry experience. Uh, you know, we've got all the all the industries quite active in South Africa, you know, the banking industry is big, insurance industry, telecoms, manufacturing, you know. So when you start looking at really functional expertise, that is really available in South Africa. And the people have got uh many, many years of experience in various industries. So you can be very industry specific in the type of resourcing that you that you might require. But also it's not just resources, you know, people always talk about oh, the the resources are cheaper, but we it's the way we look at it is we solution, we provide solutions, it's managed services. So it's not it's not necessarily just about the person, it's about how you manage the person, how you provide, how do you provide that management oversight, how do you provide that support, and it is really problem solving. You know, I've never seen in my company when there's a problem that's not part of our scope, we don't walk away from it, we help and we make sure that you know the wheels keep on turning. We'll have the conversation afterwards, of course, uh, you know, to say this wasn't really part of our job, but we will never ever just leave it and say, you know what, this is a scope change. Please uh can you, you know, can we talk about it before we help you? That's not the that's not the South African culture at all.

SPEAKER_03 10:58

Yeah, that's so true. It's it's literally we are we have an expression in South Africa called a burmark plan. A farmer makes a plan. And uh and that is very much in the in the culture. That's and and the other thing which I think is not so obvious is when you live in a multicultural country, you know, we have 11 official languages in South Africa, many different cultures, uh, the rainbow nation, as it's called, um you naturally adjust to cultural difference. It makes you a cultural chameleon. And that is so useful working into international clients because as South Africans, because you're so used to working in diversity, when you find yourself in a new culture, it's so much easier to assimilate. And our clients notice that. They they will say, Oh, we have a similar culture, and of course we do, because our people just adapt to their culture, really. And there's something magical in that, in a partnership, because as JT says, we're we're this is not, you know, we don't sell people. That's none of us do that. We really want to be partners to our clients. We want to innovate with them, we want to innovate for them. We want to be a long-term, long-standing relationship. And so, in the traditional outsourcing model, it's got such a bad rep, you know, uh, outsourcing to all parts of the world has got a terrible reputation. And what we're really trying to do through Satsia is just change that branding of what is outsourcing. It's it's really cross-border partnership, and and we call it right shoring, as you know, Kun, where we're saying let's have the right people for the right job in the right places. And and that's also at the heart of what we're doing in SATSIA is saying, well, let's be right-shored. All of these entities that are in collaboration with each other are locally. So each of us has offices uh in in the Europe and US, um, but at the same time, let's figure out who's the right person or the right team in the right place to meet the client's need or their problem that needs to be solved.

Mistakes Companies Make In Europe

SPEAKER_01 13:10

So very interesting and a very inspiring uh story here. I was actually wondering because both of you have obviously the experience to enter the European markets. What have you seen of what have you seen others make as a common mistake entering our market?

SPEAKER_03 13:29

Okay, there are so many. JT, do you want to have a go in? I'll go straight off to you.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Oh, um, look, I think I think um when it comes to Europe, um, and what I've seen is you know, it's still very much people buy from people. Um, so I think it's very much relationship-based. You need to be out there, you need to have the conversations. You know, I'm still very old school, so I love it to meet people in in person. Um, Teams is great, it's fantastic, it works really well. But I always down the line, I always say, let's meet for a coffee, let's meet for a pint, let's meet for dinner, whatever the case might be. And I think uh a lot of people feel like that's what you mean, cultural alignment. Exactly, exactly. And and I think a lot of companies think that they can do these things remotely, and it just doesn't work like that. And that uh is for me the strength in the consortium is the fact that we've got people now in different countries in Europe, suddenly. You know, you don't have to have a corporate office in all these countries yourself and it have that expenses and all the investments that you have to do, you know. We can do it as a consortium. Now we suddenly have the breath and we can we can we can have those conversations in person. I think that for me is the main thing is I that I've realized that you you cannot do these things remotely as a start. And Lisa, maybe you can uh add another one.

SPEAKER_03 14:50

Yeah, I think the biggest mistake people in any in any organization that's going cross-border, the biggest mistake you can make is to think we do this in this country, let's just do this same thing in another country. Yeah, that's definitely not how life works, right? Your business model is not just how you do things. Uh, people exactly buy from people, and people expect you to understand their way of work. So, so the mistake would be taking your way of work into a new world. What you have to try and do is say, how can we do what we do outside in? What does this market need? What is this market being serviced by? What can we do in that space? Okay, let's do that. That's that's the direction outside in. And I think the big mistake is to go inside out. In other words, here's how we do things, this is what we're good at, let's do that in another place. No. What do they need? What do they like to do? How can we do that in their place? And that's the trick. I think the the other super important lesson we've learned, and where I think we've been much better than our competition, is partnership. And in BBD, we partner in in multiple ways. We have SATS here, but we have partnerships in in a lot of other ways. And that has been a golden nugget of our expansion is how do we partner all over the show? People that know the ecosystem, even our partnership, Kun with you. How do we partner with professional services providers? How do we partner with vendors that we work for? How do we just partner with local organizations like in you know Flanders Investment in Trade or the NFIA? All these partnerships become little avenues of entry, each and every one of them. And the more you look for those partners, and again, it's JT's story. We are a human race, we operate as humans, the more we get into community with each other, like the better.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Yeah, exactly. And I think maybe another thing is also, you know, expectations. I think when a company comes in or goes into Europe or into different markets, the expectation is a quick turnaround, you know, because it's investment, so you need ROI on these investments, and it just doesn't work like that on the on the ground. You know, you need to be able to utilize the time. It takes long to build these type of relationships. You know, in South Africa, we're well known. I can walk into any company and they know who we are, and I can just immediately go to what we can help them with. You want to go to Europe or to UK, I first need to start at why South Africa, you know, which is a long, you know, and then you go, why why are we good in what we do? And then why our company? So you end you, you know, you have you have to have uh about three or four meetings before you actually get to what your service offerings are, you know, and that's uh that's the difference. I think you you need to be patient, you need to keep on going at it, and don't feel you know, also I know a lot of people say this a lot, uh, is you know, to fail fast and fail forward, you're gonna fail a lot. Um, uh that's just you're gonna fail every day, in fact. Um, and that's fine. You need to be fine with it. Um, if you're not fine with failing, don't do it. You know, stay where you are, stay where you're safe, um, because uh that's what you're gonna do, and that's why I'm gray.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, and I very much agree with the approach. It's one one plus one makes 11. If that's what you can test consistently do, then obviously you're doing the right things. Well, earlier

Industries Served And Handling Complexity

SPEAKER_01 18:35

you mentioned that um South Africa has a very has a very richness in terms of verticals. If you look at Europe, which are the verticals that you are active in as an association?

SPEAKER_03 18:47

Yeah, so a lot of um what South Africa is known for from an innovation perspective is in the financial services. Some of our banks being voted like most innovative in the world, for example. Um, and so financial services, I think for many of us in the consortium has been an entry point. Um but as the world is changing, it's it's coming down to more complex organizations. So a lot of um South African organizations have inbuilt complexity because they're operating across multiple regions or they're operating in an emerging market. So whether that's telcos or financial services or logistics or gaming, for example, we're we're seeing the definition being less about vertical, but more about complexity. And so for most of us, we're operating in these complex ecosystems, and that can be anything from we see in the partnership, big universities in the UK or logistics companies, or e-mobility. What do they all have in common? Complex, multi-country, massive scale. And funny enough, a little country in the bottom of Africa is just really good at handling big scale and big complexity. That's what we bring.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Absolutely. I mean, if I could add, uh, you know, if I look at industry, and uh, I was the chief of staff for the automotive industry for Deloitte Africa, and many people don't know this, but we've got seven OEMs in South Africa, you know, all the big ones BMW, Mercedes, uh Toyota, uh, Ford, everybody, you know, manufacturing out of South Africa. Um, so even just that industry, you know, is the depth of understanding of such an industry is so huge. But definitely, financial services, I would agree, financial services and insurance is is one where we can definitely make a big, big difference. And once again, also that is where the big players are always already in. Um, and that's why we want to come into those kind of companies as a big player together.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

I was wondering because it's a it's obviously a

How New Members Get Vetted

SPEAKER_01 21:05

super nice initiative, and there's already plenty of companies within the um association. But what's the process? How does a South African company sort of get into the association? Is there a vetting process or walk us through?

SPEAKER_03 21:21

Yeah, so we're still figuring that out ourselves, and we just welcomed our first new member, uh, Ruby Digital. Um, but the process really is answering a few questions for ourselves. One, do you have the same value system? We have a charter which spells out what do we stand for, what are our goals, and why will we come together? So the first question is are you aligned with that? And a lot of what JT and I have spoken about today uh talks to some of those things. The second is do you add to the ecosystem? So are you a South African technology service provider? And in our clients, do we see what you do being slightly different to what the rest of us are doing? So what we're trying to build is an ecosystem of technology services providers out of South Africa. That's the second question. And the third question is are you a South African entity operating in Europe, outsourcing back to South Africa? So do you have an on-the-ground presence, very important? Do you have an office in a European country? Have you figured out what you're doing in your local environment? And at the same time, is South Africa still important to your business model? So we need both of those legs to be in place. What we're not trying to do is say, oh, all South African companies that just have an ambition of going somewhere, come get on the train. No, we want you to have already learned some lessons as well, to understand the European ecosystem. It's not an easy lesson to learn. All of us have walked the talk. We we know what to expect, what our clients expect. And that's that's really important from a quality perspective. That whoever is in the alliance understands the the expectations of European clients. And as JT says, that's quite different, right? So yeah, that's the predictability, the structure, the long-term trust, those things, we want that same thing.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Absolutely. It's definitely not a game of numbers. We're not we're not looking at having 20, 30, 40 members. It's we want to be in charge and we want to be very, very focused in what we do. In order to do that, you can't also be too big. We don't want to grow too big, but we need to make sure that we cover all angles, uh, as Liesel said in the ecosystem. But we need to also have it close knit so that we can make quick decisions. That's also another thing in in many many of these types of consortiums. It takes, you know, when it becomes too big, it takes time for to make decisions. I mean, we have one steer code, we must probably make 10 decisions immediately within a half an hour. It's just yes, yes, yes, very effective. Uh yeah, no, very effective, very quick, very flexible, very agile, and that's what we want to keep. We don't want to lose that element as well. So makes sense. So that's why it's not about the numbers, it's it's more about you know having that control.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

If we look

Next 12 Months And How To Connect

SPEAKER_01 24:20

in front of us, the next 12 months, uh, we know already now that we're gonna see you at all the European events. That's one thing you're already committed to. But what else is what else is on on the agenda? What else can we expect to see from you guys?

SPEAKER_03 24:34

Yeah, so so of course the the the marketing, as you say, being at trade shows, that's important to all of us. And and in that case, the story is a South African story, showcasing showcasing South Africa as a region that is interesting for Europe to outsource to, um, and how to to cross that bridge, for example. That's one. The other is we're we're putting together a white paper um about what are these services that people can find in the South African context? What's interesting about them, what is the innovations that you can find in the South African context. Um, and then of course, we we want to do more work together. That's our goal, really, is find real projects that we can do together, um, make sure that we have an operating model that's tested, um, and really build out a map of what these services are that we can show our our combined clients uh what we can bring them.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah, I think we want to become a disruptor, to be honest. And I know this also a word that's been used a lot, but we want to disrupt uh the industry uh so that big organizations can look at us to say, you know what, you guys bring something unique. We want to bring that entrepreneurship type of thinking um as a value, uh as a value proposition to to big companies to say, you know what, there's a different way to do things as well. You don't just have to trust um a company if it's it's got a green dot attached to it, or you know, if it comes from from from uh you know, if it's got a big building canary wharf. Um, you know, you can actually trust these other companies, and they are in some in many cases much more innovative and quicker to make decisions as well. So I I I would love us, I I would love us to be seen as a disruptor in the market for sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

I think this is a a splendid ending for this uh podcast. Always end with a hi, but there's one more thing that I would like to ask you because I'm pretty sure that you have inspired a lot of the listeners. How can they get in contact with uh Satsea?

SPEAKER_03 26:45

I think reach out to JT, reach out to me. You can go via any of our websites, but yeah, watch the space. Um, we're putting together some new content and potentially a place where you can come together. Um, we're busy building a LinkedIn space, and so once that's live, we can also connect you there.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Great. JT Liesel, thank you very much for participating to this podcast. Thank you also to the audience, and please stay tuned. More news in tech unboxed. Thanks, Ken. Thank you.