After acquiring majority shareholding in NuQ in August 2013, Xpedia's major shareholders put together a partnership arrangement between the two companies to strengthen the nuQ HR/Payroll product. This includes the addition of three new key members to the nuQ team, in Heilet Smith, Pieter Botha, and Rhona van Taak. This combination adds significant experience and depth in key skills to the nuQ team.
The nuQ development team is now led by Heilet Smith. She has been Xpedia's principal nuQ consultant since its founding in 2003. Smith's experience combines Web development, business intelligence, systems analysis, design, project management, product development management, and payroll consulting. Her qualifications include a degree in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Pretoria, and a postgraduate certificate in advanced taxation from the University of South Africa. Smith will co-ordinate the nuQ development team as product owner, while continuing to serve selected customers as nuQ principal consultant.
On the technical side, the team will be strengthened with the addition of Pieter Botha, a senior developer from Xpedia. Botha has 13 years' development experience and a National Diploma in Information Technology from Technikon Pretoria (now incorporated into TUT). His experience includes a wide range of technologies, though since joining Xpedia in 2008, he has focused primarily on the Microsoft technology stack that underpins the nuQ architecture. Botha's technical acumen and incredible work rate add valuable technical depth to the nuQ development team. His role will also include continuous improvement of software engineering practices and standards in the development processes.
Rhona van Taak is a well-known tax expert in the South African payroll industry, having worked at SARS for 27 years until 2011. She boasts an encyclopaedic knowledge of payroll tax legislation and related administrative processes. Van Taak is also heavily involved with the Payroll Authors Group of South Africa (PAGSA), and many in the industry have benefited from her advice on queries submitted to PAGSA. Her role at nuQ is primarily as tax advisor contracting to NuQ on a fixed retainer basis, to ensure that nuQ clients benefit not only from accurate statutory calculations and reporting, but also have access to accurate advice on issues relating to IRP5 submissions and similar processes. Xpedia will also offer clients additional tax consulting services and advice in partnership with Van Taak to complement the payroll software services that it already provides.
In the short term, the expanded nuQ team is expected to provide customers with improved turnaround times on product support and enhancements, as well as tax issues. Longer term improvements that customers can expect to benefit from include improved development processes, product roadmap strategy, and software engineering practices that will all serve to make nuQ even more robust and effective for managing payroll and HR administration.
Share