South African IT skills outsourced to South America

South Africa`s skills in IT productivity software and services were again highlighted when resources were recently outsourced to South America.

Telmex, the largest telecommunications company in Mexico, and Issste, the Mexican government`s pension fund agency, are just two of the companies to benefit from Compuware Southern Africa`s skills in recent months. Compuware SA is a subsidiary of the fifth largest independent software vendor in the world.

Telmex has written a maintenance service levels application in Uniface which enables the telecommunications company to track service management and effectively maintain client records. Uniface is Compuware`s development environment for building, renewing and integrating strategic applications.

Describing the project, Ben van Niekerk, a professional services consultant from Compuware SA, says: "We upgraded Telmex`s Uniface 6 application to Uniface 7, with its enhanced features. The telecommunications company`s application conversion was carried out without affecting any of the existing functionality or interface of the deployed application so was a huge success."

Outlining the Isste project, van Niekerk says: "We assessed Isste`s payroll application and compiled a report with recommendations on how to improve the development, design and deployment thereof." As these recommendations were accepted, the Compuware SA team returned to assist Issste with their application performance issues.

Apart from assisting Telmex and Issste, the South African and Mexican teams met a number of existing and potential South American clients to update them on key technological matters surrounding Compuware and Uniface. An interesting trend identified by van Niekerk is that Mexican financial institutions are keen to increase their e-commerce application knowledge.

Besides visiting Mexico, resources from Compuware SA also consulted in Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and Chile.

"Within these South American countries Compuware has reseller alliances," says Dirk Loosen, EcoSYSTEMS consultant at Compuware SA. "We gave training on the new EcoSYSTEMS products to these re-sellers. In addition, we gave presentations and product demonstrations to large corporates, building the Compuware brand in South America," he says.

Although the South African teams have experience on a number of projects within Southern Africa, the South American expeditions were unique as communication with the predominantly Spanish-speaking populace happened through an interpreter.

Despite linguistic obstacles, IT skills are proving to be a global commodity. In the New Economy, Compuware is leveraging its staff`s skills to good effect.