Despite the closure of its UK and Asian Pacific operations, Ability Solutions MD Shoaib Patel remains optimistic about the company`s performance in SA.
Ability, a subsidiary of JSE-listed Ixchange, provides supply chain optimisation and e-commerce fulfilment solutions. Ixchange announced earlier this month that its international operations were being closed down.
Patel says the company`s inability to perform in the UK and Asia Pacific was "unfortunate", adding that Ability had little choice but to close these offices. "However, although we were in pain during the first seven months of the current fiscal, SA has been and remains a profitable region for us and we`re expecting to break even at the end of the fiscal in June."
Ability may still carry out some internal reshuffling on the local front, but is not planning SA staff cuts.
"In fact, we`re reinvesting heavily in the local market and the over 200 customers that we have here. It will remain key for me during this restructuring process to ensure that our customers here are treated like royalty," he says. Part of this reinvestment will be the building of strategic SA alliances "which is something we had put on the back burner for a while", he adds.
Ability will also be concentrating on growing its services side and has spent the past few months setting up additional infrastructure so as to offer a more complete solution to its client base.
This, claims Patel, has resulted in Ability having an almost 100% referral rate within its current installed base. He says recent successes include a 372-user installation at SDD, an installation at Osram and a joint partnership in the Middle East, which has led to the development of a distribution agreement between Ability and the client.
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