Small, medium and micro-enterprise (SME) businesses in SA contribute about 35% of gross domestic product and, unlike many major businesses, are creating real growth in employment, says Pastel Software international sales director Jeff Lewis.
"Sound, simple and cost-effective accounting and payroll software plays a critical role in the success of small enterprises," he adds.
Pastel is currently hosting its first Pastel World Conference in Sandton, attended by about 400 distributors and dealers from 40 countries worldwide.
"Accounting software is becoming more and more intrinsic to good business practice. It forms the core of the business with management reliant upon it for information that enables them to keep the operation on track."
Steven Cohen, COO of Pastel parent Softline, says global resources are essential for business software companies to succeed in an environment that is increasingly competitive, subject to rapid technology change and in which consolidation is taking place between leading vendors.
He says Softline's acquisition of Pastel has benefited the accounting software developer because of Softline's global resources network.
"It has become increasingly difficult to develop new products today because technology is far more complicated and sophisticated than in the early 1990s and technology changes so rapidly. A company may find that when its product is completed two years later, much of the product functionality is no longer relevant or the technology landscape has changed once again.
"But if the company has global resources to draw from, it has a much greater chance of delivering the right product at the right time. In today's environment, a company developing in isolation with limited resources is going to find it difficult to succeed.
"Softline has completed a number of acquisitions over the past few years, the most recent being MicrOpay in Australia. These have extended our global reach and provided many technological opportunities for Softline companies, including Pastel Software. Our companies are able to tackle the large shifts in technology that are taking place by working collaboratively and combining the power of their respective technical, marketing and product expertise."
Cohen says Softline is confident of future growth markets in SA and the remainder of the continent where Pastel has built up a reseller channel covering 19 countries. "There is a vibrancy and energy in Africa that cannot be felt anywhere else in the world," he adds.
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