DVT grows by over 40%

DVT, a local software and related services company, has achieved headcount and revenue growth in excess of 40% over the past 12 months.

DVT CEO Chris Wilkins says: "Our growth and current headcount of nearly 300 staff reflects the focus and effort we have put into our core business of providing software solutions and skills into the South African economy.”

Wilkins adds that a scalable business model, a mixture of in-demand services, flexible contracts, competitive pricing, and an aggressive graduate intern programme, has seen DVT secure both the rare skills and the demanding clients that characterise the skills-starved applications software services industry.

DVT was founded in 1999 by Wilkins and Clive Hubbard, and today has revenue of around R150 million a year, offices in Gauteng, Cape Town and in Delhi, India, and a long list of large and medium-sized clients. “We are trying to improve the reliability and credibility of the industry,” Wilkins says. “The past 20 years has been blighted by non-delivery - specifically large, ERP-related projects - and a raft of players offering services on terms that are just not sustainable.”

The niche applications software and services aspect of the South African IT industry has always been polarised by the larger, generic players who have generally come from a hardware or infrastructure background, or very small, specialised players who work well at an individual level. These larger, generalised IT services companies trying to grow their software and services offerings often struggle with the subtleties of staff retention, pricing, and client delivery, and the smaller players fall short when it requires a focus on the collective, commercially oriented needs of larger organisations.

Wilkins says DVT focuses exclusively on software and related services, and offers a range of technical and contractual options that have been fine-tuned over the years to match the demands of the unique South African environment. Wilkins believes there is a place in South Africa for a few medium to large systems integrators like DVT that focus on service and engagement models first, and technology for what it is: an enabler for business efficiency and innovation. “After all,” he says, “technology is always an enabler; it can never take the place of an astute commercial business model.”