Harvey Jones Systems, a local provider of financial, business intelligence and business performance management solutions, has signed a partnership agreement with InfoSoft Nigeria and has consequently been awarded a contract with InfoSoft to implement ProClarity 5.3 at Nigeria Bottling Company (NBC) Plc.
In terms of the partnership agreement, InfoSoft will be a value-added reseller for ProClarity in the Nigerian market, on behalf of Harvey Jones Systems. InfoSoft came highly recommended as a partner by Microsoft Nigeria.
"We have identified Nigeria as a key region for our offerings in West Africa," says Keith Jones, MD of Harvey Jones Systems. "By establishing a partner base there we can position the company and all the different product and solution sets we represent in the growing Nigerian market. We can also use Nigeria as an entry point into the rest of the West African region."
The move into Nigeria, and the partnership with InfoSoft, is in line with the company`s strategy to dominate the sub-Saharan African market.
Harvey Jones Systems already has clients in Angola, Botswana and Zimbabwe, in addition to its significant client base in SA.
"The business intelligence market in Nigeria is fertile ground," Jones says. "Nigerian companies have been slow to move away from expensive, proprietary vendors to more cost-effective, open solutions supported by the Microsoft platform. It will be a significant step in the Nigerian market for organisations to realise the power of solutions such as ProClarity. Introducing the open Microsoft architecture to organisations in that country will enhance the access organisations have to good skills and quick deployment times."
Harvey Jones Systems will provide product support and training to InfoSoft as it introduces the ProClarity business intelligence solutions and services to the Nigerian market. InfoSoft has already completed training with Harvey Jones Systems on the ProClarity solutions.
Nigeria Bottling Company
As a subsidiary of the Greek firm CCHBC, NBC is one of the largest bottling companies in West Africa. The company was looking for a way to understand its business better as its existing financial and sales reporting solution was not delivering the business value required.
The ProClarity solution that will be implemented at NBC supports the development of custom-made financial and sales analysis to transform complex data into individual insight. Decision-makers will be able to track, view and analyse project data, use resources more efficiently and complete mission-critical projects successfully.
"NBC awarded Harvey Jones Systems and InfoSoft this project after intense analysis of other business intelligence tools in the market," says Pius Okigbo, MD of InfoSoft Nigeria. "The decision to use ProClarity was not only based on cost and flexibility but also on ease of use. The relationship with Harvey Jones Systems, the company`s experience with SABMiller Africa and Asia, the presence of local support in Nigeria, and our strong track record in the country all made the proposal we presented the most logical route to take."
Based in Lagos, InfoSoft Nigeria Limited is a firm of IT and software services consultants. The company provides IT consulting, .NET software services and business process management (BPM) services in Nigeria and throughout the African region; and it has strategic alliances with Ultimus Inc, a US BPM vendor. Some of its existing clients include: Nigerian Export-Import Bank, United Bank for Africa Plc, Union Bank Plc, Nigerian Tobacco Company (now British America Tobacco Company), Nigeria LNG Ltd and Federal Inland Revenue Service.
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Harvey Jones Systems (HJS) was established in SA in 1997 as a specialist information delivery company focusing on financial, business intelligence and business performance management solutions on the Microsoft platform, using SQL 2000 Analysis Services as the deployment mechanism. HJS distributes a number of best-of-breed software packages, the flagship being ProClarity. Its solutions are all based exclusively on the Microsoft platform and it has become the dominant player in this sector in the region with over 100 customers, scaling from small to the largest deployments. HJS is an award-winning company, and its team has a solid understanding of the products it supports and the business issues faced by users deploying these types of solutions.
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