Iocore Africa is opening an Italian office, giving it operations in 15 countries.
Founded in 1995, Iocore was spun off from the New African Technology Holdings stable and has since expanded its operations into 14 countries, with an Italian office taking that number to 15. Iocore had a turnover of over $125 million for the last financial year.
However, Wade Gomes, CEO of the Iocore African region, says there is no complacency, and a full corporate restructure is in the offing.
This will take the form of 10 African operations being consolidated into six business units and separating the group`s executive members into delivery- and sales-focused management units.
Gomes says the company is technology-focused, concentrating on its SAP, Oracle and Microsoft service offerings.
As part of the group`s new focus, it has developed a home-grown offering - a visualisation tool called Cartagena which analyses data in a company`s data warehouses, and makes this information available on a desktop in a relevant map form.
Alison North, product manager for Cartagena, says there are two aspects to the product. The first is a library function which centralises and consolidates a company`s intelligence. The second aspect is to take the data available from the library and display it in a spatial format.
Iocore says the benefits of this display will be seen when a company can access clients` information and purchasing patterns, and see the information on their desktop superimposed on a map of the company`s operations.
A working example of this would be a bank accessing a map of its ATMs in a certain area, superimposing crime statistics on the same map and adding the number of transactions taking place at each ATM. The bank could then assess whether it should keep the ATMs in high crime areas, especially if the number of transactions conducted make the maintenance of that machine less than attractive.
Cartagena is meta data-driven and North explains that it will only work on an Oracle platform as it can conduct both text and spatial data searches. As a result, the product has received the full backing of Oracle, and the companies will soon conduct a joint marketing campaign.
Gomes says the new product has presented many new opportunities. However, he notes that Iocore`s focus will remain on its core functions, concentrating on its ability to deliver SAP via application service provision and the group`s managerial focus on providing and selling what it is best at.
Gomes says the company is on track to meet its targets for the current financial year.
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