Lawson Software Africa moves into rest of Africa and appoints partner

Lawson Software Africa today announced that it has moved into the rest of Africa with the official appointment of Tanzania-based IT solutions company Computers and Telecoms Systems (CATS) as its STAR (Strategic Territory Alliance Relationship) business Partner for the entire Eastern and Central African regions.

"STAR partners work in unison with Lawson to deliver top-notch service and maintenance to their joint customers," comments Lawson Software Africa country manager, Cliff van Tonder, who was in Dar es Salaam last week for the signing ceremony of the partnership agreement. "Star partners form an integral part of Lawson`s Global Alliance Integrated Network (GAIN) partner programme creating a competitive advantage for its customers."

Van Tonder continues: "CATS has already proved its value with regard to its products and services. During the evaluation process, we found the company to have a very strong skills base among its 120 staff complement from sales and consulting right through to implementation. CATS has been an established player in Tanzania for over 25 years and has strong partnership ties with most IT multi-national vendors. It has a strong commitment to the region and has earned the trust of many local businesses in Tanzania. We are excited about our new partnership with CATS which will be utilised as part of Lawson`s 'New Africa Focus,` an initiative which, according to Van Tonder, has already been acclaimed at the highest level by Lawson CEO, Richard Lawson."

CATS will be looking after other countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia as well as Mauritius. According to van Tonder, Lawson will use Tanzania as the springboard to dominate the Eastern African region.

Van Tonder believes that Africa is ready for the type of technology Lawson has to offer in the way of simple, affordable e-business management solutions. "With our strong partnerships with companies such as Microsoft and IBM we are in the favourable position to be able to offer Africa whatever is needed in the way of Information Technology and solutions including human resource, financial and supply chain management software solutions. All of our products are web deployable and more importantly, they are self evident, meaning that costs for employee training are drastically reduced."

He continues, "In today`s dynamic marketplace, the right alliances are critical to success. Through our GAIN network of partners, we provide our customers with the diverse strengths and experiences of global market leaders including consulting companies, software providers, hardware and database vendors, and channel partners."

CATS MD, Akber Hameer comments: "Based on the successes we have had in Tanzania, we see the potential and need to spread our wings further into Eastern and Central Africa markets. We aim to conquer and dominate the e-business in this region. To do this we need strong, reliable and dependable weapons - our weapon will be Lawson - it`s that simple."

According to Hameer, CATS brought IT culture to Tanzania and its client base includes Government organisations, parastatals and the major banks. CATS offers a total IT solution including hardware, training, software development and maintenance as well as local and wide area networking solutions. van Tonder says this fits perfectly with Lawson`s channel model, as Lawson looks for channel partners that can integrate Lawson products with the sales of hardware, complementary software and support services.

"The partnerships we form through the GAIN program allow us to integrate the strengths of the Lawson Software solutions with the expertise of select partners who have developed their own industry leading technologies and best practices," he adds. "These strategic alliances extend the capabilities of our world-class enterprise applications and software, and ultimately allow us to offer our joint customers more choices and better solutions."

Lawson Insight Business Management System comprises six fully integrated process suites, which support and facilities the cross-functional execution of business processes namely human resource, finance, procurement, supply chain, collaborative commerce and enterprise budgeting.