Paddy Govender is a CA (SA) with a very strong background in implementing shared services solutions and financial management. He served articles with Pim Goldby, spent two years at Touch'e Ross London and Pittsburgh, was financial manager at two Barloworld companies, implemented a world-class Shared Services Centre for South African Breweries - and just prior to joining COSIS, spent almost two years at Deloitte Consulting as the head of Shared Services and Business Process Outsourcing. He is an expert in the Shared Services area and has spoken at conferences in London, Chicago, Boston, Prague and Johannesburg.
"Shared Services involves taking common non-core processes out of an organisation's business units and consolidating them in a Shared Services Centre, which then frees up those business units to focus on high value-added or core tasks," he says. "Shared Services is not a tool for making business decisions, but for providing operating companies with non-core services more cheaply and effectively than they can provide for themselves."
Shared Services drivers may be grouped in terms of growth, continuous improvement and cost reduction. However, greater economies of scale may be obtained from selective outsourcing of support services. This phenomenon is known as business process outsourcing (BPO) and is a rapidly growing market both locally and internationally. The present trend is towards ever-greater use of BPO to increase efficiency, drive down costs and free up departments within an organisation to focus on core activities - which improves the potential for growth and increasing revenue.
"COSIS is the subsidiary within the larger SIS Holdings group that specialises in this rapidly developing area and I have tremendous enthusiasm for taking both the BPO concept and the COSIS operation ahead.
"The other subsidiaries within SIS Holdings - that specialise in consulting and application service provider (ASP) offerings - perfectly support COSIS's ability to offer our clients an end-to-end solution that allows the business to focus on core competencies, reduce costs and improve processes - among others.
"COSIS is focused on implementing business solutions that are not just a system, but which are based on a full understanding of the business processes and models involved. Personally, I have a passion for developing such solutions and I look forward to the challenge of growing this subsidiary for the benefit of all our customers."
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The SIS Group provides aggregated business solutions based on a standard application framework with flexible delivery mechanisms. The service set is structured to give clients access to enabling technology and services, and the ability to migrate along the business framework to accommodate growth through the full business lifecycle.
The three subsidiary companies operate autonomously, providing specialised yet complimentary business services to the marketplace. These subsidiaries collaborate where required to ensure clients seamless access to group-wide services.
* SIS General business consulting and Implementation services;
* One Turn Framework of hosted enterprise applications offered to the client base on a pay-per-use basis through a partner network;
* COSIS Specialist outsource provider of BPO, shared services and managed services.
Solutions are based on a common framework of applications comprising ERP, payroll and HR, business intelligence, CRM, knowledge management, performance management, and balanced scorecard.
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