There are a number of very good reasons why SBS Africa Holdings received the number of votes it did in the Computerweek Strategist Most Admired Awards for Desktops. One of these is its partnership with Compaq.
"Business today is about partnerships," says Gary de Menezes, channel and CRM manager for Compaq. "SBS has maintained a close relationship with Compaq over the years, investing heavily in accreditation and training, that has enabled it to enhance its service and support offerings. Recently achieving its Compaq Platinum Partnership status, the company is well positioned to develop the mid- and upper-range markets in which it operates.
"As a value-added solutions provider, SBS has been actively involved in some of SA's largest IT projects. Its commitment to the Compaq brand is witnessed by its winning of the Compaq Outstanding Achievement Award four years in a row. With partners like these on our side, Compaq can expect excellent growth in the African market."
SBS director Anthony Davies points out that the company has been around for 17 years, and boasts a national footprint, allowing it to service customers across SA.
"SBS has particular skills in roll-out, project management and the outsourced physical roll-out for large corporates, and we add value via a product Altiris, a deployment asset management and imaging product. Because we've made investment in training, we're confident of our onsite services to the desktop, and also offer a great workshop facility for hardware repairs," he says. Davies explains that SBS offers all the standard skills around the Microsoft, Unix and Novell platforms, but also has a core set of service-centric products of which it is the sole distributor. These products are built around enhancing the Compaq server platform - mostly Windows NT-based tools to enhance Windows NT's performance and stability. This includes failover servers and storage management products.
"We add real value - logistics, delivery, imaging the desktop before it arrives and preparing customers' machines regardless of whether they are servers, networking equipment, desktops or PDAs," Davies says.
To add value to vendors' warranties, SBS carries the first-year warranty together with the vendor, and will collect and deliver and look after things on site on behalf of the customer over and above the standard vendor warranty. SBS believes in building long-term relationships with its customers, and its understanding of customers' business needs, coupled with its insight into the technology issues, means that SBS often becomes technology advisor to its customers. Account managers become champions for the customer within SBS and are also the single point of contact for customers, regardless of whether it is a technical issue or a contractual one.
"Our partnerships with vendors like Compaq, Veritas, NAI and Microsoft - and our good relationships with those vendors - means we're able to pass on real value to our clients in terms of technologies built on those platforms. We are firm believers in Compaq products, and believe that the Compaq product will continue to exist under any holding company, because Compaq - from its non-stop kernel type product right down to the desktop and notebook products - offers technological prowess," Davies says.
SBS offers more than merely desktop services, though. The company also offers networking services (design and implementation of networks, LANs, WANs and SANs), hardware services (eg, customisation, integration and installation and backup strategy planning), outsourcing (onsite engineers, help desk and remote network management), software services (roll-out planning and implementation, customisation etc), peripherals and consumables and signs stringent service level agreements.
In addition, SBS also offers long- and short-term rental options on hardware. SBS has the distinction of having sold one of SA's cellular giants its first computer seven years ago, and in spite of attempts by what Davies calls "black knights", the company has maintained its good relationship with this top corporate. And, true to its nature, SBS is involved in a number of community projects. It has created computer hubs for Newclare, the Bosmont Football Association (representing 110 soccer clubs), for the Wildlife Units at the Wildlife Centre at the University of Pretoria, and is busy setting up a fourth hub for Hantam, near Calvinia. Davies also whispers of a "huge schools project" with one of SBS's corporate customers.
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