Safika BEA, the e-commerce joint venture between black empowerment company Safika Technologies and US-based BEA Systems, kicked off its media campaign yesterday at Gallagher Estate with a seminar entitled "E-commerce unveiled".
ITWeb spoke to MD Ken Murdoch and Rory Gray, a BEA Systems director, about the company`s take on the state of e-business, and its plans to expand its partner programmes.
The company`s traditional target markets have been large corporations and organisations operating in the private sector. Gray says these companies realise the need for globalisation in the face of threats from the US and the UK
But this doesn`t exclude the small to medium enterprise (SME) market. As Gray points out, various industry niche markets evolve as the business culture changes.
Core focus
Murdoch says Safika`s primary message to SMEs, service providers and other such companies is that BEA is not an applications developer. The company`s core focus is instead its technology infrastructure which opens new opportunities to application developers to create products which will run atop this platform.
Gray comments: "One thing I`ve learned is that companies which are household names today, were either not in existence, or unknown SMEs 10 years ago. A reasonable number of our [bluechip] clients started out as small companies with 10 to 15 personnel; the capabilities enabled by going online acted as the driver in their growth."
The message is clear - today`s SMEs could well be tomorrow`s multi-nationals, and Safika BEA is counting on this in its efforts to expand its established partner programmes. Murdoch points out that the company already has a handful of local partners in addition to those global companies affiliated to BEA.
"We are, however, looking to build partners across a number of key industry sectors." Murdoch is quick to note that while Safika BEA does consider other Safika Technologies subsidiaries as partners, they are dealt with in a non-exclusive manner.
Dot-coms vs traditional
Gray and Murdoch agree that eventually, where dot-coms have of late been preferred over traditional businesses, in the near future, it will be the well-run traditional businesses, which successfully integrate e-business solutions into their offerings, that catapult to the fore.
The problem has been an imbalance in the dynamic between traditional companies which have been slow to develop their online offerings, and Internet start-ups which generally are based on great ideas, but are run by people with no business expertise. The truism of there being no substitute for experience applies most aptly here, says Gray.
Another stepping stone to e-business success lies in the speed with which a company can adapt its offering to market changes. This kind of flexibility could mean the end of enterprise resource planning, he says, unless vendors in that space embrace the technology that will make their products equally flexible.
The seminar marks the beginning of an extensive local and international media campaign aimed at raising Safika BEA`s perceived market visibility. Gray admits the company has long had a low profile, even though it is believed to be twice as far ahead as its nearest competitor, IBM.
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