IT consultancy firm, Business Genetics, has begun rolling out IT training sessions for banks and tertiary institutions in SA in order to address the local skills dearth.
Cedric Tyler, Business Genetics founder and managing partner told ITWeb yesterday that the company is currently in talks with Rhodes University to establish a formal skills development programme that aims to turn SA into a “world-class centre of business analysis.”
According to Tyler, large banks and financial institutions employ skills from other countries such as India, which is well-known for being an inexpensive outsourcing hub.
“But this has devastating economical consequences to SA, especially when the country should be focusing on harnessing and developing local skills to create job opportunities,” indicates Tyler.
Quality over quantity
Tyler says the problem lies in the fact that universities are too focused on producing a high quantity of graduates, and not enough is being done to improve the quality of IT education.
He reckons many graduates coming out of tertiary institutions are not well-quipped to work in the industry and organisations need to spend large amounts of time and investment to re-train them.
“The South African skills shortage is rapidly getting worse and it has to be addressed. As standards erode and break down, consequences of this will touch every industry; enterprises throwing big chunks of money will not solve the problem. It needs to be solved holistically,” notes Tyler.
“The trend I would like to see is where SA is transformed into an outsourcing power.”
New Horizons
According to Tyler, Business Genetics, which operates in the US, aims to drive its consultancy and software solutions into the South African business and financial services market via its new reseller XBML.
He says the Business Genetics solution uses software to simulate how a business operates and how business processes can be improved.
“We've helped major Fortune 500 companies save over $2 billion by enabling them to operate efficiently. This is a gap we've identified in the South African market, where the majority of businesses as well as the government struggle with business process improvement.
“The guiding principle is to make it easy as possible for the business and IT department to collaborate and understand how the business works. Another principle is to leverage technology to enable business to communicate with IT,” Tyler concludes.
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