Softline and its accounting and payroll software subsidiary Pastel Software, have announced the formation a new company, AccountMate Africa, to provide enterprise accounting software solutions to the upper end of the market.
From 1 November, AccountMate Africa will trade as a member of JSE-listed Softline. The company holds the sole rights to market, sell and support the Visual AccountMate accounting software in sub-Saharan Africa. Developed in California, the software is an international product widely used by large companies and organisations, including 14 of the Fortune 100 companies.
Steven Cohen, chief operating officer of Softline, says AccountMate Africa will be managed by Stephen Corrigan, who relinquishes his position as managing director of Pastel Software SA to become MD of the new company. Pastel Group MD Terry Kier, who is also a Softline director, will assume management responsibility for Pastel Software.
"The move takes us onto a new level in terms of providing accounting software solutions. Pastel users will now have a full growth path, from the basic SOHO level through to SME, large business and ultimately the enterprise scale," says Cohen. "AccountMate Africa will also take charge of the Pastel Premier accounting software product which meets the needs of businesses in the upper SME and large organisation arena."
According to Corrigan, AccountMate Africa has a solid foundation from which to build business because Pastel Premier already has a well-established channel and income base.
"Start-up costs are minimal. AccountMate Africa will operate from Pastel`s existing premises and can therefore gain leverage from a well-established infrastructure, including a R2-million call centre providing support for sales and after-sales service."
Corrigan, who remains on the Pastel Software board, says AccountMate Africa will maintain strong ties with Pastel and its dealer/user base.
"The major advantage of the new structure is that each company will be able to apply all of its energy to its specific market segment, with total focus on meeting the needs of users and dealers. I am sure our channel will quickly realise the advantages of this," says Corrigan.
"A differentiating factor for AccountMate Africa is that both of its products, AccountMate and Pastel Premier, are rand-based, offering users security against the ravages of exchange rate fluctuations that can have a severe effect on costs associated future upgrades and add-on modules. This ultimately will mean significant cost savings for organisations embracing the range of products."
Corrigan adds that part of the sole rights agreement with Visual AccountMate was the development of a rand-based package re-engineered to meet specific tax and other local requirements: "AccountMate have assigned a development team specifically to deal with all local market issues. This is totally in line with the philosophy of product flexibility in order to cater for variations in requirements across international markets.
"AccountMate and Pastel Premier are most complementary products, even though they cater for different segments of the market on a size and scale basis. By bringing them together in the new company we are also offering our existing Pastel Premier dealers new business opportunities with another product to sell."
The AccountMate software runs on the international Microsoft Sequel platform and access to the source code means that the package can be modified to meet the unique needs of each purchasing business. It is a highly stable, feature-rich, multi-currency and multi-lingual package.
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