Fresh off the announcement that Comprehend IT is merging with MagmaTec, another privately held development company; the company has announced the opening up of an office in Johannesburg and is celebrating the success of its entrepreneurial ventures with, among others, Australian partner CVM.
CVM is delivering an innovative Web solution to small to corporate sized financial services brokerage firms in Australia, assisting them with measuring the potential lifetime value of their clients, resulting in maximised revenue opportunities and improved profitability for the companies.
“In addition to supporting our corporate clients by developing bespoke business intelligence software systems to improve operational efficiencies, we offer a unique solution to budding entrepreneurs or individuals with great ideas that need technology to enable them,” explains Robert Marshall, CEO for Comprehend IT.
“We're often approached by technologists and business people from a wide range of industries that have identified a niche opportunity to develop a mobile or Web application to improve or streamline an area of their business, or provide a service to companies within a particular industry sector.”
The entrepreneur has the idea and will approach Comprehend IT looking for anything from:
* A company to provide them with access to a market, local or international;
* Technology support to help develop the application; and/or
* Assistance in developing the business model that will result in the establishment of an independent and successful business.
Depending on what is required, Comprehend IT's investment model is adapted accordingly; they may provide necessary capex or opex, or invest development capabilities and time, or a combination of both, in lieu of an equitable shareholding in the new company. Whichever way the deal is structured, the priority remains to retain the intellectual capital and support the person that originated the idea for the business.
One of the major success stories for Comprehend IT is CVM (Client Value Management), which launched in June 2009 in Australia, and now boasts a number of paying clients and creates much excitement with all the potential new clients our partners speak to.
CVM is an automated Web-based system that uses sophisticated algorithms and proxy tables to assess the lifetime value of a client for small to mid-sized financial services brokerages. Developed by a team of Comprehend IT engineers under the leadership of Gerhard Pretorius, and in association with Moonstone, a South African brokerage compliance firm, and Encore, an Australian company that has patented the process, this process is adding tremendous value to customers throughout Australia.
“Truly understanding your own data is often a challenge to organisations, and through this solution we enable brokers to contextualise and understand their data, which often come from multiple sources and which we have been able to pull together in CVM to allow a single view of your clients,” says Gerhard, Director at Comprehend IT.
The system is hosted in the USA and Australia and includes an upfront and monthly usage charge, depending on the size of the company and number of brokers using the system. Assessing the lifetime value of a customer is important to be able to assess the potential value you can extract from a client, helping you understand whether you need to invest in a customer acquisition or retention value strategy. In addition to this, the system provides you with all client critical data, the potential future value and profitability of the practice or brokerage company, as well as doing performance assessments per broker to determine revenue data per broker per month on an ongoing basis.
“We're looking forward to introducing CVM to the South African market in early 2010. Our focus to support Africa's entrepreneurs and deliver services and solutions the world over has proven again that local talent delivers on the international stage.”
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