International consultancy Equal Experts is making its presence known in South Africa as companies race to maximise digital technologies and pivot their business models.
Equal Experts, describing itself as a ‘low ego’ full life cycle consultancy, is much more than just a software company or development shop, says Brian Blignaut, Equal Experts’ South African business unit lead. “We’re a team of international experts positioned to add a lot of value to customers as they accelerate their move to digital and take their digital propositions to market,” he says.
Having launched in South Africa in 2017 to service a key financial industry client, Equal Experts is now expanding its local services across sectors and across borders in southern Africa. Blignaut believes the consultancy is well positioned to help stakeholders in specifically the financial, insurance, e-commerce, telecoms and retail sectors to transform and adapt quickly.
“In South Africa, the digital economy is not as mature as it is in, say, Europe, but recent events are pushing companies to go digital in a bid to thrive,” he says. “Businesses need to pivot, but they don’t always know how,” Blignaut says. “We have access to Equal Experts skills resources from our business units in eight countries across north America, Europe, India and Australia to support customers through the full life cycle of IT projects. We can help customers initiate projects and work side by side with them to help them develop the project value proposition and mission statement, through to developing the product in partnership with the customer’s teams or other consulting partners. We also understand that South Africa, like any other region, has country specific needs, and for that reason, we are building up a strong South African team that can leverage off our international counterparts.
“Our founding principles and the difference we bring to market is that we embed ourselves in client teams – ‘we share your pain’,” Blignaut says. “Agility and speed of delivery are also among our key differentiators – the faster you are able to go to market, the more competitive advantage you have. But it’s important to understand that speed is not the only factor to consider. Your strategies and solutions also have to be better, so you have to build quality in from the start. We have an extreme focus on engineering standards, and while we deliver at pace, we never compromise on this.”
Equal Experts typically leans heavily on automation and its international expertise to achieve a minimum viable product at pace, put it out to market and then test and validate assumptions. “We put it out to market and learn – quickly, repeatedly, without sacrificing quality,” he says.
Share