Johannesburg, 01 Dec 1998
The announcement further entrenches IQ`s position in the outsourcing of non-core business processes. The company recently announced IQ Health, which manages transaction processes in South Africa`s healthcare industry, as well as IQ Advantage, a company specialising in financial and administration systems for the services industry.
The joint venture brings the IQ`s Group projected annual turnover to around R200-million after just over four months of operation.
Commenting on the most recent partnership with NMG, Managing Director of the IQ Business Group Johan Roets said: "The new venture will provide clients with a complete turnkey solution regarding the outsourcing of their human resources processes including the payroll."
According to Roets, pay and benefit queries are the most often posed internally of any others in an organisation and are a major cause of downtime and productivity losses.
"By taking on the human resources and complementary processes of a business, we will free organisations to focus on their core competencies, thereby assisting them to meet their own profit and growth objectives," he said.
The new venture will initially leverage off NMG`s existing payroll outsourcing business. Plans are to grow the number of members under administration to at least 20,000 in the first year.
Commenting on NMG`s decision to partner the IQ Business Group in the joint venture, Managing Director Andrew Sykes said: "We chose IQ because of their IT and project management skills, as well as their familiarity with process design and implementation".
"The company also had the right shareholding structure vis a vis black empowerment and a similar twenty-first century perspective towards outsourcing," he said.
Shareholding in the IQ Business Group is split between management (27,7%), the SuperGroup (27,7%), Hoskens Consolidated Investments (HCI) (22,2%), and Mettle (22,2%).
"NMG was a very attractive partner as far as growth of our outsourcing business is concerned," said Johan Roets.
"The company is the third largest actuarial consultancy in South Africa, with offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and soon Durban," Roets said.
"Apart from providing an employee benefits and financial services consultancy, NMG also has extensive expertise in healthcare, retirement funding, flexible benefits and compensation, as well as payroll outsourcing. These skills will allow us to provide holistic solutions for clients looking to outsource their entire HR and related operations," he said.
Through the new company clients can expect a broad spectrum of services ranging from initial recruitment, performance management, to the administration of HR and payroll, organisational development and integration with employee benefits in general.
"The services we provide will help clients to deliver on their remuneration promises to employees," he said.
Editors note
About the IQ Business Group
The IQ Business Group was formally launched in August, 1998, with the aim of becoming the premier provider of technology-enabled business process solutions to the South African corporate market. These solutions are targeted initially at the Financial Services, Healthcare and Logistics sectors.
The company is headed by a team of former Arthur Andersen alumni under Johan Roets and has a staff complement of 130 - most of whom have post graduate qualifications in commerce and information technology as well as in-depth experience in business consulting and business risk management.
IQ`s management team emphasises a creative and dynamic approach to finding solutions - one that is capable of leveraging available competencies in order to achieve sustainable improvement to their clients` businesses.
This philosophy is rooted in current realities which face South African corporate companies at present.
These include:
- an urgent need to ensure that all mission critical systems and subsystems are Year 2000 compliant
- a shortage of skilled human resources, which is aggravated by the Year 2000 problem and the current brain drain
- IT companies that are focused on selling their own technologies rather than applying appropriate solutions that address the underlying business problems
- professional services companies that over-promise and under deliver, or sell technologies that don`t address the strategic needs of the client
"We see huge opportunities for a company, such as ours, that comprises highly skilled individuals, who have a thorough understanding of both technology and business, and who can lend their extensive management skills to the rapid and controlled implementation of solutions," Roets said.