Johannesburg, 20 Nov 2020
I often speak about the BHAG. Pronounced “Bee Hag” and short for a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”, the concept calls on people, and businesses, to build for the long term by working today and tomorrow and the next day with strict and steadfast focus. It’s usually something that seems impossible.
Nebula has always had a dream of going global and building a billion-dollar business, co-invented and co-run by just 150 people. This was my BHAG when I started the company over 20 years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly had a negative impact on many businesses and individuals, but for us, it was actually a positive for us because it dismantled so many of the boundaries that we thought existed between us and achieving our BHAG.
Social distancing and lockdown restrictions made us realise that our globalised world is actually a lot smaller than we think. It forced us to relook at how we think and to rethink what’s possible. These regulations showed us that we don’t need to set up an office in different countries in order to create a global business, and, in doing so, we can give our staff the opportunity to become global citizens.
Forget obstacles, think opportunities
COVID-19 may have been an obstacle for many, but it’s actually been an opportunity to learn, grow and do things better. Technology allows us to work successfully as a team no matter where we are in the world. Similarly, it also gives us the chance to find and work with the right kind of clients. The old method of casting a net out and hoping that we’d catch the best client no longer works. Today, thanks to a smarter marketing engine, we know exactly who we want to “catch” and we can actively go out and pursue the clients we want to work with.
As part of our international move, we recently announced that we’d be launching OneView, our cloud-based technology expense management platform, on Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace. In doing so, we’re opening up Nebula to a global market and making our products and services available to anyone around the world. As part of our global expansion, we’re targeting the UK, the Middle East and the Netherlands, with plans to expand further to areas like the US and Asia in the near future.
Four years ago, we shifted everything to the cloud. And people thought it was premature. But this move totally changed how we do business. And today, the same people are migrating to the cloud. For us, this kind of thing is all about experimentation. And we’re going global with the same mind-set; innovating conservatively by conquering one region at a time.
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