Growing global horizons

Matthew Barnard, director of BBD UK

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As the world becomes smaller and the technology playing field evens out, the ICT skills and experience we have in South Africa are increasingly recognised as equally relevant around the globe. Our response to these advances is to expand our geographical footprint and enhance our presence as a global software development organisation.

Matthew Barnard, director of BBD UK, explains that BBD’s India office has been very successful in helping support local South African teams. Innosys leverages their Bulgaria office for similar reasons, and the work BBD does out of South Africa for a UK client has enabled them to use highly skilled development teams to build world-class software systems that are used across the UK, Europe and further afield.

“As part of our ongoing drive to entrench our global footprint, we are committed to cultivating BBD in European markets while using all of our locations to deliver innovative solutions and work directly with existing and new clients in the UK and across Europe.”

As a highly competitive market, winning business across Europe is not easy. Barnard states that they are utilising their networks to win projects and forge a future in these geographies. Some of these opportunities are already in progress, others in the pipeline.

But they don’t just have their sights set on Europe. International companies see South Africa as the doorstep to the rest of Africa. As such, BBD is committed to gaining experience in the larger African market and are working in conjunction with their client base to leverage local partnerships in these countries. Most recently, they participated in a request for information for the Ministry of Finance in Ghana.

Interestingly, Africa is also increasingly seen as having very good technology skills and innovators as seen in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, where innovative fintechs are finding tailored solutions that work for Africa. “Part of our strategy is to encourage this homegrown approach as we do with the various initiatives we’ve been involved in for the past 18 months.”

BBD is also enhancing and diversifying their own technical capabilities in relevant technologies and platforms including cloud-based expertise in AWS, Google and Azure. “This not only gives our teams a chance to gain international project experience but enables our drive to act as the software development conduit between companies in this global market.” To achieve this, BBD needs to excel at running international projects with distributed, culturally diverse teams. He says that as South Africans, this is something we’re very familiar with.

Together with the reality of immigration, BBD sees all of this as an opportunity to further develop the company and the incredible people they have working across their connected workforce. “It’s why we’re so excited to forge our brand identity globally, and allowing for alumni, current staff and new hires to grow into these new territories with us.”

If you’d like to find out more about BBD, visit www.bbdsoftware.com.