The IQ Business Group has appointed 29-year-old Chris Sinclair CEO of the company`s South African operation, to take over from group CEO Johan Roets, who is to focus on the European operations.
Roets will work from London to secure the group`s footing in the UK and Europe.
One of the original founders of the company, Sinclair`s first task will be to consolidate the local operations, grow existing opportunities into anchor clients and maintain a strong support base for global developments.
SA is the petri dish for the development of our intellectual property, as well as the test bed for all our applications.
Chris Sinclair, CEO, IQ Business Group SA
The three-year-old IQ Business Group is expanding rapidly into the US, Australia, the UK and Europe.
"The company`s aim for the next 1 000 days is to become a dominant force in the financial services, healthcare and supply chain spaces in the South African market, while also taking its expertise to global markets," says Sinclair.
The group believes it will achieve organic growth not through expansion into vertical markets, but by taking its intellectual property beyond the country`s borders into markets similar to SA.
"IQ will move into countries beyond SA by forming partnerships with major clients in order to establish itself and grow from there, at first organically and later through acquisition," says Sinclair. "In the process, equity arrangements with clients are renegotiated as necessary."
IQ plans to garner sales of R500 million in the 2001/02 fiscal period, and expects its staff complement, currently at more than 700, to grow to 1 200 within the next year.
The group has stated that it intends to list internationally within the next three years although Sinclair says the South African operations are central to the international expansion plans.
"SA is the petri dish for the development of our intellectual property, as well as the test bed for all our applications," he says.
"Central to our international growth strategy will be to hive off a portion of any project to our local developers. These will be leveraged for application in key vertical markets namely financial services and healthcare across the globe.
"SA presents a unique situation where we can propose and develop distinctive solutions for industries across a value chain, examine and evaluate the results at low cost within a first world environment and demonstrate the value added.
"It then becomes easier to focus on niches in markets many times larger than our own."
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