Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 18 | Page 9

NEWS Growing global – how to build an international firm out of SA “So we launched with a proper business model, road plan and big playbook. This helped drive our growth. “ A carefully-plotted strategic focus saw the business targeting only regions where the product-market fit was right and where reliable local networks could be established. “It’s not easy doing business across Africa,” said Daniel. “You have to be cautious about the projects you want to become involved in. Some big projects, across multiple countries, could virtually kill your company off slowly because they can take too much time and focus away from your own company’s strategic growth plans.” Payment24 is aggressively growing across pan-Africa and into the US S outh African fuel management and payment system innovator Payment24, now a multi-million rand company signing up blue chip international clients, is aggressively growing across pan-Africa and into the US. But achieving international success, the goal of many born-in-SA companies, is not a simple matter, according to Payment24’s joint CEOs, Shadab Rahil and Nolan Daniel. “Our ambitions were international from the outset and we never saw ourselves as a start-up,” said Rahil. Pan-African business expansion is also challenging in terms of cross- border payments and red tape. Despite the challenges, Payment24 is actively expanding across Namibia, Kenya, Ghana, Botswana, Nigeria and Mozambique. The company’s growth was supported by being selected as one of 36 to participate in the international 500 Start-ups Global Seed Accelerator programme in San Francisco last year. “This programme gave us an opportunity to establish links in the North American market and to conduct research that confirmed product-market fit in the US,” added Daniel. ///////////////// Paratus chooses Mapcom Systems for African fibre network infrastructure management M apcom Systems, a global leader in visual OSS and BSS software solutions for telecommunications service providers, has announced that Paratus Africa has begun the implementation of Mapcom’s M4 Solutions Suite to accelerate the service fulfilment process and manage the planning, buildout and maintenance of its broadband network. Paratus is the largest privately-owned Pan African telecoms operator and already delivers products and services to 22 African countries. It has fully licensed and operational offices in Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa. By utilising Mapcom Systems’ award- winning M4 software, Paratus will have visibility to its entire network and additional relevant data from third-party vendors in one system, thus enhancing business intelligence and cross-departmental collaboration. www.intelligentcio.com “Paratus has an aggressive expansion plan and infrastructure rollout strategy, we have already invested in excess of N$150-million on infrastructure in Namibia over the past two years and continue to invest,” said Paratus CEO Barney Harmse. “More than N$100-million alone has been invested in fibre infrastructure from March 2017 to February 2018.” Harmse says Paratus is a carrier-of-carriers throughout the region and it is important that the international operators have peace of mind when they trust the Paratus Group to deliver products and services to them. “We have been providing services on our infrastructure to many reputable international telco operators in Africa,” he said. “Mapcom’s M4 Solutions Suite will play a critical part in our network’s integrity and health, as we deliver a world-class service to world-class operators.” Utilising Mapcom Systems’ Data Integration Engine, data will seamlessly be integrated from other systems of record into M4 to allow centralised operations management and allocation of resources to efficiently handle dynamic business challenges, such as locate requests across multiple countries. INTELLIGENTCIO 9