Perhaps the most positive thing to emerge from lockdown , which forced staff to work from home , was that the whole business began operating off the cloud . “ We realised that there ’ s no-one that couldn ’ t operate from home other than our few warehouse guys . We got rid of our servers and moved all our systems into the cloud . We challenged every single system that we had .”
They also cut costs to the bone . “ We looked at every single cost . Is it critical ? …. If not , it must it go ? It was an opportunity to cut everything to the minimum . Our staff all agreed to cut their salaries . The one thing in which we didn ’ t stop investing was our staff culture . We still ate together once a week . In fact , a great way to get staff back to the office was to create an environment that they wanted to come back to . This experience made our company culture stronger than it has ever been in 18 years . Tough times brought out the best in us ,” he says .
A turning point came with a decision to merge the business with another operator in the market – a move that added a third partner with valuable financial and analytical skills that the company did not have at that point . As a result , he says , as a combined pan African marketing company , they intend to lead the game in their industry going forward .
“ When we found ourselves in dire straits , EO came to the party and helped us out in a time of need which we will never forget . In the toughest of times is when you need EO the most . We have now turned the corner and see an extremely positive future in Africa for our business .”
w Fitzsimons
SA Real Estate Investor Magazine OCT 2022 129