Cash Converters Southern Africa

1. What are some of the major challenges and trends that have been impacting the IT industry lately?

• The exponential growth of the market in terms of the need for IT solutions against the skill level and availability of the resources to deliver is the single biggest challenge.

• The scarcity of skills and the various levels of experience further contributes to making it a very expensive resource.

• I don’t know that we are growing enough new skills in the country to match the pace of the global demand for good resources. This is such a competitive market and there are exceptionally attractive offers available to our South African talent outside of our borders. This then creates unrealistic salary expectations within South Africa, causing inexperienced teams to attempt the delivery of complex projects. As much as remote working and digital ways of working have progressed in leaps and bounds, it’s not always cost-efficient to hire overseas resources for a South African rate – our currency is generally outpriced on a global stage.

• The brain drain is a possible cause for concern in this space.

• The world is increasingly dominated by the fast pace in the growth of tech requirements, and the bottleneck is providing appropriate, qualified skills and resources to grow this infrastructure within a cost-effective speed-to-market timeframe.

2. What keeps you up at night when it comes to some of the major predicaments in the IT industry?

• If you plan correctly and have sufficient resources, I should sleep brilliantly at night!

• However, the biggest issue in tech is always the time, the budget, and the resources to deliver the work.

• Tech is an anchor within most businesses – but the key dependencies can slow a business down, rather than support it.

• Racing against the clock to meet expectations

• Planning the right solutions

• Getting the right skills in place

• Delivering the appropriate solution on time, in budget

• Pre-planning for future iterations

3. Can you tell us about the latest project that you have been working on and what are some of the technological and process elements that you leveraged to make the project successful?

• Our IT infrastructure supports the broader Cash Converters group. Our IT is in-house, and a backbone to support our group of companies and our unique business model.

• We are moneylenders with a retail arm bolted on. Being non-traditional means we have had to focus on bespoke POS software that is legislatively compliant while supporting our unique business requirements.

• So we rebuilt the current software package from the ground up, based on 25+ years of Cash Converters operating experience and all our previous IT systems, to support our specific needs.

• It sits on a bespoke, modern architecture

• It’s a cloud-hosted solution

• Enabling us to be an “always on” company

• The application is delivered via the cloud to wherever our stores in sub-Saharan Africa are based

• Completely API-based tiered model, brand new, using the latest white papers and technology

• It is an architected SQL database compatible with Azure

• Build off modern code stacks from Microsoft and designed to plug multiple interfaces in so we are not limited to delivering future innovations via this backbone

• Which ultimately ensures quicker and more efficient speed-to-market delivery.

• An example of this is our webshop – which was launched in the height of level 5 COVID lockdown and has become a major business success for us and our franchisees.

• It was possible because of a solid foundation, with embedded business rules

• So an experiment during a global pandemic has grown into a highly successful part of our business!

• We have over 1.2 million customers registered on our POS, and although we have a single view of our customers, which is core to our application and the business, we are totally compliant with all legislation (such as POPI, Second Hand Goods Act, and the National Credit Act).

4. What are some of the technological trends which excite you for the future of the IT industry?

• Technology is a never-ending growth cycle, which is exciting as it forces evolution and change.

• The key is to balance using technology to leverage business growth and advantages, rather than using technology for technology’s sake.

• I see a huge opportunity to leverage social media on multiple devices to interface into our business. This means we could move away from formal applications and rather engage our customers on social media – ultimately ending up within our application but having broken down barriers unique to our space (moneylending).

• Ultimately leveraging the opportunity to use technology to grow the business.

5. How can evolving companies reach you for suggestions to streamline their business?

• We are a bespoke in-house IT solution, and we use 3^rd party tech as needed to bolster and supplement our core team.

• We have an extensive IT dept because we are such a unique business model with such specific requirements.

• Our core competency is in the IT support of franchised businesses, as we understand franchising specifically.

• At the moment we are focused on our specific Cash Converters framework, but long term there will be lots for other brands to leverage.