The sales office will be led by Khaled Ismail, vice president, Oracle Digital Application Business, East, Central Europe, Middle East, and Africa (ECEMEA), who will manage sales and marketing strategy for the region. In this role, Ismail will manage an organisation of 250 sales professionals with almost 20 managers and directors.
He will also be responsible for the supporting functions working for ECEMEA OD, from pre-sales, sales development, marketing, and customer success. NetSuite will also recruit local implementation partners with experience in ERP to support continued growth in the region.
"The South African market is uniquely positioned for this expanded investment in the region," Ismail says. "Companies here are realising the value, flexibility, and scalability of the cloud and are beginning to understand that their ageing, legacy, on-premise systems are no longer meeting their needs in this digital age."
As part of its expansion strategy, in addition to its existing partner in the region, BlueBridge One, NetSuite added four new implementation partners operating in South Africa, including Business Connexion, EOH Mthombo, Dimension Data, and XZQ Services.
BlueBridge One has been a NetSuite Solution Provider partner since 2004, and a NetSuite partner since 2009. The company is also a commerce agency partner and SuiteCloud Developer Network Partner.
Its head office is based out of the United Kingdom, with local offices in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and now Cape Town. BlueBridge One is focused on customer success in the midmarket with a significant international experience, implementing NetSuite OneWorld for local and global customers seeking to enter the African market and beyond.
"NetSuite’s continued investment in South Africa comes at a time when local, growing midmarket businesses are in need of a comprehensive, cloud-based business management solution. International businesses are coming here to get a foothold on the continent," says Channing McDonald, managing director at BlueBridge One, South Africa. "We look forward to continuing to work with NetSuite to expand the use of cloud computing here, and across Africa."
Jasco is a solutions provider of telecommunications, IT, energy industries, and more. Jasco turned to NetSuite OneWorld to merge several independent businesses into one organisation after determining that its existing system could not provide the unified view of the business it needed. Jasco is implementing NetSuite OneWorld in a phased approach.
ElectroMechanica, a distributor of switchgear brands with four branches across South Africa, went live on NetSuite OneWorld in April. ElectroMechanica selected NetSuite OneWorld for its user interface and cloud-based architecture. NetSuite OneWorld provides functionality across financials, CRM, inventory management for 11 000 SKUs and a B2B e-commerce website.
Companies like Jasco and ElectroMechanica aim to gain efficiency, grow revenues, expand globally, and enter new markets and say that they often find themselves held back by software systems siloed by department, geography or legal entity structures, leaving them unable to deliver an optimal customer experience and gain insights into their operations.
NetSuite OneWorld aims to provide a unified and cloud-based suite of software that is flexible enough to meet the needs of the diverse business models, legal structures, and geographies in the South African region.
NetSuite OneWorld supports 190 currencies, more than 20 languages, automated tax calculation, and reporting in more than 100 countries, and customer transactions in more than 200 countries.
Further, to help the B2B and B2C businesses with omnichannel commerce, NetSuite OneWorld aims to deliver commerce-ready capabilities that can help both B2B and B2C commerce businesses to move from siloed online, in-store, and phone consumer shopping channels to an integrated commerce solution – connecting e-commerce and in-store POS to order management, inventory, merchandising, marketing, financials, and customer service, while delivering a brand experience.
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