IBM sends specialist team to help economic institutions become more efficient

First-time visit for global IT company contingent

With four years project management experience at leading business solutions provider International Business Machines (IBM), Saritha Bhat from India is using her knowledge to help institutions like the Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC) become more effective.

Bhat, who has been on project assignments for IBM in France, will be based at the Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC) for a month "devising tools aimed at making the corporation's business systems become more efficient."

"IBM is offering this free service to ECDC, the Department of Economic Development and Environmental Affairs (DEDEA) and RULIV as part of our investment into developing economies around the world. Together with four other specialists, I will be based at ECDC and we will help it refine its internal processes so that it is more effective in delivering services.

"We will concentrate on ECDC's three core business units and supporting functions and we will then determine which ones should be refined or enhanced to make the corporation more effective and efficient and to have a wider development impact on the people of the Eastern Cape," says Bhat.

Armed with an Information Science degree from Visveswaraih Institute of Technology in India and a certified software quality analyst certificate in the United States of America (USA), Bhat is part of a team of 14 IBM specialists from around the world who will provide key skills to ECDC, DEDEA and RULIV. A second team will arrive in October to complete the work they are starting at ECDC.

The other specialists that will be based at ECDC are So Watanabe (Japan), Cristhel Vargas (Costa Rica) who will assist in business processes, Leandro Buena (Brazil) and Scott Neuman (USA) who will assist the corporation's marketing unit.

IBM South Africa Corporate Affairs Manager Mapule Ratshefola who announced the initiative at ECDC yesterday, says the 14 specialists will be split between DEDEA, RULIV and ECDC giving advice in areas ranging from tourism, rural development and enhanced business processes. These specialists come from the USA, Japan, Singapore, Costa Rica, Ireland, India, UK, Canada and Brazil among others.

"We are matching our skills with challenges faced by the province to enhance the province's economic impact and effectiveness. We brought a team with skills in Information Technology, Project Management, Consulting, Finance, and Marketing and Communication.

"IBM intends to invest in developing economies because the world is changing where it does business.  Developing Economies are now the future of our business, the consumer is moving from the mature markets to emerging economies where economic growth potential lies," says Ratshefola.

ECDC strategy and corporate planning manager Lesley Govender says the corporation identified that it is geared for growth and that it needs to ensure that efficient systems and processes are in place and to understand customers as stakeholders, and to meet their expectations first time.

"Three specialists will work on enhancing ECDC systems and processes so that ECDC can be more efficient when dealing with clients and two others will help the company understand its clients' needs," explains Govender.

DEDEA tourism senior manager Weziwe Busakwe says the team will provide technical support in the development of a monitoring, reporting and evaluation tool for the recently revised Provincial Tourism Master Plan as well as  a tourism statistics system for the entire province.

"This is a response to the need to measure and track tourism's contribution to the larger economy and to total job creation in the Eastern Cape as there is a statistics gap around the contribution of tourism in district municipalities and also in peripheral industries.  We see this as a way of complementing the primary research that is currently undertaken by Eastern Cape Tourism Board (ECTB) on the performance of tourism in each district municipality.

"Currently we do not have statistics on our tourism economic performance at district and local level and we are heavily reliant on Tourism South Africa and this system will assist in planning and decision-making," explains Busakwe.

The team will also assist DEDEA in the promotion of rural tourism through developing tourism products and marketing strategies of the Homestay Initiative using the Kwam eMakana model used in Grahamstown. The Eastern Cape is one of the pioneers of the Homestay Initiative and efforts are being made to ensure the sustainability of the initiative as a measure to address the product supply challenges. It also provides a more cost effective accommodation package with increased exposure to the unique and authentic culture of the Eastern Cape.

"We anticipate that the experiences from this exercise will be used as a basis to roll out the non-conventional accommodation model to the other areas in the province as well as inform the rural tourism model," adds Busakwe.

This is the third team of IBM specialists in South Africa. In the first half of the year two teams helped the Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency (MEGA), Mpumalanga Tourism & Parks Agency (MTPA) and Business Against Crime (BAC).

Ratshefola adds that IBM, which has operations in 170 countries, is conducting the programme in countries such as Romania, Phillipines, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Turkey and Vietnam.