South Africa Business Awards 2018

14 MEA MARKETS / 2018 South African Business Awards , Future Africa Consulting&Training SouthAfrica (FACT) is a Professional Services Companywith a specialist focus on Business Process Outsourcing in the Engineering; Telecommunications and IT industries.We invited CEONargis Gani to tell usmore about the innovative company and the dedicated services it provides to clients. Best for Business Process Outsourcing in Engineering, Telecommunications and IT Established in 2012, FACT has shown incredible growth, providing an excellent service to clients and exceeding their expectations. Nargis explained what attributes her team possess which allow the company to provide fantastic solutions and services. “At FACT South Africa, our goal has always been to create a business that simplifies the daily tasks for clients and companies alike. We take pride in listening to our clients’ needs and creating customised Solutions. Our hands-on approach to each project enables us to deliver consistent quality time after time.” Leading by example, Nargis is a resilient CEO who has formed a strong internal culture within her company, and this sees employees come to work motivated and wanting to produce the best work that they can. Nargis remarked on whether resilience forms a big part of the company ethos, and what she believes are the key attributes of her success. “Resilience forms a large part of the company’s philosophy. We tend to foster positive emotions more than negative ones by focusing on the issues that can be changed. With the issues that are not in our control, we accept them and move on. Over the past 15 years, we have encountered some rough patches, but instead of consolidating we pushed forward to grow ourselves out of these situations. We have built a strong team who are able to think on their feet and come up with alternative solutions and ideas, and this is key to maintaining flexibility and being resilient.” Enabling the team to produce fantastic results is Nargis’ striking ability to set out a strategy to achieve the company mission which falls in line with FACT’s culture. Nargis commented on what it is like being a successful female leader in a male dominated industry, and mentioned what advice she would give to other women looking to make a success of their own. “Moving forward, our vision is crystal clear. We want to empower and transform the norm of the industry, and to create an ecosystem where women, especially black females, have the tools and training required to thrive in the Telco space. I have two particular words of advice: Persevere and Network.” Currently, there are several challenges which are influencing South Africa’s Business Process Outsourcing industry. Nargis referred us to the techniques that FACT adopted which allowed it to embrace these opportunities and overcome them to become one of the leaders in the sector. “Traditionally, BPO was always seen as the outsourcing of basic service, including call centres; back office admin; security and cleaning services. However, this is such a limited view, mainstream business may be able to exist but without economies of scale it difficult to survive. At FACT, we looked at SA180009 how we could add high value task based services to this landscape opening up the door way for others to follow.” Across South Africa, there are many investment opportunities throughout the region, but Nargis believes that this is not represented across the area. Believing that it is the responsibility of leading companies and the government to change this view, Nargis has an idea of creating a platform which will showcase the benefits of investing in a wonderful country such as South Africa. Boasting a wealth of success, Nargis detailed some of the specific programmes which FACT has in place as per the revised BBBEEE codes, which are aimed at boosting transformation, and was keen to point out that the numbers speak volumes about the work that the team is doing. “FACT is a mechanism for empowerment and transformation. Our numbers speak for themselves, as, of our 250 plus people, 33% are under the age of 30 (Youth development), and 10% of our staff compliment are participating in internship, learnership and apprenticeship programs (Skills Development). Moreover, more than 25% of our employees are black females.” Overall, these are extremely exciting times for FACT, and there are lot of projects and plans which are in development but are yet to come to fruition. In her concluding comments, Nargis excitedly predicted what the future holds for FACT and its employees. “Within the next month our ISO 9001:2015 accreditation will be complete. We are also finalising a massive investment into Network test equipment and vehicles, and this will create an additional 16 direct jobs and another 30 indirect jobs. “Furthermore, we are expanding our services portfolio to include Network Planning and Optimisation, and we are putting the finishing touches to our new operations based out of Mauritius that will service our Africa clientele.” Company: Future Africa Consulting & Training (FACT) Contact: Esmail Gani Address: 50 Tegel Avenue, Highgrove Office Park, Highveld, Centurion, South Africa Phone: 0027 12 665 1771 Website: www.factsa.co.za