Britehouse, a Convergence Partners investee, is still one of the best companies to work for, according to Deloitte’s annual survey 2011. The fact that all levels of staff are empowered to contribute to company strategy makes Britehouse SSD, Britehouse’s specialist SAP division and a leader in mobile business software applications, one of the best companies to work for.

Says Britehouse SSD CEO, Paolo Masselli: “In spite of an extremely disruptive year in which we acquired several companies and then merged nine into four, we still came fifth in the Small to Medium category in Deloitte’s 2011 Best Company to Work For survey – and second in the Business and Professional Services category.

“This was the first year in which we entered the Business and Professional Services category. We maintained our position in areas in which we’ve always had a good standing, and we jumped straight to the top echelons in consulting.

“All of which was possible only because our employees are expected to take responsibility for themselves in getting the job done. For some people, not being micro-managed is frightening. For Britehouse achievers, relying on their own initiative is the only way to live and work, and they revel in it. They also appreciate the fact that our management structure is pretty flat. So their input is valued, and can actually change the company’s strategy.”

In most organisations, retaining staff enthusiasm in the midst of turning over more than R400 million, while simultaneously repositioning to increase growth to half a billion rand in the next 12 to 18 months, would have been more than challenging. But Britehouse employees are committed to the company’s objective of increasing annuity income.

Until 2011, 80% of the company’s revenue was project-based. “The IT landscape is now shifting strongly towards software as a service and, eventually, to the cloud,” Masselli says. “In the process, the need for bespoke systems is dwindling, and the need for outsourced or hosted systems is increasing – and, along with that, the need for support of entire systems.

“Organisations are feeling the need to be able to take their systems for granted so as to focus on optimising their solutions. Some, in fact, just want the output of the solutions, and are looking for someone reliable and innovative to look after both the systems and the solutions that run on them.

“We’re particularly well positioned to do both, because some of our subsidiaries have always either hosted SAP solutions, or managed business processes. And, in most of our client interactions, we’ve had to supply a significant measure of innovation and optimisation support services. So, it’s been a matter of repackaging what we already had in a more integrated way, and filling in a few gaps here and there.

“We might be a bigger ship now, but it’s always going to be a tight one. Our operational philosophy doesn’t change. We’re still exclusively delivery-orientated because we want long-term relationships with our clients and we believe that giving them what they need in as short a timeframe as possible is the best way to encourage them to use us again.

“It’s an extremely disciplined work ethos that creates a great deal of pressure for our employees. But they never get bored. The credit for getting a job done on time and on budget always goes to our staff. And they thrive on it.”

Britehouse Press Release

Article from ITWeb

In a first for South African SAP environments and for the steel industry globally, Britehouse, Dimension Data’s specialist SAP practice, has completed the consolidation of five different SAP systems into a single master system at ArcelorMittal South Africa, Africa’s largest steel producer.
In a project that took 11 months and involved taking millions of records from the previous 10 years of the standalone systems, the consolidated system went live in April 2011 – with subsequent month-ends running as normal.
The short-term objective of the project was for ArcelorMittal to have one set of financial statements for reporting, eliminating the need for inter-company postings. Secondary objectives included enabling users to log into one system rather than four, and thereby, reduce the workload on the business.

During the bidding process, Britehouse took ArcelorMittal executives to visit international sites where successful consolidation projects had been done by its German partner, Corporate Business Solutions (CBS). CBS has developed a framework that manages the mapping, configuring, extraction, manipulation, and migration of data in SAP consolidation projects.
“Those trips proved to ArcelorMittal that what they were planning could be achieved more cost-effectively and in far less time than they had been led to believe,” says Britehouse Executive, Hendri Pretorius. “Our subsequent delivery on those promises proves that, whether a company needs to adapt historical systems to a new template or business model, replicate processes from one geographical area to another, or simply make their business more agile, consolidation of SAP systems doesn’t have to break the bank.
“And, with the right processes and frameworks in place, it doesn’t have to take forever.”

Britehouse Press Release

Article in ITWeb

In a large and complex project that included moving one of the country’s largest MS SQL Database (housing 7.5 terabytes of data) to a Data Centre – and new hardware – as well as upgrading a highly customised SAP 4.7 version to ECCC6, Convergence Partners’ investee company, Britehouse successfully brought this important public sector project, the City of Tshwane, in on time and budget with no disruption to users.

Although the City’s SAP solution was ageing out of support, the City’s primary objectives for the upgrade were to deploy new functionality and more effectively integrate existing SAP functionality to better support business processes. The City’s intention is to offer improved services to its residents based on international best practice and proven solutions.

“SAP has done a lot of development in the public services market to align its solution offering with the South African environment and requirements,” says City of Tshwane director of ICT Governance, Norms & Standards Management, Henk Brink. “We wanted, therefore, to be able to exploit SAP solutions for strategic public sector objectives such as e-Services, CRM and Service Management, and Web enabled offerings – to provide citizens with the means to, for instance, perform self service through the Web from the comfort of their homes. Our goal always is to eliminate frustration for the citizen while continuously speeding up service”.

“In that context, the upgrade project was also aimed at enabling the City to expand on its Business Intelligence (BI) goals through the deployment of SAP BI products – providing management and other decision makers with relevant information faster.”

The project would not be just another upgrade, however, because, over the years, the City has incorporated a number of additional municipalities into the Metro and has customised its original SAP implementation extensively. The City is also growing extremely rapidly.

“At 7.5 terabytes, the City’s database is the biggest I’ve worked on in fifteen years of experience of large enterprises,” says Britehouse Operations Executive, Henk Jordaan. “So, moving the existing system onto new hardware the City had acquired, but also moved the hardware to new premises in Centurion, should have been a daunting challenge”.

“Britehouse has proved its upgrade methodology across many implementations and many industry sectors, and it worked just as effectively for the City.”

Britehouse’s first step was to analyse the City’s existing SAP landscape and ensure that both the standard and customised elements of the system were fully understood and mapped before they were moved, and that the full scope of the project was known and effectively planned in detail beforehand.

“Britehouse used a tool from our partners, Panaya, to identify SAP Programs and specialized developments that would be problematic when migrating to the new environment. This created a solid platform for the project team to plan and address these problematic areas. ,” says Britehouse project manager, Deon du Preez.

“Panaya is a control mechanism that is used throughout the lifecycle of the project, identifying potential problematic programs and providing code fixes for these programs. This process reduced process and project risk by dictating and managing test cycles, cutting the need for internal resources by up to 35%, and creating an ideal knowledge transfer vehicle”.

“Using solid Database and SAP Basis skills Britehouse reconnected some 4 500 users over the weekend of the data centre move, re-established data recoveries in the process, and switched Users back onto the system on Monday morning, without any problems.”

The data centre was moved on 18th February 2011, the upgrade was completed and the system was live on 24th March, again without any user disruption.

“The City of Tshwane chose Britehouse as its upgrade partner following a rigorous tender process that focused on pricing and capability, but their real value to us proved to be the extremely strong skills in the SAP technical environment. This was also evident in the areas of Project Management and functional consulting, where clear guidance to the City, backed up by extensive planning ensured that our environment was properly prepared for the upgrade” says Brink.

The 40-strong project team included members of the City of Tshwane’s Centre of Excellence, ensuring full continuity of knowledge of the new system once Britehouse had handed the operational system back to the City.

Britehouse pdf Article

Local Microsoft development powerhouse, 3fifteen, a Britehouse Company has announced a new partnership with Vodacom Business, which will see its customers able to – on a per seat basis – rent access to Microsoft’s enterprise software solutions for a cost-effective, predictable monthly fee.

Vodacom will be responsible for managing the multi-tenant back-end systems required to host instances of Microsoft Exchange, Dynamics CRM, SharePoint and Office Communications Server in its own data centre, while 3fifteen will focus on configuring, customising and building the functionality its customers require from their software solutions.

“Software as a service is growing in popularity,” says Andrew McPhail, Business Development Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM at 3fifteen. He adds: “Customers choosing this path for the running of their IT systems are finding that the flexibility it allows them in increasing or decreasing the number of seats their company makes use of as and when required, as well as some abdication of responsibility when it comes to ensuring the uptime, reliability and performance of their systems are concerned, to be of real benefit.

“It allows them to focus on the running of their business instead of the running of their IT systems – something that’s always been of massive importance to smaller, specialist companies and becoming increasingly important to medium-sized companies looking to reduce their IT spend.”

McPhail says even though the new partnership with Vodacom is a significant move, it will change very little when it comes to how 3fifteen executes.

“We still go through as detailed a process when it comes to assisting our customers in detailing their business requirements and architecting a solution. The only difference is, the work is carried out on a system that is hosted in Vodacom’s data centre and not on our customers’ premises,” he says.

“What this partnership does allow us to do,” he continues, “is afford our customers a more flexible, cost-effective overall solution that’s centred on operational expenditure as opposed to capital expenditure.

“This in turn means their appetite is likely to be stronger for the solutions we propose and they’re more likely to gain increased value, faster,” he adds.

McPhail says 3fifteen believes this new partnership presents a glimpse into how IT systems will be rolled out and managed in the future, and provides both itself and its customers with a solid stepping stone into the cloud computing era.

“We’re intrigued to see how the market responds over the coming months,” he concludes.

See attached link

Britehouse has further strengthened its position in the SAP market and strategy to offer “Cloud Services” to clients by acquiring a majority stake in Swicon360 (Pty) Ltd, an established human capital management business process outsourcing solution provider.

Britehouse has also purchased a majority stake in BasisOne (Pty) Ltd., Africa’s first and only SAP-accredited hosting provider.

Swicon360 has an excellent reputation in the market for the delivery of consulting services as well as business and technical processes in SAP. Swicon360 is the only SAP certified company in Africa offering Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services in the Human Capital Management (HCM) space.

CEO of Britehouse Specialist SAP Division, Paolo Masselli, says that the acquisition of Swicon360 and BasisOne is an important element in the Britehouse strategy to provide Cloud-based, hosted and BPO SAP solutions to the African market.

“Swicon360 and Basis One will continue to operate as autonomous businesses. The only change will be that Britehouse Director, Grant Tate, will join the Swicon360 and Basis One Executive Team”, Masselli says.

CEO of Swicon360, Markus Bucher, says that this transaction brings together companies that have a great deal of synergy and share a common vision. Being part of the Britehouse and larger Dimension Data Group will increase the ability for Swicon360 to grow in the BPO market in Africa.

“Britehouse is an established company in the business process automation market and Swicon360 has a proven track record in the BPO-HCM space. Customers will continue to receive exceptional levels of service and product of the highest quality”, says Bucher.

See attached Press Release

Britehouse Specialist SAP Division was yesterday ranked as the fourth Best Company To Work For in the Small Company Category in the Deloitte Annual Survey. The company was also rated third best in IT in South Africa. Britehouse shareholders, management and staff are very proud to have achieved this rating, a phenomenal improvement from ninth place in 2009!

Following the 2009 results, Britehouse management reviewed the results in detail and put a long-term and sustainable plan in place to address the shortcomings identified. The company recruited a dedicated talent manager to refine the performance management processes and structures, and addressed key areas such as communication, skills development and innovation. As a result of these activities, the company and its staff were able to get some short-term benefits, but it is continuing on the longer journey to ensure the company achieves excellence in all areas.

Britehouse strategy has always been, and continues to be, to attract and retain experienced individuals with the knowledge and the passion to deliver great value to its customers. Britehouse allows people to show their true potential by embarking on challenging projects and trusting them to deliver to customer expectations. Its staff has embraced this approach and have really excelled in achieving personal, company and customer goals.

See attached press release

See attached link

Britehouse subsidiary 3Fifteen, has, for a second year running, achieved sixth place in the Small Company Category (50 – 300 employees) in the annual Deloitte ‘Best Company to Work For Survey’. Britehouse Specialist SAP Division, a leading South Africa SAP consultancy firm employing close to 300 people improved its ranking significantly from the previous year and was also included in the top ten companies.

View the full Statement

Johannesburg, South Africa, Thursday, 12 July 2007 - In a move to grow its business on the African continent in the public and private sectors, Dimension Data plc today announced it has been granted Competition Commission approval to sell a stake in its Britehouse Group (Britehouse) to a BEE and investment company consortium.

The consortium comprises Convergence Partners Investments (Pty) Ltd, Safika Holdings (Pty) Ltd, and VenFin Limited.

In October last year, Dimension Data in South Africa announced it had consolidated its Microsoft Applications, SAP Application Development Practices and Paracon Holdings Ltd investment into a new entity, the Britehouse Group, and intended to sell a 30% stake in that business to Convergence Partners and Safika. VenFin was subsequently included as a financier in the transaction, bringing the total purchase stake by the consortium to 60%.

View the full Statement

Dimension Data Holdings PLC has today announced the formation of a new company – Britehouse Group.

In line with the ongoing convergence in the software applications space, Dimension Data in South Africa has consolidated its Microsoft Applications and SAP Application Development Practices into Britehouse Group (Britehouse), a new, black-empowered entity.

In line with the ongoing convergence in the software applications space, Dimension Data in South Africa has consolidated its Microsoft Applications and SAP Application Development Practices into Britehouse Group (Britehouse), a new, black-empowered entity.

A Black Economic Empowerment Consortium consisting of Convergence Partners Investments (Proprietary) Limited (a company headed by Andile Ngcaba) and Safika Holdings (Proprietary) Limited (an empowerment investment holding company) will purchase an effective 30% stake in Britehouse. The remaining shareholding of Britehouse will be held by a wholly owned subsidiary of Dimension Data Holdings PLC (Dimension Data PLC).

Britehouse which comprises a 57,6% stake in 3fifteen and 75% stake in Pebbletree Consulting – has a large concentration of SAP and Microsoft specialist skills. 3fifteen and Pebbletree Consulting were identified and incubated by Dimension Data’s venture capital business, Protocol Venture Capital (Pty) Ltd. The consolidation of these companies into a separate operating entity provides efficiencies, critical mass and autonomy.

3fifteen, a Microsoft Gold Partner, provides specialist Microsoft services including consulting, software application development and deployment. Earlier this year, the company was named as Microsoft’s 2006 Customer Experience Partner of the Year.

Pebbletree Consulting, a SAP Africa Service Partner and an SAP Africa SME Business Partner, provides strategic business consulting services in respect of SAP software, empowering organisations to optimise business performance using SAP as a platform.

Both 3fifteen and Pebbletree will retain their current management structures, operating independence and identities.

Dimension Data South Africa Pty Ltd’s investment in Paracon Holdings Limited has also been transferred to Britehouse. Paracon, a specialist IT contracting company, will provide the new entity with a flexible skills base to ensure an optimal structure.

Dimension Data’s core business is the provision and maintenance of the ICT infrastructure that supports the delivery of software applications to all parts of the enterprise. 3fifteen and Pebbletree excel in the area of software applications, which are network reliant, and thus a natural fit with Dimension Data’s ICT infrastructure expertise.

The consolidated carrying value of Britehouse is R98.9 million. The transaction is subject to various approval including regulatory approvals.

About Dimension Data

Dimension Data plc (LSE:DDT), a specialist IT services and solution provider, helps clients plan, build, support and manage their IT infrastructures. Dimension Data applies its expertise in networking, security, operating environments, storage and contact centre technologies and its unique skills in consulting, integration and managed services to create customised client solutions.