Marval South Africa Expands Geographic Footprint into Africa and Middle East

As part of a global brand and marketing consolidation strategy, Marval South Africa has recently been appointed centralised distributor for the entire Africa and Middle East region by Marval’s head office in the United Kingdom.

“In response to the recent upsurge in interest and adoption of ITIL on the African continent – driven largely by injections of foreign investment – it made sense for us to take advantage of growth opportunities in these emerging markets. South Africa is the gateway to Africa, and as such our existing South African office was perfectly positioned to become the centralised distributor for the African continent and the Middle East, says Greg Pritchett, CTO of Marval UK.

Marval offers integrated IT Service Management (ITSM) and service desk software, consultancy services and accredited ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000 training. The value proposition of the interdependent ‘bundle’ of tools, education and coaching is that it raises the bar of service management to become ‘service management for the governance of IT and the enterprise’.

Says Edward Carbutt, Executive Director of Marval South Africa, “These elements are tightly integrated and collectively, they meet governance and service management requirements. In addition, the tools, coaching and education elements underpin the success of an ITSM implementation and guarantee the outcome and ongoing benefits through continual service improvement.

The need for these integrated tools and services is growing in emerging markets such as Africa and the Middle East as the requirement to provide evidential reporting of compliance with IT governance regulations and standards increases.

Put simply, one of the major drivers for this is that organisations in Africa and the Middle East need to prove that they are using foreign investment capital efficiently. IT Governance necessitates compliancy reporting that quantifies IT spend and acts as evidential proof of compliance with sustainability, transparency and other regulatory requirements.

Marval South Africa will continue to deliver Marval’s MSM range of cost-effective integrated service management software solutions into this new market segment. However, reselling software will not be the sole focus, as the company will be aiming to create a network of resellers and partners throughout the region. Major focus will be given to skilling up local businesses and their staff through intensive training, enabling local support for Marval products.

“We believe strongly that simply dropping boxes is not an option. Our focus is in providing proper support for implementation and training on how to leverage the full capabilities and benefits of the solution,” says Carbutt.

One of the prerequisites to becoming a Marval reseller is ITIL certification and a thorough knowledge of the various ISO standards and other frameworks such as COBIT. This means that all of Marval’s African and Middle Eastern resellers will have full capacity to support not only our products, but the governance needs of customers throughout our new regions. This focus on skills transfer ensures that local businesses throughout the new regions will be bolstered with new skills that will enhance their business offering.

“For our company, this move allows us to increase our footprint and revenue as well as grow the business through new experiences, greater expertise and a wider range of customers. It will also allow us to extend the brand and quality it represents to those regions that previously did not have easy access to the solution. Over the past few years we have established ourselves in the South African market, and expanded our business into Southern Africa. This move into the rest of Africa, along with the Middle East, is the next logical move and part of our growth strategy,” says Carbutt.

“By appointing us as the official reseller for these new regions, Marval UK is demonstrating confidence in our service management delivery capabilities,” he concludes.