Sage VIP hosts African Alliance Conference
This year’s annual Sage VIP African Alliance Conference is taking place from 11-12 April at Lombardy Hotel in Pretoria. “The conference serves as an ideal platform for not only building relationships with our African alliance partners across 12 African countries, but also to share key product developments and assist them with operational challenges,” says Gerhard Hartman, who heads up the Africa Division at Sage VIP, a leading HR and payroll software and services provider in South Africa and Africa at large.
An opening address from the Managing Director of Sage VIP Africa, Anton van Heerden, will kick the event into gear on Thursday, 11 April 2013.
Ina du Plessis, Research and Development Director, will address the exciting roadmap that is planned for the launch of various Sage VIP products into Africa and Sandra Swanepoel, Sales director, will deliver a keynote about the organisation’s strategic focus for the future.
A highlight of the conference will be the announcement of Sage VIP’s top three African alliance partners for 2012. “Our client base into Africa has increased tremendously in the last year and these partners’ contribution has been invaluable,” says Hartman.
Sage VIP’s comprehensive partnership program is part of their winning recipe for increasing the footprint into Africa. “Establishing a partnership that works, is however a two-way street. Our partners need to take the first step in certifying themselves through Sage VIP’s training programmes. It then becomes our responsibility to monitor their growth and development and to aid them as far as we can. Being able to offer the best possible service to the end-user includes the offering of training to the client, local support and the implementation of a service level agreement. We provide our partners with regular insightful information, in addition to a monthly webinar where we discuss any issues that may have arisen,” says Hartman.
“During our recent customer road shows with partners in Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia and Zimbabwe it was once again clear that companies in Africa want to ensure profitability by streamlining their business processes with automated HR and payroll software, which enable them to, for example, email payslips and manage overtime and leave by means of an automated process,” says Hartman.
There is still an enormous scope of growth and within the next year Sage VIP’s client base in the rest of Africa will definitely increase. “The greatest driving force behind our products remains the ability to offer a service that is compliant to the country’s specific statutory requirements. Clients want the assurance that their payroll and HR system is compliant with legislation and that their tax documentation is on target,” says Hartman.
“The African Alliance Conference is the premier event of the year for Sage VIP and its partners. It promises to be highly informative and will provide a great deal of insight into the year ahead,” concludes Hartman.
