How 3 women started a business from scratch that’s set to dominate SA’s competitive consultancy and advisory market
South Africa’s management consultancy and business advisory services market is worth more than R70 billion, this is according to Consultancy South Africa, a platform for South Africa’s consulting industry. This booming industry is made up of over 60,000 individuals, ranging from consultants, business advisors and business coaches. So how easy is to stand out in this crowd and be successful given the saturation of the consulting market?
Jessica Tandy, Anne-Marie Pretorius and Seugnet van den Berg are the dynamic partners of Bizmod, a Level 2 B-BBEE IT and management consulting company that partners with its clients to co-create solutions for positive impact in their organisations.
“We met each other while collaborating on a project in 1997, decided to join forces and bought out the then owners of Bizmod,” says executive director, Jessica Tandy. With no clients or assets, the three started from scratch to build the business. With a keen sense of wanting to make a difference and give back, they introduced a fourth partner, the Women’s Trust, which essentially has a 28% stake in the business. “We believe that real growth and prosperity can only be achieved through the entrepreneurial development and empowerment of women.” The Trust has partnered with Africa Food for Thought, a PBO that provides food security for more than 18 000 children in Western Johannesburg and Womaniko, an organisation led by women that facilitates the development of women entrepreneurs and provides support for their local business ventures.
The company offers consulting services in business, technology, information security and compliance projects. “We operate in a highly competitive environment and believe we’ve perfected the formula to enable us to outprice our competitors and still deliver a world class offering.”
Bizmod focuses on managing its expenses and is highly efficient in deploying its resources. “For now, this model is sustainable, but we are looking at other product offerings that could provide us with a sustained income stream going forward,” says Tandy.
The consulting firm has not only survived but also thrived in very tough economic conditions. “We’ve managed to grow and nurture our employees and consultants. In 12 years, we have expanded Bizmod from three to currently almost 50 employees. Our growth has empowered us to create jobs and consistently place our clients in a better position by helping them to solve their problems. We’ve succeeded in building something out of nothing and a huge win has been being able to give back to our community through our CSI work,” says Tandy.
Bizmod is acutely aware of the 4th Industrial Revolution and the skills that companies will need to succeed. “We’ve been intimately involved in designing and setting up an innovation hub for one of our clients and we’re currently implementing innovative solutions for digitization, focusing on human capital changes,” says Tandy. The Bizmod team firmly believe that their robotics and intelligent automation services, change management and creative offerings position clients to remain relevant in driving user adoption and automation in response to new technologies and the 4IR.
The future looks bright! Jessica Tandy, Anne-Marie Pretorius and Seugnet van den Berg are finalists in the 2019 Entrepreneur of the Year® competition sponsored by BUSINESS/PARTNERS. For more information on Bizmod, please visit the website: https://bizmod.co.za/