Tamela is a black owned and managed investment, corporate finance advisory (including JSE sponsor services), and fund management company. It is made up of three core businesses namely, the Principal Investment Business, the Corporate Finance Business& the Mezzanine Fund. Tamela approached PPT to assist with document and workflow management as Tamela had no organised repository of documents, no streamlined method of saving documents, and no automated alerts for task management. Additionally, Tamela needed assistance with automating the lifecycle of its investor / investee reporting process which is required to manage its Mezzanine Fund.

What PPT Did

PPT conducted an in-depth analysis into the three business streams to understand Tamela’s pain points and to identify key areas where processes could be optimised.

• Through process mapping, PPT identified areas for automation (such as deadline & timeframe tracking, alerts for reporting & payment dates, management of cashflow related tasks, and triggers for management reports) and concurrently assessed solutions that would solve for Tamela’s document and workflow management challenges. Additionally, two major streams identified for automation were the investor / investee reporting process which includes capital calls and distribution notices, and an opportunity to automate Tamela’s deal flow register. Through creating an Excel Master Data Sheet which contains all the requisite information relating to Tamela’s investments such as dividend and distribution calculations, PPT was able to automate the Mezzanine Fund investor/investee reporting process.
• With regard to document management, PPT discovered that Tamela has full access to the Microsoft 356 suite which includes SharePoint and Teams. PPT identified that a significant cause of the challenges surrounding document management in the Tamela environment was an absence of training on how to maximise Microsoft 365’s offerings. The decision was therefore made to harness the capabilities of Microsoft 365 and to document best practices for Tamela through creating a Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) manual for the Tamela Team’s reference in terms of the business rules to be used when working within Teams, Office, and SharePoint. It also highlights how to use SharePoint and Teams efficiently and covers topics such as using SharePoint to create meta tags, creating Teams and channels within Teams to collaborate and efficiently save documents to SharePoint, how to access a document’s history and access version control, and even how to create Tamela branded templates in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. In addition to providing Tamela with the SOP manual, PPT conducted training sessions to take the Tamela Team through the business rules and how to use SharePoint, Teams, and Office in a way that saves time and promotes productivity.
• Finally, in order to address Tamela’s workflow pain points related to sending and sharing reports to its investees and investors, PPT proposed SharePoint as a solution to Tamela’s request for an Investor/Investee Portal. A folder structure has been set up in the Tamela environment which allows each investor and investee to access its own reports and documents in a controlled and secure manner.

Results to Date

• Before PPT implemented the Excel Master Data Sheet, Tamela would have to follow the same process of sending reports out to its 17 investors, 17 times. Reporting calculations were done using various excel spreadsheets in a highly manual and time-consuming manner. The Master Data Sheet has saved Tamela 2 hours of time per Capital Call Letter. Tamela also has a majorly improved method to track deadlines and timeframes related to Tamela’s obligations using Power Automate & MS Planner.
• Harnessing the Microsoft 365 suite that Tamela already had access to resulted in cost savings and eliminated the need to master a new, more intricate and disruptive system. Standardising the way in which documents are saved and where they are saved gives Tamela hours of time back and the introduction of meta tags into the Tamela environment allows for documents to be retrieved faster.
• The SharePoint Portal created for investee/investor reporting is more secure and far less tedious than emailing each investor/investee its own documents and reports. It also acts as a centralised place where Tamela can easily keep track of investee/investor documents and can control investee/investor permissions. Tamela is also able to prevent sensitive documents being forwarded and circulated via email, providing their investees/investors with a greater sense of privacy and trust.

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Famous Brands, South Africa’s largest QSR multi-brand franchise company, had been striving to find a comprehensive solution to manage their standard operating procedures (SOPs) across their diverse portfolio. The company decided to implement the Opus4Businesssystem to address this challenge by leveraging the cloud-based platform to replace paper-based checklists with their enhanced App-centric approach to SOPs.

What We Did

OPUS4business engaged PPT Group to assist in the system design and implementation across the Famous Brands network. This required in-depth engagement to match business and user requirements. An iterative approach was used to create a solid tool to add value to both Franchisees and the corporate business. This system was launched in November 2021.

From 2022, PPT took on the role of onboarding, user acceptance and training. We worked with OPUS4business and Famous Brands to develop a training framework using a combination of ongoing webinars, physical roadshows, and easily accessible training videos to onboard customers and help franchises adopt the new technology.

Results to Date

With over 1300 stores onboarded (and counting) across 6 different brands around South Africa, Famous Brands has experienced exceptional user adoption of a new digital system in under 2 years.

• The move away from paper alone saves the group collectively close to $2m per month.
• Close to 100 checklists have been customised and backed by over 30 focused, automated analytics reports.
• The time-saving nature of the system and the accuracy of data has prompted Famous Brands to expand the responsibilities of OPUS4business into other areas of their business. The system is being used to manage daily, weekly, and monthly routine operations and now also regional and national campaigns, internal training, and much more

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A distributor of prepaid products and transactional services, this entity of Blue Label Telecoms is represented in over 150,000 distribution points across South Africa, in the formal, independent and informal markets. Being structured as a conglomerate, the business was experiencing legacy and inherited process / system issues and required a deep dive into the business processes. Fraud, governance and risk management were identified as priorities for closing gaps across disparate systems.

What We Did

PPT embarked on a business mapping project to document as-is processes across various business units, in three functional areas:

• Operational planning – Supplier agreements & onboarding, management of hardware and physical stock, management of virtual stock
• Merchant lifecycle – Journey for a new merchant sign up, configuration, hardware and virtual stock assignment, transaction configuration, support, offboarding and asset
  management / rental management
• Transactional – Full journey of system transactions, payment processes and reconciliation, stock replenishment

A register of activities across these areas was built out for workshopping with the broader management team in order to identify which areas should be prioritised based on fraud
risk in the various products. These specific processes were analysed in great detail for both manual operator tasks as well as system functionality and configuration.

Results to Date

• Identified gaps were moved into a project register to kick-off individually tracked tasks for the internal team to implement changes and improve SOPs
• Gaps in system functionality were highlighted and moved into projects for the technology team to assist with improvements in functionality

A few months after the engagement ended, an internal investigation resulted in the uncovering of major fraud in the business, that was reported with some large figures in the
press.

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Massmart is a retail and wholesale group with over 300 stores in 9 sub-Saharan countries. They operate known brands such as Game, Makro and Builder’s Warehouse. After a recent acquisition by Walmart, Massmart has been delisted from the JSE and is now under full control of Walmart. Due to a combination of the acquisition and moving to a brand consolidated model, the Infrastructure Operations team is embarking on a journey to align all processes across brands, internal teams and vendors, with the goal of having a consistent and best-practice processes and end-user SOPs for all activities performed. This also requires consideration of the Walmart standards and audit requirements.

What We Did

PPT conducted a deep dive into the Infrastructure Operations procedures – in the realm of Datacentres, Device management, Networks, Point of Sale, and Servers.

• We built a schedule of relevant processes and procedures, highlighting points of concern, overlap between departments and 3rd party vendors. This was used to workshop the team requirements, and to create a strategy for building out structured processes and information management.
• A major pain point was how critical situations are  We mapped out current and suggested processes, together with a scorecard for managing time and cost implications during the downtime and resolution process.
• We mapped out baselines processes in about 20 areas where existing documentation was either out of date, scattered or did not exist. This required workshopping with the relevant teams to bring accurate and relevant detail into a consolidated view.

Results to Date

• The mapping process is ongoing, where next steps on completed processes will be for the internal teams to operationalise them. The PPT team will work closely to support on iterations required for ongoing change management and improvement.
• The mapping done to date has supported the team in identifying where their current gaps and risks  This has initiated the requirement for building out standard SOP documents to be used across internal teams, stores and vendors, which is the immediate next step in the project

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A leading manufacturer and supplier of abrasives and accessories to the automotive, marine, woodworking, DIY, metal, aeronautical and composite industries offering complete solutions comprising of a broad range of competitively priced, quality products and value-added service that provides premium support. Bulldog Group wanted to remain competitive in the market and to do that, they made the decision to prioritise their digital strategy. To do this; they aligned with PPT Group to create an eCommerce Platform for their subsidiaries; Bulldog Abrasives, Y.E.S and RSB. The objective of this solution was to deploy an online channel that allowed customers to easily view and purchase products and services. To also provide real- time visibility of the full catalogue, stick availability, and specific customer pricing. Along with many additional benefits including increase in profitability.

What We Did

PPT Group did an in-depth analysis of the market and of Bulldog Group and put together a strategy for the implementation of the eCommerce platform that allowed for Bulldog to start seeing customer facing work happen sooner that included processes addressing ordering, stock availability, product catalogues, payments and delivery.

PPT was required to manage the build of this platform with a selected vendor once chosen. PPT Group went through an RFP process and once the software vendor was selected; aligned with the vendor and project managed the software implementation for the Bulldog Abrasives eCommerce Website, as it was the best subsidiary to start with and allowed for minimal work and cost involved once implementation began on Y.E.S and RSB.

Results to Date

• Implementation of Product data integration, Payment Solution, Delivery Process and showcases of the Bulldog Abrasives eCommerce Website

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A leader in its segment in the automotive sector, RSB embarked on a multi-year journey to modernise their shared services; integrate data analytics and business intelligence; launch e-commerce channels; introduce customer facing apps and establish a loyalty and rewards program. RSB has a financial objective to maximise enterprise value over the next five years and a strategic objective to create digital moats and enter new markets. The business was in the process of approving the implementation of a new ERP system that would likely cost $750k and take two years to implement before real business value would accrue.

What We Did

PPT conducted a deep dive into the industry and the RSB business. We crafted an appropriate digital technology strategy aligned to long term business objectives and had this approved by the RSB board. PPT now acts as a trusted advisor to the CEO, deal advisor and incoming shareholder, where we balance long-term vision for the business with what is pragmatically possible from a technology perspective.

Results to Date

• During our evaluation we determined that the proposed ERP was not required – saving the business $750k immediately, and enabling business accretive initiatives to be fast tracked.
• We will launch e-commerce a year ahead of expectation, at 50% of the original
• We have obtained committed capital expenditure of $3

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Spur Corp, a global restaurant operator with over 600 restaurants across 20 countries, recognised the need for a comprehensive eCommerce and loyalty solution for multiple brands. To achieve this, they undertook a full rewrite of their existing solutions, which required strategic oversight and a mature execution framework across internal and external teams, including developers, marketing, and operations.

In addition to this, Spur identified the need to revamp their IT operational function to support the business’s digital sales focus and drive sales through digital channels.

Our partnership with Spur helped them to achieve their objectives and drive business growth through digital channels. We continue to work with them to support their ongoing success.

What We Did

The Spur Technology executive team enlisted our services to manage the launch of their new technology architecture and customer apps across multiple brands. As a trusted management consultancy:

• We took control of the project functions across various teams and formalized processes and procedures to execute effectively within the
• We successfully matured the project function within the IT team to bring a well-defined and structured delivery focus to the multiple teams and external
• This resulted in us being further engaged to take over the entire IT operational function inside of Spur Corp as a fully outsourced

Results to Date

By adopting our project framework and experience, we were able to deliver significant results to Spur, including

• Revamping the project execution framework within the technology team
• Launchingthe new technology stack and brand-specific apps to 3.5 million customers, servicing a growing membership base seeing over 150,000 new app downloads a month
• successfullylaunching a pilot point-of-sale solution being tested across a major brand within the Spur

The positive results achieved by our team have resulted in Spur contracting us to provide program and project management services to the Spur Marketing team. We are proud to continue supporting Spur’s growth and success through our services and look forward to helping more businesses achieve similar outcomes.

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An AgriTech pioneer, leading the frontier in providing advanced data management solutions and insights within the sugar, mining, and timber and transport sectors. With a vision to offer a data platform as a service, they cater to these industries by delivering valuable insights harvested from intricate data streams across Africa. In an era where data-driven decision- making is paramount, Crickmay recognized the need for a sophisticated platform that offers high performance, reliability, and superior data quality by seamlessly orchestrating data from diverse datasets and ensuring real-time, high availability access to data in a user-friendly manner. An additional burden for Crickmay was that their servers and infrastructure was spread across different data centres & providers making it costly, complicated and limiting their ability to scale as needed.

What We Did

We embarked on a transformative journey with Crickmay, focusing on

• StrategicDefinition & Architecture – define the overarching strategy, sculpting a blueprint for the data platform that would serve as the backbone of Crickmay’s
• TeamManagement- took the helm in managing diverse technical teams, ensuring the platform’s establishment was streamlined and efficient.
• InnovativeIntegration – Given the vast industry knowledge and the multiplicity of data sets from various service providers, PPT ensured that the platform was technologically advanced, yet  The aim was to amplify the industry’s knowledge base and provide unhindered access to big data.
• OneEnvironment – We assisted them in moving all of their data, integrations and platform to a new environment which has reduced their overall monthly cost by 30%, and made it easier to manage and maintain as well as giving them the ability to scale easily as their business grows

Results

The newly constructed AgriTech platform surpassed expectations. Not only does it leverage the latest in big data and analytics, but it also brings to the table:

• Enhanced Decision-making- By focusing on the quality of data and reporting, decision-making processes within the industry have been notably
• Knowledge Contribution- The platform is now a beacon of information, contributing immensely to the AgriTech space, both locally and on an international scale
• Real-time Accessibility – With technological innovations embedded within, the platform guarantees real-time and high availability access, ensuring data consumption is effortless
• Crickmay’s platform integrates and collects data from 29 different systems across their Agritech customer base with data totaling 4TB in size consisting of over 200 million rows of data

PPT Group’s collaboration with Crickmay & Associates is a testament to the transformative power of technology when guided by vision, strategy, and expertise. As Crickmay continues to influence the AgriTech sector, PPT Group stands proud of the platform’s role in shaping the industry’s future

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