SovTech, a software development company and start-up incubator based in Johannesburg, has recently stepped into the software as a service industry and is looking to shake things up. Having focussed predominantly on custom software development in the past, the company has picked up on several shortfalls in the South African business software industry and is excited to tackle these shortfalls and disrupt the conventional industry players with their premium product range.

With an experienced team and valuable customer feedback, SovTech entered the fray by developing an initial set of three turnkey products that are aimed at small to medium sized businesses. The products that are currently available to clients are a CRM product, a document management system, and a marketing automation product. With five more products in advanced stages of development, the software company is looking to offer their product suite as a set of solutions for any business needs. “SovTech has been looking at the software-as-a-service market for a while. We have had a few companies approach us in the past for various projects and could not help them as they did not have the budget for a full custom software solution.

SaaS allows us to offer our clients a great product that can be delivered quickly and at a great price point”, says the person spear-heading the SovTech Products business unit, Brendan Stott. While the company was hesitant to shift some focus away from the core business offering, Gerald Neves, CEO of SovTech, had this to say on the bold move: “The final decision to move into the SaaS industry was essentially made for us when we saw the lack of providers in the industry and the demand that we received from our current clients. We are excited to be able to build on the relationships we have with our current customers and offer more value for money to them and any new customers.” One of the first products to be in clients’ hands is SovTech’s Sales & CRM Cloud.

This cloud-based CRM that has been developed by SovTech to cater for small to medium enterprises that are looking at improving the quality of the data that they receive from clients, as well as to decrease the amount of time spent on generating invoices and creating reminders to follow up on client interactions. The Sales & CRM Cloud product features tools that allow sales managers to gain insight into the activities of the sales people, allowing managers to take proactive steps to improve the sales process in the company and identifying choke points and congestion in the sales pipeline- thereby increasing the overall sales of the business.

Sales people are more productive with the quote and invoice generator that optimises those processes to ensure that sales people can speak to more prospects than ever before. The products that have been released are already being used by multiple companies and users and SovTech is receiving great feedback to improve the products.

SovTech has always placed a strong emphasis on listening to customers and ensuring that a software solution develops with the customer’s changing needs. This culture will ensure that further upgrades and developments of the platform will serve the greater client base and allow the team at SovTech to offer the best service and products to their clients.