Seidor Bluekey and Merchant West have partnered to bring financed technology solutions to growing businesses. Business owners know that successful business expansion requires carefully balancing investment in new tools and services with cashflow requirements for daily operations. “One of the challenges our clients face is the ability to invest in value-adding technology solutions for their businesses without impacting monthly cash flow,” says Warwick Hopcroft, Sales Director of Seidor Bluekey, a leading African SAP Business One partner.

“The returns on technology solutions that drastically increase an organisation’s productivity, efficiency and ability to offer enterprise-grade services cannot be overplayed, but the fact remains that these systems generally require an up-front investment,” says Hopcroft. Technology finance solutions for SMEs To address this need, Seidor Bluekey has partnered with Merchant West, one of South Africa’s leading independent financial services providers, to give qualifying and interested local SMEs access to financial assistance that will support the upgrade of their infrastructure or to implement new business management systems. Merchant West has been providing bespoke business finance services for over 20 years, and has a division dedicated to technology-related transactions.

“We partnered with Merchant West because their consultants have extensive knowledge and experience in the technology space,” says Hopcroft. “They understand the general products and offerings that businesses may require in the technology space, and that these solutions help businesses grow, increasing turnover and profits, and giving them the ability to become bigger players within their markets, with little impact on their monthly cash flow.” Keith Watson, Managing Director of Asset Finance at Merchant West, says the finance house is open to applications from businesses of all sizes and operating in all economic sectors.

“While we prefer to do business with companies which have been trading profitably for three years or longer, we will consider applications from businesses with a shorter trading history,” he says. Financing growth Hopcroft believes there are a number of different solutions that Seidor Bluekey’s clients could use asset finance to implement, while benefiting from both Merchant West’s and Seidor Bluekey’s expert assistance. “Asset finance can be used to overhaul an entire network infrastructure with new servers, computers and network connections, or to implement a new business management system, such as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system,” he explains.

“We believe this partnership will also assist clients to roll out larger technology projects that cover areas like warehouse automation and management, customer relationship management or human capital management.” Merchant West offers flexible repayment options on either a monthly or quarterly structure.

Business owners can choose from an operating lease to finance their technology, or a rent-to-own option in which they have the choice to take ownership of the assets at the end of the lease period.