Britehouse shines in Deloitte 2011 Best Company to Work for Surv
Britehouse shines in Deloitte 2011 Best Company to Work for Surv
Britehouse, a Convergence Partners investee, is still one of the best companies to work for, according to Deloitte’s annual survey 2011. The fact that all levels of staff are empowered to contribute to company strategy makes Britehouse SSD, Britehouse’s specialist SAP division and a leader in mobile business software applications, one of the best companies to work for.
Says Britehouse SSD CEO, Paolo Masselli: “In spite of an extremely disruptive year in which we acquired several companies and then merged nine into four, we still came fifth in the Small to Medium category in Deloitte’s 2011 Best Company to Work For survey – and second in the Business and Professional Services category.
“This was the first year in which we entered the Business and Professional Services category. We maintained our position in areas in which we’ve always had a good standing, and we jumped straight to the top echelons in consulting.
“All of which was possible only because our employees are expected to take responsibility for themselves in getting the job done. For some people, not being micro-managed is frightening. For Britehouse achievers, relying on their own initiative is the only way to live and work, and they revel in it. They also appreciate the fact that our management structure is pretty flat. So their input is valued, and can actually change the company’s strategy.”
In most organisations, retaining staff enthusiasm in the midst of turning over more than R400 million, while simultaneously repositioning to increase growth to half a billion rand in the next 12 to 18 months, would have been more than challenging. But Britehouse employees are committed to the company’s objective of increasing annuity income.
Until 2011, 80% of the company’s revenue was project-based. “The IT landscape is now shifting strongly towards software as a service and, eventually, to the cloud,” Masselli says. “In the process, the need for bespoke systems is dwindling, and the need for outsourced or hosted systems is increasing – and, along with that, the need for support of entire systems.
“Organisations are feeling the need to be able to take their systems for granted so as to focus on optimising their solutions. Some, in fact, just want the output of the solutions, and are looking for someone reliable and innovative to look after both the systems and the solutions that run on them.
“We’re particularly well positioned to do both, because some of our subsidiaries have always either hosted SAP solutions, or managed business processes. And, in most of our client interactions, we’ve had to supply a significant measure of innovation and optimisation support services. So, it’s been a matter of repackaging what we already had in a more integrated way, and filling in a few gaps here and there.
“We might be a bigger ship now, but it’s always going to be a tight one. Our operational philosophy doesn’t change. We’re still exclusively delivery-orientated because we want long-term relationships with our clients and we believe that giving them what they need in as short a timeframe as possible is the best way to encourage them to use us again.
“It’s an extremely disciplined work ethos that creates a great deal of pressure for our employees. But they never get bored. The credit for getting a job done on time and on budget always goes to our staff. And they thrive on it.”