Datacentrix's bigger rivals must look at it with envy. While many of the large, white-owned and managed companies in the IT sector struggle to come to terms with the challenges of empowerment and transformation, Pretoria-based Datacentrix has been there, done that and got the T-shirt. (See table on ICT.)
In March 2003 Empowerdex rated Datacentrix as SA's most empowered listed company. This year it's ranked fifth overall and third in its sector.
Funnily enough, Datacentrix hadn't styled itself as an empowerment company until 18 months ago. It started marketing its credentials only when it realised the market didn't view it as being empowered.
The company, which listed on the JSE Securities Exchange in September 1998, just a week after the markets collapsed, was one of the first SA technology firms to sell equity to a black partner.
"We didn't do this in anticipation of the charter or legislation," says executive chairman Gary Morolo. "We just thought it would help position us as the best IT company."
Datacentrix started life in Pretoria in 1972 as a mainframe bureau, trading under the name NRB Computer Systems.
Datakor, the now-defunct IT conglomerate, bought the company in 1987 and seven years later, with Datakor's unbundling, MD Gerhard Uys and sales & marketing director Klaas Lammers bought the business. In 1997 they sold a 51% equity stake to black-owned Co-ordinated Network Investments (CNI and now AKA Capital; its stake has been diluted to 45%). At the time, the company had 60 employees. This has subsequently grown to nearly 500, of which 44% are black. Five of the company's eleven directors are black.
Morolo, also a director of AKA Capital, says Datacentrix was relatively easy to transform because it was small. "We weren't dealing with an entrenched culture. It was a young, dynamic, fast-growing company," he says.
For Datacentrix's bigger rivals, transformation will be much more difficult, Morolo says. Finding a black equity partner that will also participate at an operational level is a big challenge, he says. But it's not half as difficult as transforming an organisation.
"If you're a large company, it's damn tough to do this stuff without causing big disruptions to your business. Datacentrix was almost handed a clean slate and we could mould the company in the direction we wanted to take it."
That doesn't mean Datacentrix is standing still. Transformation is a "movable feast", Morolo says. The company wants more black employees in middle and senior management and more black front-office workers, such as account managers and senior technicians.
It will try to develop these skills internally, rather than poach them from elsewhere.
Morolo says Datacentrix's competitors are targeting its senior staff, with some "outrageous" offers being made.
"People don't leave because of this, but because they feel they don't have the opportunity to grow or feel they don't belong in the company. Right now, thankfully, the sun is shining a little brighter at Datacentrix than it is elsewhere."
Morolo says poaching is a short-term and unsustainable approach. He feels there's an obligation on companies to grow the pool of black skills. This, he says, requires patience.
"We are an SA company. We are not here temporarily while we consider the broader opportunities globally. We're not hoping that empowerment is simply a fad that will go away. It's a fact of life and part of doing business in this country."
