In August last year the Computershare leadership team met for a strategy session at Mount Grace.
They workshopped, played snooker and darts, watched the Springboks beat the Wallabies in the Tri-Nations - and produced a mission statement. Crisper and shorter than many of its kind, it reflects how far Computershare management has progressed in taking the company beyond its traditional focus.
Its mission now is "to provide a world-class service in database management for financial market participants".
CEO Stan Lorge says the greatest achievement of the strategy weekend was "to set us on a path that focuses on strategic growth projects".
This may sound obvious, but it was an important stage in the reinvention of a company whose traditional market, the certified share registry business, had been declining in the electronic environment.
Since 1999, the first year that Computershare operated in SA, the company has had to bed down a series of mergers and acquisitions and deal with the concomitant operational challenges.
"Last year," says Lorge, "we were able to maximise merger synergies, cutting costs and growing income to turn our bottom line from a negative into a positive."
To stay ahead of the game, Computershare needed to look afresh at what business it wanted to be in. From providing an essentially secretarial and administrative service, it decided to use its core asset - database management - as the foundation for diversification into a range of value-adding activities.
Says Lorge: "For a while we have offered far more than the functions of a transfer secretary. Today, with the added-value services we are offering, we are a one-stop shareholder services shop."
Lorge points out that this doesn't mean the traditional function has disappeared.
Following the JSE's move in the late 1990s to dematerialisation (moving from paper scrip to electronic scrip), Computershare became the country's only share registrar capable of dealing with both electronic and paper-held scrip. Its comprehensive share registry management system remains a core activity, from preregistration through to dividend payments and complex corporate actions. The proprietary Scrip software system maintains records of company share registers in real-time on a single database.
In a field where reliable and secure information storage is vital to business, Computershare does not take chances.
It has a fully functional disaster recovery site in Randburg, and electronic tapes are stored off-site every day. The Scrip global registry system is backed up every day and stored at a disaster recovery site in the UK.
There's also a dedicated global audit team that constantly monitors transactions for fraud and money-laundering.
New initiatives focus on broader shareholder activities; they include administration of employee share plans, with an important empowerment dimension (see page 8); a trading desk for shareholders to buy and sell shares, (see page 6); a desk outsourcing alternative for JSE members (see page 6); a specialised AGM support service (see page 14); and an analytics division, which specialises in shareholder identification, analysis and intelligence on capital markets.
A recent global acquisition has brought Pepper, a specialist in stakeholder relationship management, into the company fold. Lorge is excited about its application, especially in the context of black economic empowerment (BEE) analysis and ratings. "There's no doubt that a proper analysis of BEE shareholdings is becoming vital in SA," he says.
Another innovation is eTree, an electronic communications service that encourages shareholders to support a sustainable environment. For every shareholder that opts to get information online, a tree is planted.
Last year the global initiative won the Australian prime minister's National Landcare Award; locally Computershare has joined forces with Food & Trees for Africa. It is a simple indication, says Lorge, of how innovation and sustainability have become tenets of the company's strategy.
For Lorge, it could not be a more fitting time to be lifting the company's sights.
"The nature of shareholder relations is changing dramatically," he says. "There are daily examples of this in increased shareholder activism and demands for greater corporate governance. Companies today need to be prepared for investors to be vigilant - interrogating company resolutions, corporate governance and even business strategy."
One of the biggest challenges for Lorge in broadening the business model was to change the company's mind-set. He needed to turn clerks into entrepreneurs, to get people thinking "service" rather than "function". Talking to the executives who lead Computershare's 550 -strong team, it is clear that much progress has been made. Most employees were swept along by the new challenge; some found it difficult to adapt from the old nine-to-five mentality and left.
Lorge is clearly a believer in the dictum that a leader should be visible and accessible to staff at all levels. More to the point, he has ensured that the structures and processes are in place to turn this admirable theory into reality (see page 10).
He has also ensured that the work environment is conducive to creativity, with thoughtful renovation of the head office building and its immediate surrounds.
Lorge came to Computershare via a career in stockbroking. After doing his BCom at Wits, he completed articles at Coopers & Lybrand and then worked at Kaplan & Stewart for 15 years, where he became finance director and the second-largest shareholder. From 1998-2000 he was compliance officer and MD of O'Flaherty Sundelson. He joined Computershare in 2000 and became CEO in 2004.
Lorge's experience and attention to detail has paid dividends. Staff are unfailingly courteous and enthusiastic.
And Computershare passes one test that is often failed by companies that claim a great service ethic: the man at the entrance to the underground garage in downtown Jo'burg's Anderson Street not only has your car registration details, but has already filled in the form when you get there and greets you cheerfully by name.
