Company Announcement - iSolve Business Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Partner, has acquired Foster Melliar, a pillar in the South African IT Best Practice Community. iSolve’s Learning Solutions division has merged with Foster Melliar. Both companies are subsidiaries of the Morvest Group. The newly formed ‘Foster Melliar Learning Solutions', a Level 1 B-BBEE company, will provide end-to-end solutions within the IT sector, with a specific focus on skills development and knowledge transfer. The new company, a certified Microsoft Gold training partner, will also offer consulting across IT business processes, methodologies, assessments, governance and risk management.

Peter Clark, MD of Foster Melliar Learning Solutions says the merger of these two industry leaders has resulted in a unique training and consulting partner that focuses on people as well as IT best practice: “Bringing these two businesses together has strengthened our offering significantly. We now can provide an integrated portfolio of IT best practice processes, skills and knowledge solutions to enable organisations to deliver world-class information technology services. Clark says that Foster Melliar Learning Solutions will remain focused on skills development and workplace knowledge transfer from the novice to the experienced professional: “The merger brings a perfect balance, while the Learning Solutions business trains individuals on Microsoft toolsets that are used for implementations, the Foster Melliar arm complies with implementing best practice IT processes within any organisation.”

He says that the approach addresses all aspects of a business, offering a unique end-to-end training solution: “Our offering is rare, with very few training institutions able to offer the same portfolio of solutions. We do training, we do the consulting and we help with implementations, thereby improving capabilities and performance,” says Clark.  “We are also able to assist companies in complying with the skills development and socio-economic development elements as per the revised B-BBEE codes of good practice.”

Foster Melliar Learning Solutions has a combined pedigree of 35 years. The “new” combined team will operate from premises in Sunninghill and will be under the leadership of Peter Clark and Adrienne Steyn, who will head up the product management and marketing for the new company. “It is widely accepted that IT is not just a department anymore, but much rather an integrated business imperative that is essential to deliver customer value. Foster Melliar has two decades of experience in IT business process governance and risk. This brings immense value to the new training company and addresses a very real requirement within South Africa,” says Steyn.

She says that while Foster Melliar Learning Solutions has seen the need within the public and private service sector, covering banking, insurance and financial companies, they anticipate that the need for end-to-end training solutions is far more wide spread, across all business sectors employing IT to deliver customer value.