South African software company Praxis Computing has developed custom software for State-owned defence industrial group Denel to assist in its marketing function. “The software we’ve developed for Denel is called Deal Launcher. It puts crucial information at the fingertips of the marketing professionals as well as enabling executives to have the bird’s-eye view they need,” reports Praxis CEO Yugasen Naidoo. “It’s very new and is being rolled out at the moment. We developed it over the past 12 months.”

While Deal Launcher is a product for Denel, Praxis can provide the functionality to any other company interested in similar capabilities. The company’s clients for various software already include government departments (such as Education and National Treasury), nongovernmental organisations and foundations (including the Nelson Mandela Foundation) and private- sector businesses such as Advtech, Bidvest and Mustek.

“We’re looking to provide solutions which solve business problems – for example, we’ve developed software for Bidvest, which has 1 100 companies,” he points out. “This software enables the financial management of group phone bills for all those companies at the touch of a single button. It used to take them three days to do this and require two accountants with spreadsheets!”

“Generally, we do bespoke software development – specific solutions for specific organisations,” he explains. Founded some 20 years ago, Praxis is organised into three divisions – Open Source & Development, Network Infrastructure and the Financial Systems Department. “The defence business falls under Open Source & Development, which develops new software. We do work with both open source products and proprietary products. We find open source a more interesting area to work in, these days. Why we like open source software a lot is because we have total access to it, so we can quickly build a product.”

“Praxis is constantly keeping up to date,” states COO Lisa Herbert. “Over the last few years we have developed the ability to adapt very quickly, in both solutions and technologies. This has really driven our growth. We can now easily offer solutions with the latest leading- edge technologies.

“We’re very proud that we have exported software to India,” highlights Naidoo. “We work across Africa and we’re now working with GE in the US. Information technology (IT) companies have a different point of view to manufacturing companies; our main job is knowledge – we know how to move it around, how to use it. The client comes to us with a challenge; we would then decide what the best technology to meet that challenge would be and how we would address it.”

The company employs some 80 staff. “We have lots of young, smart people. We have lots of fun doing our work,” he affirms. “Praxis is very diverse – diverse cultures, diverse attitudes, diverse management styles and we generally tend to feed off each other’s positive attributes,” states Herbert. “We have good staff retention, which is one of the most important things in an IT company. We’ve had a number of young people leave Praxis, get further experience elsewhere and then come back to us. We seek to develop our people and aid them in reaching their goals in life.”