The merger of two of South Africa’s successful independent Salesforce partners, CloudSmiths and Ideas Incorporated, is set to drive adoption of the world’s most trusted cloud computing and CRM technology to new heights.
CloudSmiths and Ideas Incorporated are both Gold Salesforce Consulting Partners. Together, they offer organisations from across the economic spectrum proven skills and experience across all aspects of Salesforce clouds with the ability to provide full, end-to-end integration, applications, development, training, service and support.
Kim Fletterman, founder and CEO of Ideas Incorporated, and CloudSmiths’ CEO Derek Hughes – both of whom are unashamedly passionate Salesforce evangelists having been Salesforce customers and users prior to establishing their respective companies – believe the merger will provide an additional boost to Salesforce development and adoption in Southern Africa.
“The combination of CloudSmiths and Ideas Incorporated is exciting for our customers in Africa,” says Stephen Bradford, vice-president: alliances and channels EMEA atSalesforce. “We’ve seen increasing demand for regional systems integrators able to deliver transformative projects that empower organisations to connect to their customers in new ways.
“This merger creates a strong reseller for Salesforce in Africa and thus supports our strategy of having a local partner ecosystem in rapidly growing emerging markets,” he adds.
The Salesforce market is only about a decade old in South Africa. Ideas Incorporated was established in 2009, and is one of the first Salesforce partners in the country.
Today, as a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner and Registered ISV (Independent Software Vendor), Ideas Incorporated is a leading systems integrator in the region with deep skills in developing business applications using only Salesforce technology.
“The fast-growing market and increasingly large and complex customer requirements demand service providers with greater depth and breadth. I believe the merger will accomplish this, using the strong foundation that Ideas Incorporated has built,” Fletterman says.
Although CloudSmiths was launched in 2014, it previously merged with another long standing Cape Town-based Salesforce specialist, SFD Consulting. The company has grown quickly becoming a Salesforce Gold Consulting Partner in less than a year.
“As competitors in the market, we kept bumping heads, but began to recognise that our customer-centric philosophies and business ethos appeared to be remarkably similar. We both realise that in today’s tough business environment – and particularly in a market with enormous growth potential – it made sense to join forces with a like-minded company with complementary skills and expertise if we were to take the business to the next level,” Hughes says.
Fletterman concurrs, pointing out that whereas Ideas Incorporated was particularly strong in the large and small company sectors – particularly financial services and NGOs – CloudSmiths had focused more on the mid-sized organisations. “Together, we can now service the entire spectrum of companies, from very large to small,” she explains.
“There is no doubt that the cloud-based market is set to explode in South Africa, and throughout the continent now that fast broadband is becoming an affordable reality. This deal sets us up to lead the charge,” Hughes concludes.
