Today, Itec is an integrated digital imaging solutions provider with an annual aggregate turnover of R800 million importing and distributing the Konica Minolta range of products into Southern Africa. Together with its dealer partners, Itec has established 50 dealerships and created 650 employment opportunities in the process. Itec is also the fastest growing player in its industry and ranks third in terms of South African market share. Over the past 18 months, major achievements have been brand building, and the group roll-out of the launch of Itec Telecoms and Itec Finance under the umbrella brand.
Quite a story for a business that was started 13 years ago by Sasfin Equipment Rental Supplier Jacques Duyver, with total assets of a desk, telephone, motor car and total determination!
What is Jacques’ advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
The first maxim, is that there is no alternative to hard work!
You cannot do everything that needs doing all by yourself, yet just throwing bodies at a challenge is absolutely not the answer. You have to surround yourself with passionately committed people. This extends further to business partners and strategic alliances that will help you achieve this end. For example in Itec’s case we have a strong relationship with Sasfin thereby offering our clients an alternative to rent our equipment by paying a smaller monthly payment for a fixed period of time. Itec Finance was launched some 12-months ago with Sasfin acting as a strategic friend and alliance.
Great business visions and strategy, very often evolve from very humble origins. How hard and smart you work at this humble beginning will more than anything else determine how big and bright the business could and will be into the future. As we have grown we have indeed developed a vision of where we want the business to go but this vision will always be a "work-in-progress."
Aligning yourself with mentors who will lend their experience to your business environment. In Itec’s case we found this mentorship in Prof Gerrie Roodt, Chairman of the Itec Group and Roland Sassoon of Sasfin who similarly mentored us on the ins and outs of an asset financing business.
In terms of stakeholder management, one should concentrate on what one sees as the dominant stakeholders which are: Shareholders. Employees, Customers and Financial Institutions.
These four interact in a virtuous circle with each other. The successful management of these four gives the platform and resources from and with which to manage all other stakeholders.
It is important, at all times, to understand that the basic truth of business (and of life in fact!) is the relationship between risk and reward - you simply cannot have the one without the other. Entrepreneurs perhaps understand this truth better than most.
Finally, for the budding entrepreneur, you have to have a deeply rooted understanding that success is a function of what you do for yourself with what you have. One of the great definitions of entrepreneurship is "The relentless pursuit of business opportunity regardless of the resources that are currently available as well as the constraints that exist in the environment."
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