“We are part of the Tsebo Group that operates across 25 countries from South Africa all the way to Saudi Arabia. Our group has 34,000 staff members and we use those employees to suit the needs of our clients,” explains Tsebo Facilities Solutions CEO, John Wentzel.
As we discovered last month, the facilities management industry is not an easy place to operate, especially when the economy is performing poorly. Management are quick to cut spending where possible and this is usually not a wise strategy. Facilities management is today, more than ever, a hugely important factor in the success of any business and when top quality service is provided, companies can thrive and make use of happy employees, happy customers and cost savings and efficiencies.
Offering a unique and industry-leading portfolio of services to some of the biggest clients in the industry, Tsebo Facilities Solutions manages more than 4000 sites in Africa across a range of sectors including leisure, retail, commercial, industrial sectors and more. “Our ability to optimise work environments and the supporting services of an organisation enables our clients to achieve their objectives more efficiently, and at a lower cost,” the company says.
As part of the Tsebo Outsourcing group, formed in 1971, Tsebo Facilities Solutions has a robust history that can stand up to any other company in the industry. CEO, John Wentzel explains that the company is demonstrating its strength in a current project in the city of Tshwane.
“The single biggest initiative that we are busy with at this point in time is the construction of Tshwane House which is the municipal headquarters of the City of Pretoria,” he says. “We are part of the consortium that’s building that, it’s costing in excess of R1 billon and we will operate it for 25 years post construction. It should be complete by the end of the year and operation and management of the building will commence in 2017.”
According to the Municipality, ‘Tshwane House, a modern, forward-looking municipal centre, will bring local government closer to its people, and is the first step in rejuvenating the inner city.
‘A part of the old Munitoria building was destroyed by fire in March 1997. This block was never rebuilt. As a result, the staff of Munitoria were scattered in the inner-city. The building contained inadequate space regimes, was not environmentally conducive and was not socially cohesive.
‘The scope of the project entails the demolition of the old, inferior Munitoria, a complete new design, construction, financing and other defined services including operations and facilities management’.
HISTORIC STRENGTH
Tsebo Facilities Solutions is able to contribute to ‘big name’ projects like this thanks to its track record of consistently dealing with similar clients and its industry-leading reach.
“We’ve been around for a number of years as a division and a group,” says Wentzel. “Many of our clients have been with us for a number of years so the first thing that separates us from our competitors is that we always stand by our clients. Even when the client is going through difficulties, we will stand by them.
“Secondly, the reputation of this group has been built on years of consistent delivery in a manner that our clients know that they can trust. We are ethical, we have values and we live by those values.
“Thirdly, we have scale. Our ability to provide services is close to unlimited. Whether it’s cleaning or security or catering; whether it’s in Cape Town or Kigali or Congo; we can do everything for you,” he says.
Thanks to this reputation and position in the industry, Wentzel says that the company often does not need to actively market itself through traditional methods as word of mouth and referrals keep the orders rolling in.
MANAGING GROWTH
Facilities management is a business that can grow quickly. All it takes is a team with a knowledge of the industry and a list of contacts and a small business can be created. In fact, we often see this happen but unfortunately, the much more difficult task is keeping the company on a growth path. This is something that Tsebo has managed to do consistently for the last decade.
“The Tsebo Group grew out of a catering business and as it expanded into complimentary services, facilities management was the next company so within the group, facilities management is the second oldest division. We directly employ around 1600 people but we also manage around 5500 sub-contract staff.
“Over the last decade, at group level, we’ve achieved double digit growth consistently irrespective of the economic downturn. Where we are right now, across the African continent, our turnover is measured in billions and the company has exceeded targets over the last ten years.
“The underlying challenge that a business like ours always has to face is that our services are delivered through people. Our biggest challenge is ensuring, notwithstanding the myriad of things that go on, that our staff understand that the primary responsibility is to serve the client,” Wentzel explains.
This management of people and instilling the values of the company into employees is a huge part of the Tsebo set-up, not just with facilities solutions, but across all divisions of the group.
“Our single most important investment is investment in our people and we measure that by how much we spend on training and development and we consistently spend in excess of 2% of our turnover. That’s to ensure staff are correctly and continually trained,” reiterates Wentzel.
“Because we’re a services business, we don’t invest in infrastructure. We don’t have fancy building or huge fleets of cars – we work mostly on our client’s sites so we invest in systems as we need to keep track of thousands of sites and people.”
QUALITY SERVICE
Over the years, Tsebo has become a trusted name, synonymous with quality and excellence and that reputation was enhanced further earlier this year after the company claimed the winning place in the coveted SAFMA Awards ‘Excellence in FM’ category – the SAFMA Awards’ highest accolade.
Through one of its Public Private Partnerships, Tirasano, Tsebo Facilities Solutions picked up the award at a celebration alongside its peers in Sandton. SAFMA said the company had ‘met and exceeded the expected role of FM within a PPP’.
Achieving success like this pays testament to the unrelenting drive at Tsebo for client satisfaction.
“Our core business is to ensure that the non-core components of client’s business is looked after so that they can focus on their core business.
“We know that when we manage a hospital our primary mission is to help ensure that patients are cured – everything that we do in a hospital is geared towards achieving a client’s ultimate goal,” says Wentzel.
Providing a full list of soft, hard and business support services, Tsebo Facilities Solutions cites experience from a wide-range of industry sectors, reinforcing the idea that it can become a valuable partner to companies operating across all different areas.
“We’ve got experience form the last 40 years working across just about every industry – it’s probably easier to list the industries that we haven’t worked in,” says Wentzel. “We have significant exposure in the facilities management space to financial services, leisure, healthcare, retail, government and the company is also involved in Public Private Partnerships where we work with partners and governments to create infrastructure so that we can provide to governments in a public-private partnership over a 25-30 year deal term. There isn’t really an industry we haven’t had exposure to over the last 40 years but these are the ones in which we are most active right now.”
THE FUTURE
As we discovered last month after speaking to Broll, facilities management does have a big future in Africa. As many big-name international brands are attracted to the continent for its growing populations, growing incomes, growing middle classes and important first mover advantages, facilities managers are seeing high-profile potential customers entering the market. Because of this, Africa forms a big part of the growth strategy for Tsebo Facilities Solutions.
“When we look at the growth we’ve achieved across the African continent, it’s primarily been acquisitive growth. The acquisition targets are identified by each of the individual divisions in the group. For example, the acquisitions we’ve made in West and East Africa were identified by our division. We would do the review, the initial inspection and then we would discuss with the group whether it was appropriate.
“At the facilities solutions division, our focus is on growing the business across the African continent. Whilst the market in Africa for FM is very much in its infancy compared to SA, there’s an opportunity for a major player to emerge and we believe that we are well positioned to be that major player. We have a number of global clients who still look at Africa as a place that growth will come from in the next 10-15 years and we want to position ourselves as a premier facilities management company across the whole continent that can deliver facilities management at global standards and become the go to company when global companies look to expand here,” explains Wentzel.
Of course, there is also another big factor to consider when planning for growth and that is the ever-increasing influence of technology and its impact on the client. Obviously, it can make things smoother and cheaper from an operational perspective but it can also help to create new customer expectations. Wentzel says that this has been the most significant change in the industry in recent years and the true value of the portfolio of services offered by Tsebo are truly realised when the client engages with the facilities manager, aligning the strategies of both organisations.
“The rate of change and the impact of technology has moved faster than ever. Our clients want things faster, they know more, they have a better understanding of value, complexity in the business has risen exponentially, so clients want us to be more responsive and want innovation. Because of this, the dynamic of the industry has changed and clients have migrated from viewing facilities management as an off the shelf commodity to understanding that facilities is probably the second most expensive item that a company runs. If your facilities manager doesn’t understand your strategy then it’s always going to be a weak point. Our best projects come when we sit with the c-suite of a company and understand their strategy and they understand ours and they learn how we can contribute to their strategy,” he concludes.