IDU Holdings (https://www.IDUsoft.com/), the financial planning and analysis software company, has set its sights on replicating its success in Southern and Eastern African countries in other markets in Africa. Its recent restructuring, including the merger with IDU KZN, has set the company up for this next phase of growth. Partnerships will be key to the expansion strategy.

Margie Whitten joined IDU Holdings’ senior management team as CRO (Africa) at the start of June 2022. Whitten was previously the director of IDU KZN where she successfully grew IDU’s customer base in Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, South Africa (KZN), Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. She will bring this experience to drive growth in existing and new African countries.

IDU is ideally set up to implement this expansion strategy. Over the last two years it has optimised its flagship product, idu-Concept, to meet budgeting and forecasting requirements from customers in any industry. During the pandemic, IDU customers used idu-Concept to speed up budgeting cycles from months to weeks, and forecasting cycles were reduced to days if not hours. This allowed IDU customers to have the information they needed at their fingertips to make good, data-driven decisions, and the flexibility to change direction when markets shifted. Non-financial managers were happy not to be bogged down in preparing budgets. Further, with the merger, all IDU customers are now supported by a consolidated helpdesk, and have access to the depth and breadth of experience and knowledge within the IDU team.

“African business leaders recently predicted that sub-Saharan Africa will beat IMF forecasts for GDP growth in 2022 and 2023,” said Whitten. “Forecasting, budgeting and planning are going to remain key business activities for the companies driving this growth, allowing them to avoid risks and take advantage of the opportunities that are out there. IDU not only makes these financial processes far less painful and time-consuming, but it also gives companies the flexibility and agility to navigate a far from predictable post-pandemic economy.”

“I am delighted to have someone of Margie Whitten’s calibre and experience heading up our expansion and growth in Africa. She has the technical and the business know-how to help companies solve their budgeting and forecasting challenges, and achieve a rapid ROI,” said Kevin Phillips, CEO of IDU. “As a company that was founded in South Africa, with software that was developed locally, we are well-positioned to understand the dynamics of the business challenges in the various African markets and are well-located to support our customers.”

IDU’s operations, including support, are in Cape Town, South Africa, and in a similar time zone to the rest of the region. Through its partner network, which IDU is currently actively growing, the company has a good understanding of the local contexts in which businesses operate.

Whitten will visit Gaborone (2 August 2022), Lusaka (11 August 2022) and Kampala (16 August 2022), in conjunction with our partners 4Site/AccTech Botswana, Zambia and Uganda. To set up a meeting email margie@idusoft.com.