Take innovative steps to build delightful software for your customers

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Gugulethu

We continue now and our entrepreneur on the move this afternoon, is Kgomotso Sediane, M.D. at Khabane Majestic Consulting. Now Khabane Majestic Consulting is a black female owned software development company that specializes in delivering complex and interactive customer facing software, which includes but not limited to mobile applications and websites. Now, what sets them apart in the industry is their innovative delivery model that is centered around user research and experience design. Kgomotso, thank you very much for your time this afternoon.

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Kgomotso

Thank you for having me. I think maybe you need to break down some of this. I mean, there's quite a few terms here that can be very confusing, maybe. Let's just start with what exactly you do. What's agile software development and consulting? OK, so basically what we do, we build software and we use the agile framework as a support to build the software. And basically within that framework, there's a couple of things that we use that help us build the software that is delightful to our customers.

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Kgomotso

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So one of the things that we do is, basically our software is centered around user research, but before we build that piece of software, we make sure that we interact with the users and make sure that whatever it is that we are building is relevant and appropriate for those users. And then we build their user experience around those customers as well. So whatever it is that we build, we build it to be delightful to your customers. So not only is it going to be functional in terms of being able to do what is expected to do, but it's also going to cost us the sense of you delight to your customers and they would want to use it more frequently, thats basically what it means.

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Gugulethu

Okay, do you have a specific target market? I mean, take me through some of your clients. So, the team that we work with, we call ourselves the Majestics. The Majestics are actually very ambitious and they are very courageous. So we don't have a specific industry that we work in. We actually work in whatever industry that has those courageous CEOs and CTOs who want to build these amazing pieces of software or things that have actually never been built or are considered to be very complicated. Usually when I describe what KMC does, I usually say, you know, if you can think of cake boss, you know, cake boss.

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Kgomotso

Yes. We are the cake boss. Ah, software development. Ah. So regardless of what you want we can do it, we can build it no matter what the complexity is. We are the guys who can do it for you. OK, so, so I mean it's interesting that you have Majestics and you call yourself logistics and it seems like you have lots of females within the company. It's quite impressive because technology is still very male dominated.

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Kgomotso

Yes, and as an organization, we've actually made a very conscious decision to be biased towards women. And even most of the guys at KMC are very much more biased towards women as well. We seek to actually create an environment that encourages a safe space for women. So you are allowed and you are encouraged to be a woman, be who you are going through the stuff that you go through, be a makoti, be a mother, be a wife, but be a technologist as well.

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Kgomotso

And we will create that space for you as well within the organization.

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Kgomotso

I love that. But did you face any challenges? Because, you know, there's always the stereotype. There's always that apprehension. I mean, you know, for instance, if you want the typical financial advisor, people tend to want to go to somebody older because they have more experience. Why not go to someone younger? Was that a challenge for you, as you know, with getting clients to trust you as a female led company as opposed to men in the same space?

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Kgomotso

I think it was actually much more difficult for me as I was growing up and growing in my career in I.T. cause I also come from an I.T. background as well. So I just kind of happened to end up on the operational side of the company where I run the company. But it was much more challenging in that space, but I found that as I grew older, maybe it's an age thing. (audible laughter)

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Gugulethu

Sadly, all of these things come of age, yes.

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Kgomotso

Maybe he's an age thing. I've never really experienced that. But what I have experienced with the ladies who work at KMC is that they even the guys, they have seen that happen. And what I love about the guys at KMC is that the guys will stand up for the ladies and they will say to the client, I think Nomcebo wanted to make this point, please allow her to to speak to speak her mind, so they will make sure that they give that lady space. They will actually go out of their way to create a safe space for the ladies at KMC as well.

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Gugulethu

But from the from the client side, I mean, are you finding that they're changing their mindsets and how they look at women and respecting women in this field?

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Kgomotso

I think I see that's slowly happening. Definitely. I do see it happen. It's not as fast as it should happen, but there is a change. I mean, there has been when I think of some of the engagements that I've had with the client, where I said to to the ladies, you know what, I'll take a step back and I need you to take a lead.

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Kgomotso

I'll be around just to support you. And I need you to take a lead. And I've seen that change. But it's what I've noticed is that it comes easier for the guys to get acceptance than it does for the ladies to get acceptance at the clients. So the ladies have to work a little bit harder. But what I love about KMC is that the guys with them support them, you know, which it would have been great if most companies had a similar kind of structure in place.

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Gugulethu

Yeah, it sounds like you have a great team, there's quite a few demands placed on you. I mean, this is serious, I mean, if the technology fails, it becomes a real problem. And your business is designed on making everything easier and creating that enjoyable experience. How do you how do you foster a culture of delivering excellence within the business?

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Kgomotso

What I love you know, I think it was one of the quotes from Steve Jobs who said that when when you hire smart people, allow them to have space to express themselves and be who they are. And and I'm actually seen my team do amazing things. So what I do is I actually don't run with a lot of things in the organization. The team actually runs with those things. I give them the platform and are supposed to do that. So we've got things, like for example.

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Kgomotso

There's a lot of collaboration that that happens within the organization, the team itself, there are people responsible within the organization that run with that. We have a lot of knowledge sharing sessions, for example, which also speaks to black excellence and the team themselves, actually run those, we encourage a lot of speaking at conferences the team runs with that. We encourage a lot of speaking at each and any other knowledge sharing session. Best that we have.

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Kgomotso

And the team actually runs with that. And we recognize them for doing that as well as the leadership of the organization. So what we've done is we've actually put a lot in the hands of the team and they are actually running with it and doing an amazing job

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Gugulethu

Which is great because you're not only a development company, as you know, developing software, you're developing your staff, too, which is really important. It creates great it you get better productivity out of them and innovation flows from that.

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Gugulethu

Take me through some of the projects that y'all are busy with, so I can't go into a lot of detail about the projects we are busy with.

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Kgomotso

Im sorry, because our clients are one of the big banks. And, you know. (audible laughter)

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Gugulethu

Tell us about some of your older clients.

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Kgomotso

OK, so I can talk a little bit about some of our older clients. So we had a bit of work with some of the work that we do is when we get to the clients.

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Kgomotso

And we started working with with them, with the client teams and they see how we work. They actually want to start working the agile way. And we call that a transformation. So there's delivery, which is building the software, and then there's transformation, which is us working with the team at the client side to help them build whatever product that they're building, but also to teach them how to work in an agile way.

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Kgomotso

So there's quite a number of what we call transformation projects that we've had at, for example, Liberty, where we've worked with their teams and we've built a lot of products that are on the robotics space with the Liberty team, and then we also doing training, we are an accredited agile training provider, accredited by ICAgile and we've run alot of those training sessions recently we have done some training with the robotics team with Sanlam in Cape Town

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Gugulethu

Well, it does sound like you are completely involved in tech you have a technically skilled team working with you, we wish you all the luck, Thank you very much for being our entreprenuer on the move on Khaya FM

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Kgomotso

Thank you