A growing Angolan IT provider

Angola

Carlos de Melo, CEO of Sistec, talks to The Energy Year about how Sistec Corporate has evolved since its creation, the key sectors for the company's business activities, its competitive advantages and its relationship with the oil and gas sector. Sistec has business lines in IT and telecommunications, energy and retail.

How has Sistec Corporate evolved since its creation?
Sistec Corporate was created in 2015 with the aim of uniting the knowledge of IT and telecommunications in order to offer turnkey solutions to our clients. We have been thriving throughout the years, achieving important results such as the ISO 9001 certification and establishing solid partnerships with major international brands such as IBM, Oracle and Finastra.
Our modus operandi sees us starting with consultancy services, which we believe help us understand not only what our clients need but also what they might be looking for in the future. We propose tailormade solutions to our clients, and then we provide them with services, such as supplying the data infrastructure, supervising the flow of processes and, if needed, providing data security support. It goes without saying that to deliver these services, you need certified technicians and salespeople, which we have.

What are the key sectors for your business activities?
The financial sector is very important for us, and we have been working with several banks by delivering software solutions. When we started our collaboration with them, the market was much smaller than today, and their main challenge was infrastructure.
We stepped in to provide them with high-quality infrastructure services, which we could do thanks to the partnerships we had in place and the professionalism of our after-sales support division. Then, after we gained a good position in the market with both our equipment and services, we went one step further by offering consultancy services for those clients.
Today, we are very happy with the momentum that we have. Among our clients, we have some of the most important banks in Angola, such as Banco Nacional de Angola, Banco BAI, Banco BCS, Standard Bank and Banco Sol.
Furthermore, our partnership with Finastra – one of the leaders worldwide in providing core solutions for banks – definitely represents an element that gives our clients a further sense of security.

What is the company’s standpoint with respect to the oil and gas sector?
Our involvement with oil and gas is not as well developed as we would like it to be. It is a sector that we have to continue to approach in order to carve out a position. However, we are much more comfortable dealing with oil and gas players now than we were a few years back.
The main barrier has been that most of the oil companies are multinationals, and when they come into a country, they are usually already well serviced, using local companies as a last resort. These companies contact the locals only if something goes wrong.
We have been experiencing a change in perception lately, and that is one of the reasons why our standpoint in the oil and gas industry has improved. We took advantage of our longstanding international partnerships with large brands such as IBM and Lenovo to bridge this gap, aiming to make oil and gas players realise that we are a trustworthy company and that they can therefore fully rely on our services.

What are the peculiarities that, in your opinion, differentiate Sistec from other IT companies in the market?
Our response speed is a top advantage. We are able to deploy solutions very rapidly because we count on local people. We are just a phone call away from our clients. Second, we are spread across the country.
Then, something we are really proud of is the Sistec Academy, which provides trainees with certifications, from small ones for Excel, for example, to ones for more complex systems of IBM and Cisco, for example.
The academy is based not only in Luanda but also in Benguela and Huambo, and we are able to tailor the training for the clients to meet their specific needs. Furthermore, we have partnered with Pearson VUE – a well-known company which delivers high-stakes exams that empower professions to certify and license individuals. Over the years, we have given more than 50,000 certifications, and many people know us because they have studied at our academy.
Finally, Sistec is a very transparent company. We provide accounts, audits and performance reports every year.

Where do you see the most growth for the company in the future?
We have targeted the government with respect to some projects that aim to digitalise several of its entities. Then, in terms of corporate, we are also looking at oil and gas companies, with TotalEnergies and Chevron as main targets. We look to start by providing them with the technical infrastructure they need.
We already have Sonangol as a client, but we want to extend our range of operations with them, taking advantage of the fact that there are more tenders that we are able to compete for now. We are well positioned in the market for the services we provide and are strong from a financial perspective. These are elements which give big companies confidence, as they make us more trustworthy. They cannot afford to contract an important project to a local company that cannot handle it.
To conclude, over the next five years, I see Sistec as a point of reference in energy and IT, mainly on the services side, because that is what clients are increasingly looking for – turnkey solutions – and that is what we are focusing on.

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