{"id":47907,"date":"2022-07-25T15:11:17","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T14:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=47907"},"modified":"2023-05-25T10:54:29","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T09:54:29","slug":"five-reasons-why-investment-in-software-development-community-is-a-strategic-business-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2022\/07\/25\/five-reasons-why-investment-in-software-development-community-is-a-strategic-business-driver\/","title":{"rendered":"Five reasons why investment in the software development community is a strategic business driver"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Software development skills are at the core of South Africa\u2019s and Africa\u2019s regeneration. Bolstering the community that underpins this revitalisation makes strategic sense for companies and governments.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

South African businesses are grappling with the aftermath of the last two years, and the challenges of recovering from loadshedding. Investing in software developers as a community can seem far-fetched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, developer skills are at the core of South Africa\u2019s and Africa\u2019s regeneration. Bolstering the community that underpins this regeneration makes strategic sense for companies and governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Developers are likely behind your next product evolution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Pillay, regional manager at Peach Payments, said the company\u2019s investments in the developer community have resulted in changes to its product pipeline – even though the developers don\u2019t work for Peach Payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDevelopers are important decision-makers in companies because they make critical technical choices that permeate through the business. Interacting with them has given us deeper insights into what our customers require from our products.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. You need developers – but they don\u2019t know you exist<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Said Stephen van der Heijden, VP Community at community-first job marketplace OfferZen. \u201cWe\u2019re regularly contacted by companies wanting to accelerate their developer hiring. The problem many of them face is that their companies do not have a suitable profile among developers to be considered as potential employers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, some of the start-ups OfferZen works with are known because they have been active in the community and developers know their ethos, thinking and general approach to problem-solving. As a result, these companies have more – and better quality – applicants for software developer jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a direct result of their founders making themselves available and investing through their time, participation and activities in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. \u201cHome\u201d is anywhere – meet them there<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van der Heijden underscores that being able to choose where your \u2018office\u2019 is has opened up amazing opportunities for local developers. Companies that prefer their developers on-site, rather than working from home, make life difficult for themselves, he believes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBetween 2019 and 2022 we saw a 14% decrease in the number of South African developers looking to move abroad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This requires a fundamental rethink in how local companies recruit and retain software development staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Encouraging developer communities builds the country\u2019s technology base<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pillay said getting more closely involved in developer communities has taught him that developers in the B2B space can learn much from developers in the B2C space, and vice versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the big problems we face as a country is how siloed technologies remain both within and across industries. Investing in the developer community opens up doorways for cross-silo technologies,\u201d said Pillay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An example would be a developer at a bank wanting to add a \u2018wish list\u2019 option to a banking app, to allow customers to indicate what they\u2019d want from the bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt sounds left field until you realise she got the idea from a developer at an online retailer, who said that \u2018wish lists\u2019 provide deeper insight for the retailer\u2019s future planning than direct sales figures do. The bank\u2019s developer found a way to use this insight to adjust the bank\u2019s potential future offerings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another example is Investec tapping into the developer community for programmable banking, Van der Heijden adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Devs help you reach next year\u2019s customers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Millennials – born between 1981 and 1994 – became the largest living generation in 2019. Similarly, South Africa\u2019s Gen Z consumers – those born in or after 1995 – are becoming increasingly credit active and are helping fuel the growth of the consumer credit market, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese generations are digital natives; they grew up with technology, and paper-based systems are something of a foreign concept. They don\u2019t recall a world without the Internet and have always been able to purchase and consume services via the web and their mobile phones,\u201d said Louw Hopley, CEO and co-founder of insurtech company Root.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Root has found that new consumers expect near-instantaneous responses to queries, so adding digital front-ends to analogue back-ends won\u2019t cut it, Hopley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey expect an embedded experience, which requires software developers who understand your internal systems and can make them work with your suppliers\u2019 and partners\u2019 systems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an environment where tech skills are increasingly rare, Hopley, Pillay and Van der Heijden agree that businesses that invest in South Africa\u2019s developer community – and its scarce skills – have a strategic advantage. But what does investing in the development community look like? Van der Heijden suggests basics like helping existing tech communities with event or venue sponsorships is a good start. \u201cAlso look at supporting mentorship programmes across industries, creating access to tech leadership within your own company and helping the next generation of developers upskill.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Software development skills are at the core of South Africa\u2019s and Africa\u2019s regeneration. Bolstering the community that underpins this revitalisation makes strategic sense for companies and governments. South African businesses are grappling with the aftermath of the last two years, and the challenges of recovering from loadshedding. Investing in software developers as a community can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":47911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,298,183,10675,262],"tags":[15421,15420,67,453,15419,15422],"class_list":["post-47907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights","category-main-story-newsletter","category-software","category-thought-leadership","category-used","tag-andrew-pillay","tag-louw-hopley","tag-software-development","tag-south-africa","tag-stephen-van-der-heijden","tag-strategy"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47907"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48189,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47907\/revisions\/48189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}