We develop websites according to the following principles which a great website should have including the following:

Purpose-Driven and Functional

At Exponant, our websites are crafted to fulfill specific functions—whether that’s providing information, hosting online forms and applications, managing subscriptions, or facilitating event bookings. Each feature is designed to solve problems efficiently.

User-Friendly Navigation

We prioritize easy navigation through meticulous planning of content architecture and site structure. Our websites feature robust search functions, allowing users to quickly find what they need by simply entering a search term.

Relevant and Engaging Content

We dive deep into your business model, industry legislation, and target audience to develop content that meets the specific needs of your users. Our approach ensures that your website speaks directly to its visitors, enhancing user engagement.

Cutting-Edge Design

Stay ahead of the curve with Exponant. We’re continually updating our practices to incorporate the latest design trends and technologies, ensuring your website remains modern and competitive.

Optimized for All Platforms

Our websites are optimized for various devices, browsers, and connection speeds, ensuring a seamless experience for all users.

High Performance and Speed

We constantly monitor and optimize our websites for speed and efficiency. Our technical diagnostics help pinpoint and resolve any performance issues, and we offer round-the-clock SLA services for ongoing monitoring.

Responsive Design

With mobile access dominating the web, our responsive design ensures that your site looks great and functions perfectly on every device—from smartphones to desktops.

Scalable
Our websites scale to a number of potential visitors. Not only the website’s user interface databases, APIs, and services.

Secure
We make sure that your website follows industry standards and guidelines. For example, if you have user registration feature, you want to make sure that user passwords are encrypted and not displayed in plain text. We also ensure that the website is secure and uses SSL encryption and a CAPTCHA feature to ensure that the user is not a bot.

Accessibility for All

Our designs include features like AltText for images and tools for testing color blindness compatibility, ensuring that your website is accessible to people with visual impairments.

Proactive Monitoring and Management

Utilize our expertise in Google Analytics and other tools to monitor user behaviors and demographics. We help optimize your website’s performance and support business growth strategies.

Expert SEO Services

At Exponant, we specialize in white hat SEO, which encompasses techniques that enhance your search rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) while adhering to the ethical standards and terms of service of search engines.

We use two primary mechanisms for this:

• Technical – the settings are optimised, keywords in the correct place, there is a site map for the bots to find and index and many more features.
• Content – we can assist you in content creation and the development of SEO strategies and content calendars in order to keep the site fresh and the Search Engine bots coming back for more.

At Exponant, we recognize the unique needs of each company in managing internal systems, documents, and communication. Instead of a generic solution, we tailor a SharePoint Intranet strategy that begins with thorough analysis and groundwork, ensuring it aligns perfectly with your business requirements.

Our optimized Intranets serve as a strategic backbone, boosting productivity and motivating employees by aligning them with your organizational vision and goals. Additionally,

Exponant provides monitoring services to enhance system adoption and offers insights to maximize Intranet usage.

An extranet allows access to partners, vendors and suppliers or an authorised set of customers – to information which is not in the public domain.

We develop two kinds on Extranets:

• Traditional Extranets

Enable secure access for named users to specific internal applications or parts of the Intranet. Robust security protocols such as Acceptable Use Policies, firewalls, and strict onboarding/offboarding processes are enforced to prevent data breaches.

• Portal-Based Extranets

These are developed on a secure, dedicated Team site. Registered users can only access authorized information, reducing risks. Careful management of version control and document duplication in the DRMS is essential to ensure data integrity and security.

Utilize SharePoint for enhanced enterprise content management. Its design mirrors the familiar Microsoft Office interface, ensuring ease of use without the need for extensive training on new systems. At Exponant, we specialize in creating reliable and intuitive ECM solutions that minimize risk and boost productivity.

Development and Configuration Methodologies

Optimally we prefer to use the three-server environment.

Development Environment

Our development environment is tailored for configuring and creating software updates. It includes essential development tools such as compilers and integrated development environments, which differ from what’s available in a typical user environment. This setup allows for the trial and refinement of new features and changes.

Testing Environment

After initial development, changes move to our testing environment. Here, human testers perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to verify the functionality of new or updated systems. This critical step ensures that configurations meet the required standards before moving to the next phase.

Pre-Production Environment

Prior to live deployment, our pre-production environment is crucial for final testing. It connects to other production services and databases to test installation and configuration procedures, ensuring a smooth, error-free transition to live deployment. It’s also used for performance and load testing, and to give select customers a preview of upcoming features.

Production Environment

Known as the ‘live’ environment, this is where users directly interact with our software. Deploying new releases can require service interruptions, which we mitigate by scheduling deployments during off-peak hours or by using redundant servers to manage traffic without downtime.

Our three-server setup—development, testing, and production—ensures reliable, efficient, and user-friendly software updates, catering to the needs of all industries.

Choosing the right project management approach is crucial.

Agile is dynamic, breaking projects into short sprints, promoting flexibility and client collaboration. It’s ideal for evolving systems like Microsoft 365, where users discover functionalities progressively, ensuring tailor-made solutions.

Waterfall is structured, organizing projects into distinct phases, offering clear timelines and budget control. This method suits projects with defined requirements and no expected changes.

Each method has its strengths, with Agile often providing greater adaptability in modern tech environments, while Waterfall offers predictability in cost and scope.

At Exponant we consider the structure of our team very carefully. Whether on sight at the client or working remotely the following teams are usually gathered, depending on the project.

• Account Manager

A key executive at Exponant overseeing the entire project. This senior team member is versatile, capable of stepping into various roles as needed to ensure client project success.

• Project Manager

Vital for large, complex projects, the Project Manager sets the foundation for project success. They collaborate with clients to agree on management methodologies, establish a Project Steering Committee, and ensure the project is delivered on time, within budget, and to the highest quality.

They also oversee financial aspects like timesheets and invoicing.

• Team Lead and Subject Matter Expert

These roles, often held by the same person, are crucial for designing effective project methodologies. They engage deeply with client industries to identify trends and opportunities, ensuring resources are well-allocated and the team is well-guided. They focus on delivering comprehensive documentation and fostering strong collaborative relationships within the client’s business framework.

Technical Lead and the software specialist master

The Technical Lead is a senior developer and is responsible for developing the technical solution based on the Functional Requirements. He may also be a 3^rd party software specialist or he will have one on his team. This person is responsible for liaising with the client’s technical team, usually the IT team as well as with the business teams to make recommendations for improvement where the software enables it.

The Technical Team Lead is responsible for being up to date with the latest technologies and trends and ensuring that the technical resources that report to him are productive and exercising care.

This Team Lead is also responsible for the development of the Interns. The role of technical, policy and methodology skills transfer to the client as well as technical training also fall within this role. Over and above that, the change agents (interns) must be taught the softer skills of engaging with the clients.

Administrator

Manages essential administrative tasks including access coordination, meeting setups, and attendance tracking, ensuring smooth operation on client sites.

Interns 

Junior developers acting as change agents within client environments, they support and facilitate business user engagement with new technologies and manage service desks under SLA contracts.

At Exponant, we prioritize excellence in Data Architecture to enhance system optimization through consistent standards. Our proprietary conventions, developed and mastered by our team, ensure robust deliverability, effective reporting, and scalable solutions, adhered to strictly across all projects.

 As an accredited Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, Exponant simplifies your digital transformation. We handle your complete Microsoft cloud customer lifecycle, integrating our bespoke tools, products, and services into a single billing cycle—monthly or annually.

Partnering with us means:

• Faster deployment
• Enhanced performance
• Cost savings

By working with Exponant, our clients save money and time.

At Exponant, we excel in blending our expertise with your team’s involvement to ensure a successful project delivery. Our collaborative approach enables:

• Seamless Communication: Ensuring all participants fully understand the business requirements through effective dialogue.
• Empowerment through Participation: Your team will gain deep insights into new systems and processes by being directly involved in their implementation.
• Ownership of Change: Encouraging ownership among all levels of your staff, reducing resistance and enhancing the likelihood of project success and ROI.
• Access to Specialized Skills: We provide access to specialized skills on-demand, eliminating the need for full-time specialists.

Our recommended project framework includes Project Management, Business Analysis, Solution Design, Training, Business Processes, and Technical Workstreams. We also integrate Operational Experience with subject matter experts to ensure our solutions are perfectly tailored to your needs.

Streamline your business operations with Sage Finance and Operations. Here’s how Sage enhances your business efficiency:

• Boost Productivity: Quickly accomplish more tasks and save valuable time.
• Confident Business Management: Stay agile, manage costs, and deliver exceptional customer service with proven solutions.
• Enhanced Accessibility: Vital customer information is always accessible, enabling informed decision-making with Sage 200 Evolution.
• Collaborative Workspaces: As your business expands, Sage 200 coupled with Microsoft 365 helps maintain collaboration, allowing teams to work effectively from virtually anywhere.

Top 10 Benefits of Sage Software:

1. Highly recommended by accountants.
2. Fully integrated business management tool.
3. Cost-effective with the lowest ownership cost in its category.
4. Tailored with five specialized modules catering to specific industry needs.
5. Simplified reporting features.
6. Improved customer and supplier relations.
7. Easy access to professional skills.
8. Boosts productivity levels.
9. Comprehensive national support network.
10. Sage 200 Evolution offers a complete business management solution.

Why Exponant Partners with Sage: Exponant chose Sage for its ease of implementation and renewal, ensuring peace of mind with one of the top global accounting solutions.

Annual Renewal and Benefits: Sage 200 Evolution Accounting requires an annual renewal, providing continuous updates, upgrades, and dedicated support. Payable annually on the registration date, it ensures your business always benefits from the latest features and expert support, much like a reliable insurance policy.

Sage: A Commitment to Growth: Suitable for businesses of all sizes, Sage’s robust and adaptable software supports your growth at every stage. Exponant’s commitment to excellence is reflected in our ongoing enhancements to our service and support infrastructure, ensuring you maximize the benefits from your Sage software.

Business Analysis at Exponant

Optimizing Technology for Business Goals: Exponant offers comprehensive Business Analysis Solutions tailored to ensure your technology investments align with your business objectives. This involves creating User Requirement Specifications that analyze your organization’s environment, processes, and sector trends. We determine essential technology functionalities and establish metrics to gauge success.

Functional and Technical Specifications: We develop detailed Functional Specifications outlining required technology functionalities, security needs, and interoperability conditions. These specifications are supported by Change Management plans, Training, and Testing protocols. After approval, these plans guide the development of Technical Specifications, including software configuration and data architecture.

Change Management and User Adoption: Our Business Analysts craft strategies for Change Management and oversee their implementation, ensuring smooth technology adoption across your organization.

Testing and User Acceptance: Our analysts manage all testing phases, adjustments, and the final user acceptance to ensure the technology meets your needs.

Why Choose Exponant?

Skilled and Versatile Analysts: Exponant’s Business Analysts are equipped with advanced degrees, certifications, and a blend of soft and technical skills. They excel in facilitation, negotiation, and are adept change agents who understand your business needs.

Effective Communication and Problem Solving: They possess strong communication skills, engaging stakeholders through various platforms and ensuring all voices are heard. Our analysts excel in solving complex problems, often requiring them to synthesize information from multiple sources and scenarios.

Broad Industry Knowledge: Our analysts bring diverse experiences across industries, enhancing their ability to analyze and apply insights uniquely suited to your business. They leverage this expertise to recommend and implement effective, context-specific solutions.

Decision-Making Support: Exponant analysts facilitate key decision-making processes, ensuring that all necessary decisions are made judiciously to drive the right changes for your organization.

Confidential and Trustworthy: We uphold strict confidentiality agreements, building trusting relationships that enable effective consultation and project success.

By choosing Exponant, you ensure that your technology investments are not just implemented, but are strategically aligned to enhance your business operations and achieve measurable success.

Data science is rapidly advancing, fueled by quantum computing, faster processing times, and especially cloud computing. This growth facilitates numerous functions such as:

Insights: Data science helps uncover vital business metrics like data usage, leave time, and sales growth through cross-correlation of multiple datasets. For instance, sales data can be analyzed by geographic regions and seasons, with tools from common business and social software to create visual dashboards and charts for effective planning and decision-making.

Forecasting: Leveraging behavioral and other data types, data science enables accurate future predictions. For example, future shopping trends can be deduced from current retail behaviors and loyalty card data, aiding in informed merchandising decisions.

Knowledge Management: Organizations utilize Document and Records Management systems to organize captured information. Data architects optimize metadata for easier storage and retrieval, facilitating workflow processes such as approvals and adding functionalities like version control.

Connectivity and Context: Microsoft’s Graph API integrates users, emails, calendars, tasks, and devices, enhancing the utility of daily generated data. By enabling data sharing across applications, Microsoft Graph prevents data siloing within Microsoft 365.

DRMS at Exponant ensures accountability and efficiency in managing business documents and records. Our systems streamline the creation, storage, and management of documents, significantly improving organizational workflows and reducing misplaced files.

Key benefits of our Document Management system include:

• Quicker document search and retrieval.
• Enhanced organization and storage efficiency.
• Reduced physical space requirements.

Additionally, our Records Management extends these capabilities by:

• Maintaining detailed records inventories.
• Enforcing retention periods and ownership identification.
• Ensuring secure, compliant disposal and legal safeguards against data breaches.

Central to our strategy is the role of the Data Architect. This senior role bridges business and technology, designing data frameworks that are robust, future-proof, and tailored to client needs. Working closely with Business Analysts, they ensure our solutions are comprehensive and strategically aligned.

Overall, Exponant’s DRMS encompasses:

• System deployment and configuration.
• Robust security mechanisms.
• Tailored data architectures and workflows.
• Compliance with legislative standards.
• Effective adoption through training and communication.

This holistic approach not only safeguards information but also enhances the overall efficiency and compliance of your organization.

Good workflow management helps to eliminate chaos and attain organisational goals faster. When Exponant builds, automates and manages workflows effectively, our client understands the whole picture with each and every step clearly.

Workflow management systems to streamline workflows and make processes easier. This is why we automate workflow

• Reduced errors

Operating with zero errors is impossible. But being proactive in identifying and setting errors right is something to work on. With workflow management, it is easier to prevent errors from occurring in the first place. And if they happen, you can pinpoint the exact location. The same errors can be prevented from happening again.

• Improved connectivity

Workflow management connects multiple entities–people, software and work culture. Work that is well-connected enables increased productivity.

Integration between software systems is critical in IT infrastructure. Workflows draw data from different software tools and run workflows between them. Most tasks need employees to use more than one application. Workflows function as facilitators.

Data on how work happens is slowly pooled and then you can use the data to improve workflows, this prevents errors and builds stronger connections between people and software.

• Increased productivity

Since all workflows are automated, teams save a lot of time sending emails and updating information in multiple tools. Employees don’t need to wait for approvals to reach them. They can track the progress in the workflow system and stay in the loop.

Critical data missing in an approval? Employees can send it back to someone in the previous step of the workflow and even communicate contextually within the tool.

• Redundant manual tasks eliminated

With workflow systems, pre-defined business rules do the job. The workflow can be configured to trigger steps based on conditions to automatically delegate tasks.

• Increased trust, transparency, and control

Workflow greatly reduces micromanagement. The duties of each job role are clear with defined goals. Employees are informed on what they need to do, managers are comfortable delegating ownership over tasks.

Workflow automation squeezes out shadow tasks, everything happens out in the open, with more control over data accessibility than before. Admins can choose to display or hold back sensitive information to specific job roles or teams.

With many companies working remotely, there are enough emails and messages going around. Workflow helps keep work organised and trackable.

Workflow management has the potential to evolve into a company-wide practice.

Workflow

Exponant has solid experience in documenting and automating processes which speeds up an organisation’s workflow whilst increasing accuracy and measurability.

Our process maps illustrate the flow of the work and the interaction with the organisation. We make use of common notation that is easily understood by everyone. Our process maps contain proper detail with respect to multiple paths, decisions and rework loops. But as we all know it is people who make the organisation work, so these processes match the organisational processes that employees are used to and when improvements are made, we can assist with the training and communication of that change.

We also perform workflow audits

Workflow audits should occur regularly (every 6 months at a minimum), but if you’re noticing any of the following, you should perform an audit immediately:

• Noticeable bottlenecks or delays on a daily or weekly basis
• Simple tasks like approvals overwhelm your team
• There have been significant changes to team roles in the last 6 months
• Processes and workflows have changed significantly in the last 6 months
• Goals and objectives are not being met on time or according to plan

It is becoming important not only to incorporate workflow planning and mapping into your daily routines, but also implement business process management (BPM) solutions into the organisation as a whole. BPM helps to keep the organisation moving in a clear direction. It can help set priorities for the organisation and plan out failures at a higher level.

Robotic Process Automation

Exponant now offers Robotic Process Automation to our clients.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the process of automating mundane tasks such as taking data from one file and entering it into a business application like CRM. It’s about automating repetitive tasks that are an inefficient use of people’s time.

RPA is an approach to working across multiple software applications and entering, maintaining, migrating, integrating, mining and testing data on spreadsheets. It’s the equivalent to an employee who never sleeps, eats or makes mistakes on tasks that need repeating over and over again.

It is the fastest-growing segment in the global enterprise software market, according to Gartner.

RPA provides improved accuracy for automated and repetitive tasks. Two-thirds of financial processes are now automated, in one shape or form. The remaining third is taken up by ad hoc or ‘human’ requests for information.

Exponant uses the Microsoft cloud to enhance the business use of information technology and the acceleration of POPIA compliance.

We align IT as a mechanism to support the controls, procedures identified to achieve POPIA compliance.

South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI Act or POPIA) sets a standard for the processing of South African’s personal information by public and private bodies within and outside of the country’s borders. Organisations doing business in South Africa need to ensure their information security practices are updated to meet POPI compliance.

The POPI Act sets in place regulations governing South Africa’s constitutional right to privacy, by safeguarding personal information when processed by a responsible part to balance the right to privacy against other rights, particularly the right of access to information; and protecting important interests, including the free flow of information within the Republic and across international borders.

It also aims to regulate the manner in which personal information may be processed, by establishing conditions, in harmony with international standards, that prescribe the minimum threshold requirements for the lawful processing of personal information.

 The purpose of the POPI Act is to lead to:

• Enhanced personal privacy rights;
• Increased duty for protecting data;
• Mandatory breach reporting; and
• Penalties for non-compliance.

 Protecting personal data in your care

 With penalties for data privacy violations growing in South Africa and worldwide, organisations need to assess their information security practices. The key is to balance the pervasive access to information made possible by enterprise collaboration applications – including data sharing tools, messaging apps and email – while maintaining compliance with POPIA and other regulations. Collaboration tools make it easy for employees to inadvertently share regulated information with unauthorised parties, or worse steal it for malicious purposes.

 There are many solutions that can help ensure POPI compliance and mitigate risk. A data-centric approach to managing compliance is a must to comply with POPI. Protection must be applied to data itself as opposed to just the application or container in which it resides to best protect against breaches and compliance violations as it passes though digital hands within and outside your organisation.

 Exponant offers advanced information protection that can help ensure your organisation complies with the POPI Act information security mandates. Exponant provides a simpler, faster and cost-effective solution to tailor information protection to control user access to and sharing of regulated personal data and other sensitive information (intellectual property, financial information, healthcare information, HR documents, etc.) in file sharing, messaging and chat across cloud, on-premises and hybrid collaboration tools.

 We empower organisations to implement and enforce POPI information security measures with an automated solution to:

• Locate personal data that currently exists within the storage repositories and tools used for file storage and collaboration including on-premises files shares and cloud sharing applications including Microsoft Office 365—SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange, plus Dropbox, and Windows file shares.
• Automatically classify documents based on the presence of personal or other sensitive data governed by POPI and other regulatory guidelines.
• Set business rules with classifications to restrict actions that can be taken with classified documents such as print, email, save as or downloading to prevent data leakage.
• Ensure that documents accessed and shared in group messaging and chat tools like Microsoft Teams and Yammer have the same data security restrictions as other collaboration tools.
• Restrict collaboration between users in different geographical locations or subsidiaries to meet regulatory guidelines.
• Automatically adapt security controls to the changing risk profile of data as users and third parties’ access and collaborate across multiple locations, organisational and geographic boundaries, and devices.
• Track access to regulated personal data for auditing and compliance purposes.

 Compliance without sacrificing collaboration

 Protecting data governed under POPI is of utmost importance for organisations doing business in South Africa – not doing so will harm both your brand’s reputation and your bottom line. Organisations must keep the right balance between what users need from a collaboration perspective and what the organisation demands from a security perspective to remain in compliance.

At Exponant we know that technology investment is redundant without adoption and so we take a two part approach to ensuring maximum take up of the new technology.

Technology Adoption Modelling

Before we even consider change management principles, great care is taken to use our Technology Adoption model to enhance our chances of gaining traction.

• Fit for Purpose

The technology must be aligned with business processes and deliver the same or more than the incumbent system, so that people see the point of using it. This takes careful business analysis in the form of both the business team and the technology team together with thorough process modelling and sufficient documentation.

• Easy to use

The new system should be intuitive, logical and easy to navigate. Multiple navigation routes, internal links and a comprehensive search function can be used to achieve this

• Make the user look and feel good

Nobody likes to feel like they are floundering, can’t keep up or may be embarrassed in front of their colleagues, so the system must have adequate help mechanisms such as links to internal policies or “how to” videos. The helpdesk should also be accessible, friendly and efficient.

Change Management

Change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support and help individuals and teams to effect organisational change. Drivers of change include the ongoing evolution of technology, internal reviews of processes, crisis response, customer demand changes, competitive pressure, acquisitions and mergers and organisational restructuring. These all impact on how employees use IT systems to remain productive. 

It includes methods that redirect or redefine the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly change a company.

Change management considers the full organisation but focuses on how people and teams are affected by this transition.

Exponant has a unique approach to change management in that we realise that change is also a product of people having day to day jobs on top of adapting a new system.

Over and above the existing and proven methodologies including Prosci ADCAR, Exponant adds an additional element. Our highly trained interns have the education they need, but in order for us to turn out well rounded professionals, we need them to gain real world experience. This is done through placing them on the ground with your employees to assist or reexplain the training, your employees get the hand holding they need and our interns gain insight into how business people think.

Exponant uses very senior, experienced project managers for our larger, more complex projects.

We believe that Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve goals and meet success criteria at a specified time. The primary challenge of our project management is to achieve all of the project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimise the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.

The objective of our project management is to produce a complete project which complies with our client’s objectives. The objective of project management is also to shape or reform the client’s brief to address the client’s objectives. Once our client’s objectives are clearly established they should influence all decisions made by other people involved in the project.

Content is the essence of people deriving the most out of your solution, if instructions are not clear or content is obscure or simply missing, this impacts on your user’s experience of the technology. We are in a position to assist you with the structuring of your information, curating, creating and editing your content.