ICT solutions and services distributor Westcon-Comstor has appointed Rentia Booysen as its new business unit manager of unified communication and collaboration (UCC) in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Booysen, who was promoted from channel manager for Avaya and Polycom at Westcon-Comstor, previously worked as a key account manager for ICT products distributor Drive Control. Before joining Drive Control, she had worked as external account manager Pinnacle Micro.

In her new position, she will be responsible for strategic planning, development and implementation of sales and marketing programmes and managing vendor and partner relationships for Westcon-Comstor's business unit.

The company recently announced the integration of the Westcon-Comstor Africa team and the Westcon-Comstor Southern Africa region. The teams are currently engaging and putting strategic plans together to increase their territories.

"We intend growing UCC in Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to do that, we need to take our department to the next level and start doing some heavy leg work ourselves. We are looking at training, education and collaboration opportunities in order to move forward. I am currently responsible for strategic planning, development and implementation of sales and marketing programmes for the business unit. Vendor and partner relationships are a key focus and I will also handle budgets, increasing sales, and keeping the team focused and motivated."

Discussing the digital transformation challenges that face local organisations, Booysen notes that companies often grapple with legacy issues when deploying new digital transformation initiatives.

"Organisations face real compatibility issues when adopting new applications. Getting the right compatibility between legacy and new applications is something that should be investigated before upgrading or replacing infrastructure," she explains.

Westcon-Comstor is a subsidiary of ICT solutions and services group Datatec. In June last year, Datatec entered into a definitive agreement to dispose of its Westcon-Comstor business in North America and Latin America (Westcon Americas) to Synnex for a maximum consideration of $800 million and to sell 10% of the remaining part of Westcon (Westcon International) to Synnex for $30 million.

"The sale has had minimal impact on us here in SA, it's a transaction which is really around shareholding so obviously it has an impact on Datatec and an impact on the changes in the US [market], but in terms of our daily lives and what we need to do here in SA, it's business as usual.

"At this point, we don't foresee any dramatic changes, but they may however be opportunities that may come out of this [sale] at a later stage. For now, the foregoing strategy will be centralised around our partners and our customers," said CEO Rakesh Parbhoo, a few months after the sale.

The South African market, according to the company, is a significant one and is one of four global distribution centres in terms of the warehouse and facilities. There is also significant investment being made into further development of the local market, indicating that there is confidence in its potential growth. With regards to economies across the African continent, SA is up there among the top economies.

"The two areas we are investing in strongest are our cloud solution as well as customer service. However, we need to clarify that this does not mean we will be competing with our customers and partners. We don't deal with the end-user; our business is to support the resellers.

"With regards to customer services, we are about to be the first to go live with our 24-hour customer service desk which will go across all our vendor solutions for customers to have one solution and procurement of the kind of service they would like to sell to the end user," Parbhoo explained.