Companies were forced to delay large-scale programmes, and many had a scrappy year, working hard to gain and maintain momentum.

The Rand traded through one of its most unstable ranges over the past five years, moving between R17.80 ($1.12) and R19.64 to the dollar and unsettling long-term planning. This economic pressure has also influenced how companies think about transformation.

Leaders are cautious. Spending is controlled. Decisions are taking longer. Companies are hesitant to invest in technology and are demanding more visibility into return on investment (ROI) and sustainability. They also want less of a licensing cost burden.

Global cloud platforms are usually dollar-based, which means that monthly costs are as unpredictable as the exchange rate. Which means companies are either sitting on the fence when it comes to optimising their systems or they’re not even considering it.

The problem with this stagnation is that, despite the hype, systems do lag if they’re not optimised or agile enough to adapt to changing market conditions.

Outdated technology faces inefficiencies, higher error rates and difficulty scaling are common challenges thanks to manual processes and fragmented data. The move from these older systems to smoother digital ones also benefits employees who tend to, with the right change management, be more engaged, which reduces training costs and faster time to ROI.

Globally, companies are offsetting this risk with ERP solutions that prioritise value. This is reflected in how Microsoft has approached Business Central, commissioning a Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study into the value companies will measurably feel if they migrate to the cloud-based business management tool.

The study found that companies see a 265% ROI with tangible productivity improvements across operations, sales and finance. It also reduced the cost of third-party fees by more than $80,000 every year.

It’s a cloud-native ERP implementation which has become increasingly popular in the mid-market because it replaces siloed, ageing architecture with a single business platform capable of scaling without the cost and complexity of traditional tier one ERP systems.

Larger companies are also moving into Business Central because it offers a value alternative with strong capabilities without the excess costs.

Providing you with a full operating environment that manages finance, compliance, inventory, importing, warehousing, manufacturing and sales in one place, Business Central is a simplified system for control and visibility.

A 2024 TEI study by Forrester found that the technology can help companies avoid the costs associated with legacy ERP systems to the tune of $53k every year – a saving that is also felt in reduced infrastructure and upgrade costs.

The software helps companies move from fragmented environments into a centralised system that can run the entire organisation and it can support companies of all shapes and sizes. Enterprise?

Get in. SME? Also welcome. Even companies with fewer than 10 employees can use the system because it is designed to scale in both directions.

This versatility is essential for companies that don’t fully understand the scale of an ERP change. The transition is massive and disruptive.

Moving into a modern ERP is a complete structural change that asks you to replace systems that touch every financial and operational workflow while your teams are still performing their day-to-day roles.

It’s open-heart surgery on the business because you’re changing the system that keeps the business running while the heart is still beating.

All of this depends on the partner supporting your implementation. ERP success is defined by experience, not software alone – projects fail when inexperienced partners underestimate scope, mismanage data, fail to prepare users or over-customise the system.

A strong partner keeps the focus on your core business outcomes. They guide the data migration. They manage change.

They refine reporting. They support your first month-end and ensure your users understand the system well enough to work confidently.

So, don’t stay stuck in the old systems because costs are making you wary. Instead, look to solutions that are built to take your current costs even lower while optimising your operations to the point where you are seeing significant ROI.

On one hand, they’re expected to be the country’s job creation and economic engine, on the other they operate in thin margins with high borrowing costs, uneven demand and borderline ridiculous red tape.

The IFC-World Bank MSME Finance Gap 2025 study puts the global emerging market credit shortfall at $5.7 trillion, with 40% of formal MSMEs credit-constrained. And South African firms are squarely in this cohort.

The OECD Economic Outlook forecasts subdued growth in South Africa without deeper structural reforms across key touchpoints such as regulatory simplification, improved infrastructure and investment efficiency.

It’s a sentiment reflected in the Small Growth Business Index released in June 2025, showing a business ecosystem under immense pressure thanks to costs and complexity. The Index believes that almost half of these SMEs are at risk of closing down.

However, waiting for macroeconomic reform isn’t a strategy. What Braintree has done instead is build a growth engine that supports both its own growth, and that of other companies.

“We started our Business Partner programme over three years ago to diversify risk and build a sustainable sales channel,” says Doug Morrison, VP of Modern Workplace at Braintree. “What began as a sales strategy has become a platform for SME empowerment as we’ve now provided other consultancies with a home where they can grow within the Microsoft ecosystem while still maintaining their independence.”

Braintree’s agent channel supports independent partners in their sales of Microsoft solutions under a shared commercial umbrella.

It’s a smart strategy – Braintree owns the billing and vendor management, so smaller firms are no longer stuck in the cogs of complex admin, debtor control and compliance work.

In return, Braintree’s partners bring relationships, agility and niche expertise, which are invaluable. This reciprocal model turns administrative friction into collective efficiency.

Currently, Braintree works with around 30 active business partners. Some are established consultancies with mature client bases, while others are in the incubation phase. Regardless of size and expertise, they all benefit from the partnership programme.

Braintree provides mentorship and shared delivery frameworks alongside ongoing technical shadowing so partners can build capacity on live projects before taking ownership.

The goal is to take customer engagements and implementations beyond transactional subcontracting towards co-delivery and measurable results.

Another benefit of the Business Partner programme is how it helps companies move away from the limitations of short-termism. Braintree’s approach is anchored in integrity.

“We don’t engage with opportunistic intermediaries or tender-driven middlemen,” Dharashni Naidoo, Partner Manager at Braintree, says. “Our partnerships have aligned, shared ethics and we believe success is mutual.”

Every new partner is screened for commercial viability and for values alignment. The programme’s growth plan focuses on long-term relationships, mutual profitability and consistent delivery standards. And this insistence on ethics has created a network built on trust.

Throughout the programme, Braintree has evolved in how it builds on and supports partners.

The practical playbook of learnings from the model can be easily applied across the SME sector, showing how resilient ecosystems start small but, with systematic thinking can become immensely successful.

Some of the most impactful learnings are:

• Form a compact of equals. Draft a short collaboration memorandum that defines scope, regional reach and shared values.
• Centralise the friction. Nominate one company to own billing, compliance and vendor management, creating a single monthly statement for all network activity.
• Incubate skills. Run co-delivery sprints where senior engineers lead the first implementations while partners shadow, then take the lead under supervision.
• Balance branding. Allow co-branding for credibility while letting partners keep their own customer-facing identity.
• Measure the ecosystem. Track performance by outcomes because factors such as time-to-invoice, churn reduction, and co-sell win rates are better indicators of resilience than headline revenue.

As Microsoft continues to refine and change its global partner structure, many smaller resellers run the risk of losing direct access to transactional channels.

The Braintree model provides a solution, giving smaller companies with niche expertise and unique talents the ability to grow and expand, both locally and abroad. Certainly, for Braintree, international expansion is definitely on the cards.

“Our model’s strategic plan is to start in the UK and Western Europe, creating a bridge for SMEs that want to remain active within the Microsoft environment while maintaining autonomy,” says Morrison. “Our programme is structured around our beliefs and goals, and so we are passing on the same principles that helped us grow with an approach that treats everyone equally.”

This is reflected by market growth, with the global cloud-based communications market expected to exceed $47 billion by 2030, according to Mordor Intelligence.

The technologies evolving around cloud collaboration are enhancing productivity, lowering costs, and improving business agility and customer service.

According to IDC, cloud-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) deployments, including unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions, are replacing on-premises deployments globally.

UCaaS solutions accounted for 89% of market revenue worldwide, said IDC, with Microsoft remaining in the lead in the UC&C market with 44.7% market share.

Companies are leaning into solutions that allow them to use integrated voice, video and chat systems which enhance their decision-making and collaboration capabilities. It is a move that makes strategic and budget sense.

It is also light years away from when Alexander Graham Bell made the first call in 1876. For decades, business communication has relied on switchboards, physical wires and hardware-bound systems.

The mid-20th century office was dominated by PBX hardware and vast racks of circuitry tying workers to static locations and systems.

Companies were connected to customers by a length of wire, tethered to their desks as receptionists manually routed calls and lost calls were just that, lost conversations.

In the 1960s, PBX systems began to automate switchboard tasks but they still cost a lot of money to install and maintain.

Fast-forward to the 1990s, and voice over IP (VoIP) was the game changing technology which broke physical barriers by transmitting calls over the internet. However, even VoIP had its limitations with clunky interfaces, complex installations and limited integration with other business tools.

The true inflection point arrived with the cloud. 

The Forrester Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Teams Calling Solutions report found that small to medium companies were achieving up to 45% on total cost of ownership (TCO) savings over three years and enterprise customers were seeing a 17% TCO saving.

Both also saw impressive return on investment (ROI) with SMBs experiencing 185% over three years and enterprises 132%.

Companies were adopting the technology before 2020, but it was the pandemic that accelerated the shift to the cloud.

Before companies were reluctant to use Teams as their primary communication tool, now it’s become their backbone.

Operator Connect, Microsoft’s fully integrated voice service, is a case study in the future of telephony. It allows companies to turn Teams into a complete telephony solution without having to invest in a PBX or a third-party dialler.

Calls are routed through any one of Microsoft’s certified telecom partners directly into Teams, effectively bypassing the need for hardware, cables or wires. Everything sits in the cloud and on the device.

It’s a leapfrog moment, taking telephony away from its reliance on hardware and the costs that come with it, such as upgrades and maintenance, and instead putting it into the cloud.

Cloud also brings with it the added layer of security which means rapid patch deployment, encrypted communications and granular access controls, minimising the risk of unexpected vulnerabilities.

Mobility is also changing. Employees can use any device with connectivity to make and receive calls from any location.

The technology has removed the need for traditional network operators – bringing the corporate reliance on telecom providers under scrutiny – and simplified remote and hybrid working.

Companies also create a communication platform that can be enhanced with additional technologies, such as AI.

The technology can detect stress and agitation in a caller’s voice in real-time and use this data to prompt support staff to de-escalate the situation, record and transcribe calls to improve training and compliance, and offers a variety of intelligent capabilities that include workflow automation, keyword tracking and reporting.

Where just a few years ago, evolution meant switching boxes or pulling new lines, today communication is AI, online, and intelligent. And in the next five years?

Expect more AI, more integration with omnichannel platforms like WhatsApp and Linkedin, and more control over call data, costs and outcomes.

Copilot, a generative AI chatbot based on GPT-4, was first introduced as Bing Chat on February 07, 2023. It was integrated into both Bing and Edge as Cortana’s successor, but by September 2023 it was released into the enterprise as Microsoft 365 Copilot as a tool to boost enterprise productivity.

As of October 2023, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reported that the company had more than one million paid Copilot users across more than 37,000 companies.

By 2025, that number is estimated at hundreds of thousands of customers, according to Nadella’s official LinkedIn account.

The smart Microsoft tool’s uptake has been impressive. Integrated across Word, Excel, Teams and Outlook, it blends generative AI with Microsoft Graph data to summarise meetings, write content, and automate repetitive tasks.

The solution has fundamentally changed the narrative for companies wanting to improve workload management and optimise human talent. Companies are leveraging it to work faster and think better.

Today, Copilot is everywhere – Word, Excel, Teams, Outlook and beyond. And it does more than assist people, it collaborates with them to draft reports, summarise meetings, generate presentations, and automate workflows.

Copilot combines large language models (LLMs) with contextual awareness across calendar invites, Teams messages, SharePoint files and other data to provide users with optimised time and resource management capabilities.

The AI knows your next meeting, the prep doc you worked on, the stakeholder comments that need to feed into the document and the meeting, and the last presentation you shared.

This deep integration allows it to generate emails, write PowerPoint decks and even build Excel dashboards that provide you with recommended insights. And all this is done in minutes, not the hours usually spent on this admin-intensive work.

However, perhaps one of the most profound value-adds is how Copilot has transformed access to knowledge. It is a zero-cost interaction which allows users to retrieve anything. When the right prompts are used, users have access to infinite insights on demand.

Copilot is also no longer just reactive. Users can use Copilot Studio to create AI agents capable of executing multi-step workflows such as emailing reports, updating CRM systems or analysing Excel data.

This agentic approach to AI changes the story from AI that responds to AI that acts autonomously across integrated platforms. Agentic AI is defined by its ability to understand context, chain tasks and make decisions within defined boundaries.

You can instruct an agent to create a proposal, attach key figures to it, and then email it to the relevant stakeholders without any intervention on your side.

The process just gets done with the AI deftly managing the entire action stack. Microsoft’s Copilot Studio allows users to create these workflows with minimal coding which democratises a task that was once only possible with engineers.

While productivity is an obvious gain, there are other, unexpected benefits. You can synthesise internal knowledge as easily as Googling a fact, which is both a cultural transformation and a process improvement.

Other use cases include intelligent meeting recaps, real-time proposal drafting, and internal document search that rivals enterprise-grade search engines.

Companies are now deploying thousands of copilots just to crawl through petabytes of data because the answers they provide are invaluable.

However, the implementation of AI remains challenging. Companies have AI on their strategy list but aren’t sure where to start. Data is messy, security frameworks aren’t compliant and employees often don’t know how to prompt the AI effectively.

There is a growing need for training that takes people beyond just clicking an AI button and into the realm of understanding the right questions to ask and how to interrogate the AI correctly.

The future of Copilot and AI in general comes down to orchestration. Companies want bespoke Copilots tailored to their workflows and an agent ecosystem that solves their problems.

They also want to create a culture which embraces AI and this means building skills in curiosity, experimentation and critical thinking.

There is a danger in over trusting AI, it has to be validated, challenged and directed to ensure it is delivering value.

Winning at Copilot, or any form of agentic AI, will come down to companies being willing to learn how to ask better questions, explore the potential of the technology, and that are open to learning, failing and experimenting.

These are the routes to finding new ways of benefitting from AI’s capabilities, and ensuring it works hard for the business.

Today that figure stands at 33.5% globally while in South Africa, it has increased from 26% to 42%. Top management roles are only held by 29% of women in South Africa – .3% higher than the global average of 28.7%.

Representation is improving, but there remains a persistent challenge in creating spaces where women leaders can connect, network and expand their knowledge bases so they can collectively drive the diversity narrative forward.

For many women in leadership, safety at work is about the subtle but powerful sense of being heard, valued and supported. Not once a year on a specific day, but consistently and meaningfully, without conditions.

At Braintree, this conversation around women in leadership came into focus at Accelerate Action, an event focused on exploring how to build an environment where safe, inclusive spaces are not the goal, but the norm.

It highlighted a growing concern for women in business – to work in a culture where all employees are given the time to discuss ideas, and feel they deserve to be there.

Recognising the need for authentic spaces is one thing, creating them is another. Companies need to come together and form partnerships with organisations designed to foster this inclusivity and these connections.

This lived experience matters, it pushes companies to move beyond the assumptions of what women might need and to instead listen to the women who are already in leadership roles and to take their advice on how to move forward.

This takes the concept of safe spaces beyond the performative. Employees need to feel they can walk into anyone’s office and be themselves – that kind of access matters more than companies realise.

It is also a model that works. It has already been adopted by companies like Braintree because it is quietly powerful in an industry where inclusion can still be more rhetoric than reality.

Of course, creating safe spaces is only one part of the solution. Companies need to implement policies and practices that support women’s advancement.

This includes mentorship programmes, flexible work arrangements and transparent promotion pathways. Actively changing policy and collaborating with initiatives designed to foster inclusion, such as GirlCode, means businesses are playing a pivotal role in changing the gender narrative.

Events like Accelerate Action, which brought together C-Suite women and rising leaders, are designed to reflect the leadership that’s already in place, giving attendees a safe space to share stories, not scripts.

They allow for people to be honest about the challenges they’ve faced and how they’ve built resilience in their roles.

Importantly, these stories aren’t about bitterness and resentment but rather about shared knowledge and creating a blueprint for those still climbing the ladder. Here, at events like these, people have the opportunity to reflect the lived reality of how leadership looks when women lift each other up.

A surprising insight shared by many speakers was that they attributed a large percentage of their career growth to their mentors – most of whom were men.

It is not a story of men rescuing women, but men playing an increasingly important role in building mentorship ecosystems that are gender-inclusive by design.

The future isn’t gung-ho women’s only spaces, but diversity in all its forms that brings everyone together and gives everyone a chance to thrive.

It’s easy to treat equity as a finish line and measure progress in statistics and press releases, but the women of Braintree spoke to something quieter and more enduring – the need to keep evolving.

Many women are thriving and feel supported, and believe their companies are getting it right, so the narrative isn’t that all is bad but rather that the good models, the working models, should be shared widely so more workplaces embrace this level of change.

The challenge isn’t creating safe spaces from scratch but recognising the ones that exist and asking how these can be scaled so everyone can benefit.

Today, Volkswagen has 6% of the global market and its luxury car, Audi, is considered one of the ten most valuable brands. That small VW campaign proved that creativity and innovation aren’t about size.

Gaining ground in competitive markets means listening to people and creating solutions that solve their problems.

It means thinking small when it comes to personalised service and collaborative customer relationships, but thinking far beyond the box when it comes to technology solutions, innovation and growth.

This is something that many technology companies have forgotten – the human element of service delivery amidst the rush to create new solutions and implement new technologies.

The pressure to drive sales often overshadows the importance of understanding what a business actually needs.

The most successful technology partners are built on shared growth and understanding. This is reflected in research that shows how the relationship between the service provider and the customer is one of the single biggest determinants of success.

It is also the customer’s experience throughout the technology implementation and support phases that defines the longevity of that success. Service providers need to take the time to understand the business and design solutions that will evolve with them.

It’s not lip service that makes technology last, it’s time spent sitting inside the depths of the organisation and ensuring the technology fits the problem. This approach is in stark contrast to the ‘whole pie in the first bite’ strategy that can be used to describe many technology implementations.

Companies don’t want to feel as if they’ve been thrown into a den where every employee is fighting for their share of this pie, either.

They want to feel as if the person selling the solution is interested in more than the signature on the invoice. Adopting the alternative approach – building genuine, long-term relationships – is a long-tail strategy that delivers better results for both parties.

Another often overlooked factor is the relationship between talent retention and service quality. Investing in the right people and fostering a culture of innovation has a direct impact on how satisfied a client feels.

When technical teams combine ingenuity with engineering expertise, the results often exceed client expectations, however, retaining these teams and this talent means prioritising relationships within the business as well. Customers know when the services they receive are from people who love what they do.

The most effective partnerships between service providers and organisations rely on deep marketing understanding, consistent service delivery, investment into talent, long-term relationships over quick wins, and adaptive solution design.

This ensures longevity and success which are becoming increasingly important in the highly competitive market.

The most valuable partners – those that hold onto customers – are those who remember what it’s like to think both in terms of scale and growth, but what it means to start small.

And starting small means remembering the value of providing solutions that answer very real business problems and don’t rely on hype to get in the door.

As companies continue to navigate digital transformation – and yes, companies are still finding their feet within this ecosystem – it has become increasingly important to choose the right technology partner.

Differentiation as a business doesn’t just rest in having the best technology, but in a relationship with a service provider that prioritises the right investments and solutions to help you better overcome your challenges and build exceptional market share.

Core to this move has been the consolidation of data from a multitude of financial services providers into one Efficient group database – the single view of and for the client.

An initial in-depth needs assessment and Microsoft Cybersecurity Assessment also revealed potential security vulnerabilities that required resolution.

As a Microsoft Dynamics partner, Braintree facilitated the implementation of Azure as a secure, powerful foundation on which to seamlessly integrate all business operations.

What has resulted is a first of its kind app for South African investors that provides a 360-view of all financial services related products and services.

Improvements in productivity and compliance were catalysts for this systems upgrade, with security being the biggest priority.

The Efficient Group has over 500 employees, many of whom operate remotely and in field, in addition to partnering with more than 200 financial advisors across South Africa.

The need to solve complex data sharing challenges and the mitigation of common threats were integral to the modifications undertaken.

With the ageing and increasingly complex infrastructure no longer able to interoperate as efficiently as needed, a wealth of Microsoft opportunities were uncovered, and the Efficient Group were fully onboarded to Microsoft 365 and its data centre transformed and moved to Azure.

The group is now running on a 96% Microsoft Secure score, in line with international best practice.

Other Microsoft capabilities such as Teams were also used as a solution to consolidate vast amounts of emails, online video calls, collaborative spreadsheets and documents shared between employees from multiple locations.

Through this process, Braintree also limited overspending and under utilisation by doing a comprehensive review of all licenses and productivity suites.

“Financial services have historically been technology laggards, but we are building platforms that will make us a pioneer, based on future proof infrastructure,“ says Heiko Weidhase, chief executive officer of the Efficient Group.

The app, which has been a work in progress for ten years, would not have been possible without the advanced digital solutions now available, the scalability of the cloud, improved connectivity and the enhanced security which is now fully incorporated into the system.

Doug Morrison, Strategic Head Microsoft 365 Braintree, says that the interoperability enabled by Microsoft eliminates complicated development.

“As partners, we are reaping the rewards of the investments Microsoft has made over the past 8 years across security for infrastructure, networks, applications and devices – so we have a totally robust solution to take to market,” he says.

Not only has this integration enhanced efficiency and security within the group, but it has provided users with a secure, consolidated and easy-to-use overview of their investments, irrespective of platform or product provider.

Weidhase  says that most South Africans don’t save enough for retirement because they don’t fully understand how much they have invested.

This new app enable investors with instant access to information to enhance their investment decisions.

In line with Efficient Group’s strategy to harness technology to drive value for its clients, this app is just one of the innovations that the company plans to roll out in future, all enabled by the infrastructure and security upgrade to Azure.

Up next will be the launch of their financial well-being app for mobile and desktop, to be released later this year.

The app will integrate with a multitude of product providers, empowering clients and advisors to work together to achieve better outcomes.