Pastel chooses optimism for South Africa

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July 2008

Softline Pastel, developer of South Africa’s most popular SME accounting and business software, is sponsoring two public presentations by political trend analyst, JP Landman, that will demonstrate why South Africans can be positive about the future of the country.

“As an organisation we tend to be inherently optimistic because we’ve been operating for 19 years and have grown consistently in that time in spite of some fairly extreme political situations that had the potential to be economically very disruptive,” says Softline Pastel managing director, Steven Cohen.

“So, experience has taught us that an organisation that chooses to remain adaptable and willing to redefine itself is always able to exploit the opportunities that exist, even in tough economic times. There’s always more than one way to drive revenue. It’s always possible to manage costs so that margins don’t shrink too far. There’s always a new product you can bring to market. There’s always a new market or an aspect of the market you haven’t targeted before.

“That doesn’t mean being a Pollyanna and not recognising and acknowledging obstacles when they arise. Besides, you can’t fix a problem if you don’t actually know that you have one. But, we’ve learned that you get, in life and in business, what you look for. If it’s trouble you look for, you’ll find it. If you look for answers, you’ll find those too. So your prosperity, or lack of it, depends to a large extent on your mindset.

“We were delighted, therefore, to find in JP Landman’s article, ‘Is the bad mood justified’, independent and authoritative support for our belief that South Africa is already a success story – and will continue to be one.

”We wanted to go beyond accounting and make that information available on as broad a basis as possible. So we’ve opened to the public what was initially planned as a briefing by JP to our staff and business partners.”

Landman’s belief that South Africans should stick around instead of emigrating is based on his years as editor of the business publication Finweek as well as being an analyst at the JSE and a specialist in industrial relations. He has also, in his capacity as an independent consultant to financial services institutions and other corporates, undertaken research projects into corruption in public institutions (quoted in a United Nations report), poverty alleviation in South Africa, and the extent to which President Thabo Mbeki has delivered on his State of the Nation plans.

Neither Landman nor Cohen are naïve about the local economy, however.

As Landman says: “Yes, consumption expenditure will fall and all sectors exposed to that will feel the pain: retail, advertising, car sales and so on. And, yes, change is messy. But, progress does not come from having no challenges; rather it comes from responding successfully to challenges.”

And Cohen believes it’s not helpful to pretend there are no problems, many of them are out of South Africans’ control because they originate in the United States or Europe or the rest of Africa. “You do have to be realistic – so that you can make the appropriate corrections to your business strategy. But it’s important to remember that it’s very easy to be right a lot of the time if you focus on the negatives, because things do go wrong. By contrast, it’s just as easy to be right a lot of the time if you focus on the positives, because mankind has a way of finding solutions.

“It’s your mindset that matters. So, JP’s presentations in Johannesburg and Cape Town will focus on helping the owners of small and medium-sized businesses position themselves strategically for growth.”

The presentations, at a nominal fee of R70 per seat, will take place on 23rd and 29th July respectively. To book a place, click here or visit www.pastel.co.za