It’s time for Africa!

Gensuite, a global provider of an award-winning, cloud-based suite of compliance and risk management software solutions, sponsored the 10th Annual HSE Excellence Europe conference. And, as CHARLEEN CLARKE discovered at this event, the company is keen to enter the South African market!

Gensuite is a relatively new name to the South African health and safety industry. But it’s a massive – and massively successful – company that operates in over 100 countries worldwide. In fact, Gensuite is THE company when it comes to software solutions that enable operational excellence in environmental, health and safety; sustainability; quality; supplier risk; security; and cross-functional risk management.

The company was created by R Mukund – its current CEO – some 18 years ago. As an environmental, health and safety (EHS) professional, Mukund recognised the needs and challenges of functional programme leaders during his tenure in consulting and industry. “As such, working with my peers and stakeholders, we developed and refined the solutions that are Gensuite today,” he tells SHEQ MANAGEMENT.

Attending HSE Excellence Europe was a first for the company. “Gensuite has a good subscriber base in Europe serving over 1 000 facilities. We participated in the conference because we wanted to share relevant case studies with delegates,” explains Mukund.

The exercise was extremely valuable. “We had the opportunity to meet a broad group of SHE leaders and professionals, and to understand their safety excellence process needs. As a bonus, we also got to engage with key leaders from our subscribers – such as GE, L’Oréal and AECOM, for instance. The conference itself offered great speakers with engaging topics, for a great learning opportunity. Overall, it was a well-spent couple of days and we hope to advance the relationships we initiated at the conference. With our established office at London, we aspire to grow our subscriber base in Europe,” he tells SHEQ MANAGEMENT.

And the company doesn’t only wish to expand in Europe; it is also eyeing the South African market. “South Africa, the second largest economy in Africa, has developed an established, diversified manufacturing base that has shown resilience and potential to compete in the global economy with key sectors such as mining, metals, transportation, construction and chemical demonstrating continued growth. With growth, there have been challenges in effective implementation and compliance to environmental, health and safety (EHS) regulations. This has been noted in a speech made on behalf of Department of Labour’s deputy director-general: Inspection and Enforcement Services (IES), Siyanda Nxawe, who said that ‘the cost of non-adherence to occupational health and safety to the economy is dire’,” comments Mukund.

He notes that Gensuite, with its best-in-class solutions for compliance and risk management, would like to offer the same configurable and locally customisable solutions to the South African industry sectors. “We would like to digitise key business processes in EHS. This will drive productivity, transparency and engagement of all workers and staff, with the end goal of ensuring safety and providing a pathway to ‘zero target for workplace injuries and diseases’, as emphasised by Labour Minister, Mildred Oliphant.

“We know we have the best solutions available in the marketplace and understand that South Africa offers a huge untapped potential for us to serve. We aspire to be part of the country’s economic growth and in driving the cause for effective EHS implementation and compliance,” Mukund elaborates.

South Africa is just the starting point. “We would like to expand into Africa. We would like to explore the strong growth potential of the African markets and Special Economic Zones on the continent. We plan to take some of our initial success stories in South Africa to other regions to demonstrate how Gensuite can drive operational excellence and, at the same time, improve EHS performance. We plan to set up a local Gensuite office in the region once we start catering to a larger African subscriber base,” Mukund concludes. Watch this space!

GE: 19 000 Gensuite users!

One of the highlights of HSE Excellence Europe was a joint presentation by R Mukund, CEO and founder of Gensuite and Jan Jaap van der Bij, executive EHS leader at GE Oil and Gas in The Netherlands.

Van der Bij explained that the company’s journey to EHS excellence had been challenging. “Our EHS performance was average; we have a high potential for incidents; we have had an inconsistent and silo-ed approach to safety and we have traditionally operated in an extremely volatile business situation,” he told delegates.

Based on this situation, the company came up with a vision for the future. “We want to deliver EHS excellence across all regions within Subsea Systems and Drilling, through strong, dynamic and creative EHS solutions, which promote and include all employees to drive a sustainable EHS culture,” Van der Bij reported. However, the company could not achieve this vision on its own …

Enter Gensuite. “We have a long history of using Gensuite. It supports the compliance processes, simplifies EHS processes, increases reporting capabilities, enables us to see what is happening, allows us to prioritise support and it drives EHS to our operations. But this was rolled out even further. We even distributed 300 iPad mini tablets to supervisors and cell leaders to promote operational use. Today we have 19 000 Gensuite users across more than 280 sites,” he revealed.

Van der Bij believes that this will transform the way that GE addresses EHS. “This strategy is allowing us to predict accurately and we have smart delivery of information.”

These – and many other – benefits are seeing Gensuite enjoy massive growth. “The number of subscribing companies has grown by ten times in the past five years,” Mukund told delegates.

“Gensuite is affordable and it can be deployed fast – we can be launch ready within six to eight weeks. It is scalable and web-based. Furthermore, it is proven and reliable. We have also been named ‘Best in Class’ by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index,” he reported.

It’s certainly not hard to understand why the company is growing so fast!