Capability you can own. Delivery you control. At a cost that reduces.
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Growth takes more than capacity. You need a team that shares your purpose, understands how you work and builds knowledge over time. A team that grows with you and that you control.
For executives in the UK and Europe this mandate can be challenging due to constrained budgets, not being able to find and hire the people they need at home and typical lack of ownership in outcomes when using multiple suppliers.
There is a way though, and it’s been proven. See how the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland did it.
True capability must be shaped to your business and need not be limited to certain skillsets. It can start small and grow at a pace the business can absorb. As the team grows, so does their knowledge of the organisation, its culture and the value they can create.
Setting up in another country brings operational, regulatory, tax and employment questions. Those are the answerable part which we take off your plate. The harder part is finding the right people who fit your business and running operations that transfer your ways of working across to them. That is the part we build for with you.
Its Cape Town team grew from four people to 48 in three years, while capability that had previously been spread across service providers in multiple countries was brought together into one team, one location and one time zone.
See how IMD built capability that grew with their business.
Capability you can own. Delivery you control. At a cost that reduces.
Jakobus Wilken is a Senior Partner at iqbusiness, leading the firm's Global Capability Services (GCS) practice — helping executives in the UK and Europe grow their business without growing spend.
With three decades in professional services, successfully building and running regional operations in a federated model, he takes the approach of an 'operator': hands-on, goal-driven, disciplined and personally involved every step of the way.
His experience spans every part of setting up operations in South Africa from the ground up — regulatory, contractual, people and process — backed by an MBA from Stellenbosch Business School (AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS accredited). The result is a personal stake in getting it right: an approach built with you, not simply delivered for you, and an outcome focused on value that compounds.
