Colombian firm Novasoft plans to expand to Argentina, Honduras

Colombian software company Novasoft plans to expand to Argentina and Honduras in the coming years, significantly increasing its business across the region.

The company offers ERP business management software and has a strong offering in payroll (human resources) applications. It has a presence in Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru.

It is currently preparing to start operations in Honduras in 2024 and Argentina the following year.

Novasoft has a strategy to grow in partnership with human resources consulting companies such as Adecco and Manpower.

“These companies allow us to expand to other countries where they have a presence. With Addecco, we're already operating in Mexico and Peru,” Angelica Martínez, manager of Novasoft's ERP business unit, told BNamericas.

Colombia currently accounts for 90% of Novasoft's business, but the company wants its international business to grow to 30% of the total in the next five years. “We hope that in five years we will be at 70-30 and continue to grow. We hope at some point to match our regional presence with that in Colombia," she said.

"Mexico is a very interesting market for us, and Peru, where we started out last year, has very good growth expectations," Martínez added.

Some 60% of the company's clients work in services. Retailers represent 30% and manufacturing firms approximately 10%. Novasoft also has solutions for vertical markets such as surveillance and cleaning, where it can handle issues of staff shift scheduling, educational institutions and government, among others.

Novasoft also has a large market in temporary service companies.

In partnership with Brazilian company Senior, the company intends to start offering agribusiness, construction and logistics solutions across the region. “What we're going to do is integrate [Senior's solutions] into our ERP,” said Martínez.

"At the moment, we're already in logistics tests and we're examining the translation issues. We hope that in the last quarter of this year we can start with logistics,” she added.

By the first half of next year, Novasfot hopes to have the system ready for manufacturing and then construction.

TO THE CLOUD

Novasoft's technology is all on the web in .NET language. However, the products can be offered in various ways, such as on-premise projects (licensed and installed on client servers) or via a cloud model.

“Most of the clients are acquiring or migrating to the cloud. That's what is growing the most,” Martínez said. Novasoft's solutions are on the Microsoft platform and are hosted in the Azure cloud in Virginia datacenters.

The pandemic accelerated the migration to the cloud and Novasoft claims that it has been seeing 90% growth in cloud services.

The Colombian company is also open to considering migrating its Virginia platform to Microsoft datacenters in Latin America. “It's not necessary yet, but it would be something that we would be evaluating, because the closer these datacenters are, the better the latency and it would also be a benefit for our clients,” she said.