Startup Story
Segametsi Mafa is the founder of Service Xcellence in Botswana, an ICT professional with over 18 years of corporate experience acquired from Government, Parastatals and Private companies. She brings almost 4 years of full-time entrepreneurial consulting experience gained from being the Founder and Managing Director of Service Xcellence, an ICT and Management Consultancy Business focused on IT Governance, IT Service Management, Strategy, Risk and Project Management Consulting. She also serves as an Independent Consultant for other companies.
Segametsi is an avid learner who holds a BSc Computer Science from the University of Botswana, MSc Strategic Management from the University of Derby and MDP from University of Stellenbosch, ITIL 4 Foundation Certificate, Post Graduate Certificate in Enterprise Risk Management, Post Graduate Certificate in Finance for Non-Finance Managers, a professional member of PMI with a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, a professional member ISACA pursuing Certification in Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT), a Trained Trainer and Assessor, and a number of certificates from short courses and workshops on a variety of subjects including ESG.
Segametsi has served as a Board and Board Committee member in a number of institutions where she has continued to gain invaluable leadership experience while also serving. She is also a radio personality with over 2 years as a Weekly Guest Presenter on local Private Radio Station Yarona FM, where she has a Digital Citizenship Awareness series that she initiated in 2021 aimed at giving public awareness and education to the listeners on current and key ICT matters and the Digital landscape. Segametsi loves Speaking, Facilitation, MC and enjoys working around and with people, especially mentoring the Youth. She uses some of her time as a Coach, a Mentor and participating in a number of wellness, charity and social activities.
LoA spoke to Segametsi Mafa about her passion for ICT, her long-held entrepreneurial vision, and her ambitions for the future.
“From a very young professional background, I knew one day I would own an ICT Company, though not defined at the time, and not sure what it would do, the thought of owning one has always been my dream.”
When did your start your business?
We started the business in 2020, somewhere in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the many lockdowns that we all went through.
What does your company do?
Our focus as a Consulting Business is on ICT consulting in various aspects of IT with strengths in Service Management and Governance, Digital Awareness and Cybersecurity Awareness, and basic IT Technical Support. We also do Management Consulting in areas of
-Risk Management where we do risk assessments, develop risk management frameworks, train staff on management of risk
-Strategy Management where we do strategy reviews, develop departmental strategies and strategy execution plans and performance measures
-Project management where we manage projects from initiation stage to closeout, and this comes with lots of change management as well during and post execution
Since we started business we also came up with a flagship annual conference named the ICT Graduates Conference which was first held in November 2020 and has continued since then, with the 4th Conference being planned for 26 November 2024. In 2023 we added a ICT Graduates Mentorship Programme where we saw a number of industry professionals partnering with us with the desire to grow graduates. We also initiated a program called “Character Building through Digital Awareness” for high school students since January 2023 to date, delivered to students during their school assemblies and on invite to different school engagements.
“Issues around digital transformation, from what I have seen so far, are another great concern and I wish to use all the platforms we have to continue with awareness and also reach out and teach and train in most organizations.”
What inspired you to start your company?
From a very young professional background, I knew one day I would own an ICT Company, though not defined at the time, and not sure what it would do, the thought of owning one has always been my dream. Somehow I thought that dream would be realized when I decided to retire from employment and lay back and run a company. Although the start of this business came much earlier and was not properly planned for, I believed nonetheless that it was time to start.
Over the years as I grew in ICT Operations Management, my inspiration was driven more by the experiences I had with companies we contracted to give us service. More than half the time I felt we were getting a raw deal from the services offered and felt one day when owning my Company I will indeed be different. In some cases while I was still employed, most of the time I found myself even coaching the Company owners in how to do business with us and comply to set SLA metrics, and that’s when I realized I was indeed going to do a Service Company.
Why should anyone use your service or product?
What makes our service provision different is the desire to see change in everything we do, and to build robust client relations. In most of the clients that we have done work with, it is indeed hard to part ways because we desire to continually see the results of our work and be part of the feedback for continual improvement.
Tell us a little about your team:
Service Xcellence operates a very volatile structure with a pool of both professional and technical independent consultants within our reach. We build teams based on the type of job and dismantle them once we have completed the job, but remain in contact as they are part of our pool of resources. This model has worked for us since we started the business as we do not have jobs that give us continuous cash flow and we are still building on that. However, we have also enjoyed working with graduates who only get a little Stipend to help with Office and Project Administration duties as well as marketing the business.
“As an entrepreneur, I have been able to reach out to more people and change lives both on professional levels and at personal levels.”
Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?
I have been an entrepreneur from as far back as during University times from selling such products as Tupperware while still a student. Other businesses that were done while now working included again selling products such as Table Charm and Amway, and these are network marketing businesses. But more importantly, I loved the products and bought more for myself than sell. I have also owned a hair salon before and ran it for almost 4 years. It was a good learning platform as well, to have employees, manage stock, clients, income and expenditure, pay regulators and rentals and utilities and that one was a good grooming ground for me, great lessons indeed too.
Other than that, I come from a background of being raised by a very entrepreneurial mother, from selling vegetables and sweets by our street to sewing and knitting clothes from any cloth she laid her hands on. When clothes became old and torn, she would cut and make new things even for us as her kids while selling some to the public.
What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?
I wish to build a strong professional team of Service Management experts. A lot of organizations fail to deliver on their mandate not because they do not have the necessary resources, but because they cannot work together and handshake well across the value chain. There is still a lot of decentralization by departments and this causes a lot of delivery inefficiencies across most processes and strategies. Issues around digital transformation from what I have seen so far are another great concern and I wish to use all the platforms we have to continue with awareness and also reach out and teach and train in most organizations. Hence I would want to grow into an accredited training institute and train on what we also do.
What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
As an entrepreneur, I have been able to reach out to more people and change lives both on professional levels and at personal levels. I have been able to publicly sell myself and that has given me greater networks than when I was still employed and that is one thing I enjoy, reaching out and giving out to more than staying in my little corner and only being exposed to the one organization. I know and I give out knowledge to many.
What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?
Do what you love and even when things get tough at least wake up to something you enjoy doing. Do not for a minute do something because you heard there are rewards or money in there, because if you do then one day when the money or the rewards are not coming through you will drop down and collapse.
Sometimes there is no business and that means no money coming in. It has happened and still happens that we sometimes go for months with no business, and through very depressing financially, the fact that I enjoy what I do, means I keep going on.
Find out more:
Email: segametsi@servicexcellence.co.bw
Website: http://www.servicexcellence.co.bw
Facebook: http://web.facebook.com/servicexcellencebw
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ictconferenceservicexcellence
Why LoA loves it…
As an entrepreneur, you have to be passionate about what you do and have a vision for what you want to ultimately achieve. Segametsi Mafa is driven by both her long-held vision of building a business, combined with her passion for ICT. She is now fulfilling that vision and helping other companies and individuals be the ICT change that is needed in the country. A business to watch as it grows over the coming years. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo, Lionesses of Africa