Flexyforce is South Africa’s first female-founded cloud-based business software. Established by Annette Muller in 2018, the innovative new technology startup helps teams to digitize and automate the piles of paperwork and spreadsheet administration around their supplier management.
The B2B cloud-based software is smart, simple to use and flexible – catering to any kind of supplier including contractors, one-man shows and freelancers.
Less time on admin, more time for growth
It also takes care of all onboarding (easily customized to your businesses vendor compliance needs like BEE) as well as digital contract management, including service level agreement creation, acceptance and purchase order management.
“The payout service is super useful if you are paying a lot of small to medium suppliers per day, or week and your business may be in need of some automation to ensure payouts happen on time and your business complies with associated tax requirements,” says Annette.
Flexyforce arose as a much-needed solution to a problem faced in a previous venture with independent contractors, freelancers and smaller suppliers.
“Keeping track of agreements, and who is working on what project and how much they need to get paid when was a total administration nightmare.”
“So we built some software. Accidently actually. Since then the business has taken some turns, including a major pivot from one of South Africa’s first job market places – into a pure SaaS business – specifically aimed at helping companies to automate administration to spend time where it matters most.”
Since then, the highlight has “definitely finally having a beautiful product, that adds real value to companies, people.
“The highlight for sure is when you get messages from clients saying how much they love Flexyforce and what a significant difference or help it has been in their working lives.”
The benefits
Flexyforce is a flexible alternative to old school vendor on-boarding systems and in house solutions like excel. It comes with smart contracting, automated payouts and a price tag that doesn’t break the bank. But most importantly, it is incredibly flexible and caters to the new on-demand, flexible and task-based micro workforce.
The top four benefits:
1. Self-service – Vendors onboarding themselves, so no time wasted
2. Low cost
3. Future of work fit
4. Easy to onboard
Flexyforce’s journey has not been without its challenges.
“With every startup journey comes great responsibility and expectations to handle everything with care and wisdom. It requires a lot more from a person than what the naked eye may see,” says Annette.
From busyness, to business
Moving forward, Flexyforce’s vision is to help entrepreneurs and teams all over the world to spend less time on admin, and more time on impact – be that growth, strategy, time with family, or more time with clients. In other words, helping everyone to go from busyness, to business.
“Right now one of our biggest goals is to support other startups, founders and entrepreneurs,” says Annette.
“We are committed to the South African entrepreneurial ecosystem and this partnership [with CiTi] will play an important role in assisting entrepreneurs to learn how to work together to succeed in a challenging business environment. We believe we can not only be an asset from a business automation perspective but also contribute to the larger South African startup community by promoting startup collaboration.”
More about the founder
Annette previously founded DOTNXT, one of South Africa’s first Innovation Consultancies (sold to an international firm) where she launched a number of innovations for South African corporate clients such as www.alphacode.club for Rand Merchant Bank and www.satrixnow.co.za for Satrix to name but a few.
She holds a Business Science Finance & Marketing degree (Honours Cum Laude) from the University of Cape Town, SA, and has attended the renowned Hyper Island Digital Master Class in New York. Recognised by Forbes as one of the top 10 female tech founders to watch in Africa in 2014 Annette is a sought-after international speaker and digital change agent, where her work continues to inspire people and companies all around the world to do things differently.
