Rixwelle Corporation Ltd (Rixwelle) is a specialist ICT consultancy firm with 25 years’ experience in producing best-in-class corporate and consumer ICT security products and services. As Head of Digital Transformation at the company, Richard Chege has a track record for managing the successful delivery of these complex ICT programmes/projects, and he is on a mission to make Rixwelle Africa’s leader in digital transformation and integration.

Being the only service provider to demonstrate a global competitive advantage on the SWIFT ISO® 20022 (https://www.iso20022.org/) Migration, while endlessly delivering world-class products and services, Rixwelle is no doubt well on the way to achieving this. Following Richard’s success in the Security Awards 2023, we learn more.

Rixwelle Corporation’s areas of expertise lie in programme/project management, governance and compliance management, enterprise architecture, business analysis, technology architecture, solution architecture, public finance management, banking and sovereign asset and liability management system (SALMS) ERP, business intelligence, and analytics. It also has and continues to grow its link with fellow leading ICT product and service providers to bring best practice solutions on digital transformation into Africa within the framework of strong local support networks.

Notably, SALMS ERP is a robust, powerful, flexible, and integrated system for public finance operations in any sovereign country. It offers integrated cash and debt management that consolidates the government’s entire budget cycle and ensures a systematic approach to forecasting, assisting with the early identification of priorities, and the automated settlement of government obligations on a daily basis.

The system allows the government to avoid imbalances caused by idle cash balances sitting in some departments on a real-time basis, thereby helping to ensure the temporary reallocation of these idle resources while being supported with the daily identification of deficits that can be bridge financed through the country’s financial systems. The result is the smoothening of the timely settlement of payments across all government departments using existing and linked economic units.

SALMS ERP can be customised for managing domestic and the sovereign government’s debt and cash needs and requirements. This powerful tool also helps to enable speedy progress for economic advancement as well as ensures the kind of investor confidence that attracts credible international contractors and service providers, in addition to growing mainstream domestic capabilities.

This is just one example of Rixwelle’s extraordinary offering, with its team demonstrating to all clients their wealth of relevant sovereign and professional expertise in both the public and private sectors, assisting them to benchmark their organisations with the rest of the industry across South Africa. Rixwelle is an institution that its clients consider to be very receptive in providing professional advice and guidance and, wherever required, act on behalf of them to ensure successful management and on-time delivery of their strategic programmes/projects.

The company’s main objective is to continuously champion SWIFT ISO® 20022 Migration in the public sector, as Richard explains, “Our core aim is to create a unique defensive position in the SWIFT ISO® 20022 Migration across the world. This is because Rixwelle is generating a superior ROI (return on investment) to the South African government by being the only company in South Africa that is collaborating with FedPayments Improvement Community (https://fedpaymentsimprovement.org/).

“South African companies do not understand that ISO® 20022 is the only best practice and trusted information security Meta Data Management Framework (MDMF) (https://www.claravine.com/resources/metadata-management/) in Computer Science available in the market in this current generation.

“In doing this, we are able to demonstrate our Vision 2026 is in full compliance with Information Security Governance.”

Alongside the company’s focus on SWIFT ISO® 20022 Migration, its mission is to provide highly responsive service support to clients through an evidence-based, client feedback-driven consulting culture, as well as to leverage and develop its youth’s world-class ICT and project management practices. This is in addition to being guided by an over-arching principle of building capacity through scheduled and repeated ICT training to maximise skills transfer to, and work efficacy of, its clients.

Leading the team is Richard Chege, a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science graduate and an accomplished, result-driven digital transformation specialist, with a career spanning more than 25 years, having worked in roles such as senior analyst and senior project manager for the likes of LOGTEK USA Inc, National Treasury of South Africa, GovCon Consulting Group, and more.

Over the years, Richard has been progressively championing SWIFT ISO® 20022 Migration in the public sector, business and technology strategy, and project management governance using the Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM). He leverages this experience to lead his team through programme management and technical leadership on key strategic projects to ensure digital solutions are designed, developed, and implemented according to the client’s approved objectives and budget.

Richard continues to promote efficiency, transforming critical business processes and business intelligence models in the prudent management of sovereign financial assets and liabilities at the National Treasury, improving end-user experience and engagement. His focus is also of course on supporting innovation for a true digital transformation using MDMF in Computer Science for the creation of long-term value.

None of what Rixwelle offers could happen without the team, though, with Richard saying, “Our consultants are exceptional professionals with the education, sovereign institutional memory in custom-development and successful implementation of any digital transformation program/project, and business and technological experience. That definitely adds real value.”

He continues, “Some of our consultants have a combined sovereign institutional memory of more than 150 years on sovereign debt and cash management in South Africa, both at the National Treasury and at the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).”

And the team continues to provide this extensive wealth of knowledge in the modernisation of functional public financial management systems, in collaboration with the Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI®), which works with sovereign states in African finance and budget ministries in developing and putting into practice sovereign policy and technical reforms that will drive the next generation of management of sovereign financial assets and liabilities in the African continent.

Now as Rixwelle looks towards the future, Richard gives us an insight into what that looks like: “By learning from our past mistakes through knowledge sharing with the financial market as part of the SWIFT ISO® 20022 Migration journey, which will go beyond 2025, we will continue championing MDMF in Computer Science. Focusing on ISO® 20022 as Rixwelle’s Vision 2026 is our core long-term plan because we will gain competitive advantage over any current, potential, or even any future competitors in the industry.”

He continues, “We will also be modernising and migrating the SALMS ERP for the South African government, from on-premise to a Trusted Government Cloud Framework using Security Practice Guide for VMware Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Environments from NIST® (https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.1800-19.pdf).”

For further information, please contact Richard Sammy Mwithukia Chege or visit www.rixwelle.co.za