Every long-standing
company eventually reaches a moment when steady progress is no longer enough.
Market cycles accelerate, customer expectations escalate, and the systems that
once supported growth begin to constrain it. Transformation becomes inevitable,
as a disciplined reinvention of how a company thinks, operates, and delivers
value. At Syspro, a forty-eight-year-old ERP vendor long respected for its
authenticity and deep industry roots, this transformation has taken shape
quietly but decisively under the leadership of CEO Jaco Maritz.
Syspro’s new brand and tagline, Smarter. Faster. Built for Your
Industry, signals the outward expression of a much deeper internal shift. The
company is claiming its position as the platform trusted by the people who
build, make, move, and sell the products that keep the world running and
thriving. What Syspro calls the True Pros of industry. The manufacturers and
distributors who rely on technology that’s robust, practical, and engineered
for the way their production floors actually run. Jaco is the force behind that
shift, evolving Syspro into a unified, globally aligned SaaS company engineered
to simplify, standardise, scale, and innovate.
From the beginning of his career, Jaco gravitated far more to the
business side of operations than the traditional finance track. Although he
served as a Financial Director and oversaw financial departments, he naturally
found himself engaging in business challenges, negotiations, and deal
structuring. Even fresh out of his articles, he was already involved in sales, pre-sales,
and the architecture of business transactions. His early exposure led him to
sit in on executive committee meetings, presenting critical topics long before
he held an executive title.
Jaco’s professional path has been rooted in the IT sector from the
beginning. His journey started in the technology division of ABSA Bank. When
the bank outsourced their distributed IT functions to AST, he led the financial
stream on the project and transitioned into AST’s managed services division as
part of the transaction. Though his role remained finance-oriented, he
continued contributing significantly to business development activities.
Before joining Syspro, he expanded his experience by
working at Silverbridge, a software company servicing mid-market life insurers.
The combination of financial expertise and a strong business mindset made him
an ideal fit for the next chapter of his journey
When Jaco joined Syspro in 2014 as Financial Director, founder Phil Duff made it clear that the role would be far more expansive than traditional finance. Syspro was then a globally recognised brand operating as a constellation of independent regional businesses. Each region, South Africa, the United States, Canada, Australia, Asia, and the UK, ran on its own systems, processes, and priorities. The model had created decades of entrepreneurial energy, but it also limited scalability.
Phil wanted Syspro to evolve into a unified global company without losing the closeness and integrity that defined it. Jaco’s hybrid experience positioned him perfectly at the centre of this shift.
One of Jaco’s earliest and most significant undertakings was the consolidation of Syspro’s independently run regions into a coherent global structure. The acquisition of the United States business, a major milestone, accelerated this change. As the deal concluded, Jaco stepped into the role of Chief Operating Officer, working alongside Phil to modernise the organisation's structure, standards, and global rhythm.
The focus was straightforward but ambitious. Syspro needed standardisation, unified systems and a shared strategy that could work across different markets without losing the entrepreneurial energy that shaped the company’s origins.
During his tenure as COO, while also overseeing the CFO responsibilities, Jaco recognised the natural conflict between these two worlds. The COO is driven by growth, opportunity, and calculated risk, while the CFO is anchored in conservatism, caution, and financial guardrails.
Jaco realised that the company needed independent leadership in both roles to effectively scale. In 2022, Syspro appointed a dedicated CFO, allowing Jaco to transition into a pure operational and strategic leadership function.
In 2022, Jaco became CEO as part of a carefully planned succession process and began preparing Syspro for a new era. The shift from a founder-led organisation to a professionally run global company required structural evolution, disciplined execution and long-term clarity of purpose.
This transformation set the stage for a major milestone in Syspro’s history. In 2023, the company initiated a shareholder transition that resulted in Advent acquiring the business. The transaction, completed in October 2024, officially marked Syspro’s evolution into a Private Equity-led organisation governed by an independent board.
For Jaco, customer centricity is not a slogan but a structural principle. Historically, product development and market execution operated independently across regions. Under Jaco’s leadership, Syspro reoriented its product decisions, road map, and innovation closer to real market needs.
He introduced a single global plan rather than multiple regional ones. Core roles such as Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Customer Officer now operate globally rather than by territory. This unification ensures that customer engagement, delivery, and success are consistent across every region, with room for local nuances but without losing alignment.
Syspro’s 48-year legacy is a competitive advantage. An archive of industry knowledge that cannot be replicated by newer vendors. Jaco has worked to preserve the company’s authenticity, closeness, and humility while repositioning it for a smarter, faster, more competitive cloud-first era.
He emphasises three guardrails: the right people, chosen for cultural fit as much as capability; the right communication, transparent and grounded; the right leadership behaviours, defined by discipline, urgency, and accountability.
It is a philosophy perfectly aligned with the ethos behind Syspro’s True Pros community. The professionals who build, move, integrate, and innovate across every supply chain. The customers, partners, and employees who collectively define progress for the manufacturing and distribution industries.
Several moments stand out in Jaco’s journey.
His transition from finance into broader business strategy.
The consolidation of global regions into one unified entity.
The structural evolution from founder-led to professionally run.
The successful shareholder transition to Advent.
And above all, the preservation of a deeply rooted culture, while positioning Syspro for global growth and long-term success.
Innovation at the Heart of Syspro’s Evolution
For Jaco, innovation is not a department or an initiative. It is a behaviour. His view is shaped by years observing how brilliant ideas can evaporate when organisations fail to execute. At Syspro, innovation is expected to produce tangible outcomes: operational efficiencies, product advancement, and meaningful improvements for customers.
He noted that innovation is particularly vital because Syspro is a software solutions provider, where technological progress determines competitiveness. Syspro’s acceleration in platform modernisation and AI capability is one of the clearest indicators of this shift. Jaco expressed pride in the team’s achievements while acknowledging the steep challenge ahead. According to him, customer expectations are not simply increasing, they are shifting fundamentally. The rules of the industry have changed, and staying ahead of that curve will remain one of Syspro’s biggest tests in the coming years.
And Syspro’s advantage is unique and brings superior intelligence into customer organisations. Decades of manufacturing logic, deeply embedded in the platform, now being surfaced through modern cloud architecture and AI tooling. The very essence of Smarter. Faster. Built for Your Industry.
Turning to corporate social responsibility, Jaco highlighted Syspro’s commitment to internal consciousness as well as external community engagement. Internally, the company prioritises creating a culture that respects diversity across cultures, genders and backgrounds. This sensitivity, he noted, is not limited to South Africa but must be upheld globally across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Asia.
Externally, Syspro adheres to ethical business practices and supports community initiatives in every region where it operates. Each office receives a dedicated budget to contribute to local causes. Whether it is Chicago, Johannesburg or London, the company ensures its support remains rooted in the communities where its people live and work. Jaco also shared that he was a finalist in the Conscious Company Awards for Conscious Ethical Leadership in 2023, recognising the embedded conscious leadership in Syspro, and an initiative he deeply admires for its focus on responsible leadership.
Syspro is undergoing a significant rebrand and repositioning as part of its broader transformation. The new brand identity centres on the theme smarter, faster, built for your industry and reflects Syspro’s commitment to professionalism, community and industry focus. The rebrand goes far beyond visual changes and instead represents how the organisation is positioning itself for the future, and how it shows up, all the time.
Syspro is now more than one year into its new chapter under Advent, executing a clear multi-year plan to standardise operations, modernise systems, and deepen leadership within core markets. The first priority has been driving operational efficiency, especially by consolidating region-specific processes and systems into a unified, standardised global model. While the company respects regional nuances, Syspro aims for customers across the world to experience consistent quality, delivery, and engagement.
Syspro is already well-positioned within its target markets of manufacturing and distribution, but Jaco sees considerable opportunity to strengthen its dominance. Expansion into additional territories remains a possibility in the future, but the immediate focus is on perfecting operational efficiency and deepening market leadership where the company is already present. That means forging deeper partnerships that span the entire buy-make-move-sell continuum, not just solving isolated pain points, but supporting customers through the full rhythm of their manufacturing and distribution lifecycle. True Pros don’t deliver value in fragments; they deliver it end-to-end.
The pace is faster than anything Syspro has experienced before. But it is purposeful, disciplined, and aligned with a new organisational rhythm. Externally, customers feel the shift; internally, teams are rising to meet it.
Syspro’s decades of functionality and industry data give it an advantage in an AI-driven future where knowledge, not merely software, differentiates winners.
When asked what guidance he would offer to emerging leaders who look up to professionals in positions like his, Jaco shared insights shaped largely by the organisational transformations of the past year.
He emphasised that the first and most critical step for any leader is to be completely clear about what they want to achieve. This clarity must begin internally, but it cannot remain there. According to Jaco, leaders must ensure that their vision does more than simply translate into the organisation. It needs to resonate with every individual, from the senior leadership and extended leadership teams to employees across all levels of the business.
Jaco believes that people want to understand where the organisation is heading, how it intends to get there, and what the journey will realistically entail. He stressed the importance of honesty, especially during challenging phases of transition. Sugarcoating difficulties, he noted, serves no one. Employees value transparency, even when the message is uncomfortable. If the road ahead is going to be tough, leaders must express that clearly and openly.
By doing so, employees can contextualise the obstacles they face. They are more likely to remain engaged and resilient when they understand not only the destination but also the temporary discomfort required to reach it. Jaco explained that major operational changes, such as shifts in processes across global markets, can be unsettling. However, when individuals know that these changes are guided by a thoughtful strategy and a defined end goal, they are better equipped to accept and navigate them.
He also highlighted another essential element of leadership: building a strong and aligned team. Reflecting on his own experience, Jaco shared that part of the organisation’s evolution involved bringing in new talent over the past year. The goal was to create a senior leadership team filled with like-minded individuals who bring diverse experiences and a clear understanding of how excellence is implemented and ingrained throughout the business.
For Jaco, a leader’s success is never achieved alone. It requires a collective effort, a “village” that moves with shared purpose. This team must not only possess expertise but must also fully subscribe to the organisation’s vision and direction. Only then can meaningful, sustainable progress be achieved.
Through these reflections, Jaco underscored that clarity, honesty, alignment, and strong leadership collaboration form the foundation of effective, modern leadership, particularly in times of change.
Syspro’s transformation is not simply internal. Under Jaco’s leadership, the company has embraced a more strategic approach to capability expansion through mergers and acquisitions. Judicious, value-driven, and focused on strengthening the customer proposition.
He explained that the organisation previously relied heavily on a do-it-yourself approach, which slowed the company down in areas where acquiring ready-made functionality could have accelerated progress.
With Advent’s involvement, mergers and acquisitions have now become an integral part of the strategy. Jaco stated that any acquisition must be accretive, contributing meaningfully to both revenue and profitability. However, financial benefit is only one part of the equation. Each acquisition must also enhance the company’s platform by adding new capabilities and strengthening the overall offering for customers.
Under this strengthened strategy, the company has already acquired its UK business, which it previously did not own, along with three additional acquisitions that brought new functional enhancements. Acquisitions are for value not just scale.
It is the mindset of a company no longer defined by its history but building deliberately toward its future.
A company of True Pros, for True Pros.
A platform engineered for how real manufacturing works.
A transformation rooted in clarity, discipline, and ambition.
Smarter. Faster. Built for Your Industry.
And at the centre of it is a CEO guiding Syspro into a new era, quietly, steadily, and with the conviction of someone who knows exactly what the next chapter requires
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