DISCON Specialists is an organization that was formed in 1994 by the two founding members Bert Engelbrecht and Johan Viljoen. The organization's primary reason for existence has always been to aid and enable businesses to address business problems pro-actively, effectively and to effect change to these organizations in a controlled manner.
To enable their customers to achieve this DISCON Specialists have developed a propriety Business Engineering methodology which they have patented internationally.
DISCON Specialists is still the only organization in South Africa that provides training in Business Engineering. It is also the only organization in South Africa that has a single integrated methodology that covers the diverse disciplines of, amongst others, Business Engineering, Human Engineering (Change Management) and Programme and Project Management.
The DISCON Specialists methodology has been applied with tremendous success over diverse industries in countries like the United States of America, Australia, China, Botswana, Lesotho, the United Kingdom and South Africa over the past ten years.
In South Africa, China, Botswana and Lesotho the methodology has been, and is currently utilized with great success in both the private and public sectors.
In the United States of America, Australia and the United Kingdom it has been, and is currently still being utilized with great success in the private sector.
DISCON Specialists have a suite of thirteen different training courses, which are unique in South Africa, that the organization has been successfully applying locally and internationally over the past ten years.
The DISCON Specialists courses have over the last five years, and are currently still utilized by, and presented to post graduated students, as part of their formal curriculums at tertiary education centers. Centers like the University of South Africa's Post Graduate School of Business Leadership (UNISA SBL), and Vaal Triangle Technicon's Post Graduate Programme Management faculty are successfully making use of this expertise and availability of this intellectual property.
DISCON Specialists have also embedded their entire methodology into a graphical modeling tool backed by a complete and integrated repository. This tool is currently still being used extremely successfully on all DISCON Specialists' project assignments, as well as by national and international customers that have standardized on the DISCON Specialists method set.
The DISCON Specialists methodology is an adaptable method framework that can incorporate any methodology technique from other methods, should it be required, and should it integrate and make business sense. This is made possible due to the fact that the DISCON Specialists method set is totally object oriented, not only in that it delivers an object-oriented result, but also in that it consists out of methodology objects. Newly required methodology techniques and objects that have to be incorporated into the DISCON Specialists framework have to be objectised, wrapped to represent objects, to be integrated into the holistic framework.
DISCON Specialists primarily earn their revenue from providing a Business Engineering consulting service, from providing training on Business Engineering and related topics, from building and selling customizable information systems and from selling Methodology related automated toolsets.
We do not sell a methodology; we provide a philosophy and a framework to methodologies. Our point of departure was the establishment of a meta-model to provide solutions to business problems. This meta-model was then objectised into true object oriented methodology objects. For all of these methodology objects we have developed methodology techniques of which some are already strung together in hundreds of methodology recipes, tailor made to specific problems.
Some of these recipes have also been re-applied on other projects where they were applicable.
We are of the opinion that there does not exist a single methodology that can be applied to solve all kinds of problems, for all sorts of businesses, across diverse industries. What we do believe is that a methodology potentially has to be created for each instance of a project within each organization. So, methodologies are not only organization specific but are also project specific within each individual organization. We also believe that a methodology for a project has to evolve over time to accommodate changes in what a project has to deliver, as a result of pressure exerted on the project from its External and Target Environments. Thus a project specific methodology must also be time dependent.
The fact that our methodology philosophy is reflected in an object oriented methodology meta-model enables us to incorporate different methodology components that are existent within customers, or that are at that time better than our existing components. This is accommodated without obscuring the larger methodology framework and encompassing philosophy.
As a result of an object oriented methodology meta-model we can also string methodology objects together to represent new recipes as they are required for unique individual projects, again without obscuring the larger methodology framework and encompassing philosophy.
Over the past ten years, and for seven years before that, the core team and later the other members of the team have accumulated an immense amount of knowledge on methodologies. We truly regard ourselves as of the world's best in terms of methodology aspects like their integration, their shortcomings, the abstract meta-base required from which all methodologies should have been extrapolated, their positioning relative to one another as well as a complete framework within which all business problems should be addressed through methodologies and their components.
Our consulting exposure over the past years in a diverse customer environment has also equipped us with a great deal of intellectual property on businesses and all of its intricacies.