About

Team UpdateMe in action

Founded in the heart of South Africa's tech revolution in 2015, UpdateMe has grown from a boutique IT consulting firm to a trailblazer in digital transformation. We are more than just a team of developers; we are your strategic partners in business growth. Whether you're an insurance giant, a legal powerhouse, a financial institution, or a fast-food conglomerate, we engineer bespoke systems that redefine your industry's landscape.

Our services go beyond traditional IT solutions. With our cutting-edge AI microservices, we craft scalable, custom-tailored systems that integrate seamlessly into your existing infrastructure. From system architecture and software development to social media management and cloud strategy, we ensure that your business isn't just online but ahead of the curve.

At UpdateMe, we believe that the key to success lies in comprehensive, data-driven solutioning. Our team excels in transforming complex challenges into streamlined, efficient solutions that not only meet but exceed your business objectives. We dig deep into your data, uncovering actionable insights that drive strategic decisions and fuel growth. Whether you need to optimize existing processes or build entirely new systems from the ground up, we provide the roadmap to get you there.

But we don't stop at delivering generic services; we specialize in creating custom, bespoke solutions that align with your unique business needs. Our AI systems are just the beginning. On top of these, we build tailored applications and integrations that give you a competitive edge. From personalized customer experiences to innovative product offerings, UpdateMe's bespoke services ensure that your business stands out in an increasingly crowded digital marketplace.

Invisible Contributions. Visible Results.

You won't find us on stage taking credit for your success. We don't publish press releases naming our clients. We don't plaster logos on case studies for our own marketing. That's not the business we're in.

We coach your teams. We rebuild your systems. We sit in the trenches with your developers until they don't need us anymore. And when it works, when the platform launches, when the audit passes, when the sprint times halve: it's your name on the win. Not ours.

Other firms shout about what they've built. We'd rather you never had to mention us at all. The best measure of our work is a client whose business shines so brightly that no one asks who helped build the light.

We're bespoke by design and selective by choice. We don't take on every engagement that comes our way. We choose our clients carefully, because when we commit, we go all in. Your business gets our full attention, not a junior bench and a project manager reading from a playbook.

That's the UpdateMe method. We accelerate your business. Then we step back and let you fly.

How We Work

Every engagement follows the same discipline. No theatre. No unnecessary phases. We get in, we deliver, and we leave your team stronger than we found them.

Assess
We start by understanding what you have: your systems, your team, your constraints. We audit the architecture, review the codebase, and identify the security gaps, bottlenecks, and technical debt that are slowing you down. No assumptions. Just evidence.

Architect
We design the system that should exist. Secure, compliant, and built to scale. Whether that means reworking an existing platform or starting from scratch, every decision is driven by your regulatory requirements, your infrastructure, and your team's ability to maintain it long after we leave.

Build
We rebuild alongside your team, not instead of them. Backend, frontend, AI pipelines. We write production code shoulder-to-shoulder with your developers. They're not watching a handover presentation in three months. They're in the codebase from day one.

Coach
We upskill your developers as we go. Prompt engineering, AI-assisted code review, secure development practices, and the confidence to ship without second-guessing. Your team doesn't just get a new system. They get the skills to evolve it.

Ship
We deploy, we pass audits, and we hand over. Clean documentation, full traceability, and a team that owns the platform completely. When we step back, you don't feel the gap. Because there isn't one.

Success Stories

Top-5 SA Insurer: From 6-Week Sprints to 2-Week Delivery
A leading South African insurer was drowning in legacy processes. Their dev teams were shipping once every six weeks, if they were lucky. The bottleneck wasn't talent; it was tooling, fear, and a mountain of manual code review. They needed speed without sacrificing compliance. They called UpdateMe.

The Intervention: Secure LLM Pipelines, Zero Compromise
We embedded with their engineering teams and built secure, enterprise-grade LLM pipelines running on zero-retention, zero-training API tiers. Every AI-assisted code suggestion was logged, reviewed, and traceable. Nothing was stored. Nothing was learned from. We didn't replace their developers. We supercharged them. Prompt-driven code generation, automated test scaffolding, and AI-assisted code review slashed the friction from every sprint.

The Result: Live Code, Zero Outages
Sprint cycles dropped from six weeks to two. Code went live without a single outage. The insurer's leadership didn't just see faster delivery. They saw higher-quality output with full audit trails. Compliance teams signed off without hesitation. What once felt impossible became the new baseline.

South Africa's Green Bank: SME Onboarding Rebuilt from the Ground Up
When the world locked down, banks had to adapt overnight. Small business owners needed to open accounts, apply for lending, and manage their finances from their living rooms, their kitchen tables, their beds. A well-known South African bank, instantly recognisable by its green, had an SME onboarding system built by an outsourced team at considerable cost. There was just one problem: it was riddled with security holes.

Tear It Down, Build It Right
UpdateMe was brought in to assess the damage. What we found wasn't salvageable. The architecture had fundamental security flaws that no amount of patching could fix. We made the call: tear it down and start again. But we didn't just replace the code. We replaced the approach. We sat with their internal development team, coached them on secure development practices, and rebuilt the entire backend and frontend together. Not in six months. Not in three. In one month.

What We Built
This wasn't a simple account-opening form. The platform we delivered powers the full SME banking experience: multiple account packages from startup bundles to high-volume business accounts, integrated card acceptance and payment solutions, lending and investment products, cross-border payment capabilities, and tailored industry solutions for agriculture, franchising, and medical practices. A complete digital onboarding and banking ecosystem, built to serve over 500 dedicated bankers across more than 200 locations.

Security Audit: Passed with Flying Colours
The rebuilt system was redeployed and put through rigorous security audits. It passed with flying colours. Small businesses could now onboard securely from anywhere in the country, and the bank's internal team had the skills and confidence to maintain and extend the platform themselves, long after we stepped back.

The UpdateMe Difference
This is what sets us apart. We're not consultants who deliver slide decks and disappear. We know the regulatory landscape. We understand compliance. We know what it takes to deliver securely in financial services. Because we've done it, under pressure, when it mattered most.

A World-Renowned Chicken Chain: AI-Powered Insights Across Continents
A global fast-food giant—world-renowned for their chicken—needed to manage their extensive social media presence across multiple countries in the Middle East and Africa. They turned to UpdateMe to unlock the power of AI-driven microservices for this challenge. Our task? To translate the flood of social media content from various regions into English, perform sentiment analysis, and distill it into actionable insights.

The Process: Turning Data into Strategy
We leveraged our advanced AI microservices to process social media feeds from across the region. Each piece of content was translated into English, allowing for a unified analysis. We then conducted sentiment analysis, identifying the top 10 positive and top 10 negative points. These insights gave leadership a clear view of their brand's social media presence across every market, highlighting what customers love and where there's room for improvement.

The Impact: Data-Driven Decisions for Superior Customer Service
Armed with these valuable insights, leadership was able to make informed decisions across their regions. The data allowed them to celebrate the successes of their franchises and implement targeted improvements in customer service. This AI-powered approach not only enhanced their social media strategy but also strengthened their overall brand presence in a highly competitive market.

The Next Chapter: 5 Years of Sales Data, 1 Week to Transform
But social media was just the beginning. The chain came back with a far bigger challenge: five years of sales data, terabytes of transactions across hundreds of stores, and a question that had stumped the big consulting firms for months. Which products sell best, where, and when? How should menus be structured per store, per time of day, to maximise revenue?

From Months to Days
Previous consulting engagements had taken months and commanded enormous fees, with results that were slow to action. UpdateMe took a different approach. Using our enterprise-grade LLM agreements and secure AI pipelines, we ingested the full dataset and delivered comprehensive menu optimisation insights in one week. Not a summary. Not a slide deck. Actionable, store-level recommendations: what to promote, what to reposition, and when. Broken down by location, daypart, and season.

The Result: Smarter Menus, Every Store, Every Hour
The chain now optimises menu layouts per store and time of day, driven by patterns that were buried in years of data no one had the tools to unlock at speed. What once took large consultancies months to deliver at premium rates, UpdateMe accomplished in days, with enterprise-grade security and zero data retention. The menus changed. The revenue followed.

AgriSense International: The Afri-Revolution Begins in a Humble Home
Picture this: a humble abode in Pietermaritzburg, home to sky-high ambitions and drones that dare to fly even higher. AgriSense International, a fledgling drone surveillance company, had their sights set on more than just the skies. They aimed to revolutionize farming across the African continent.

The Birth of AgriMaps
We rolled up our sleeves and dove right into the source code to craft AgriMaps. This was no ordinary mapping software; it was a farmer's dream come true. We made it easy for farmers to get drone shots of their land, measure it, and keep tabs on it from any device: web, mobile, or tablet. Now, the lush landscapes of African farms had an all-access pass to the digital realm

Enter DataSense
But wait, there's more! With AgriSense operating their drones not just in South Africa but across the entire continent, there was a thirst for data in places where even signal feared to tread. Enter DataSense. This tool didn't just collect data; it brewed insights in the very heart of rural Africa. Offline? No problem. DataSense would sync everything to a central server once back online, creating a treasure trove of farming analytics

The Grand Finale: Bridging the Knowledge Gap
Africa's farming secrets have long been whispered through the wind and written in the soil. Documentation? Scarce. But not anymore. Thanks to AgriSense and UpdateMe, a bridge was built between traditional practices and data-driven agriculture. African farming now has a digital legacy, a storyline in bytes and pixels, for generations to come. And so, as the sun sets on another African horizon, AgriSense International knows one thing for certain: their idea took flight, thanks to UpdateMe. The End. Or should we say, just the beginning?"

Blow The Ref: Whistling a New Tune in the World of Sports
A tennis legend, fueled by a passion for rugby, stands at the crossroads of dreams and reality. The dream is vivid: a gamified app that gives fans the power to 'blow the whistle' on referees. The reality? Well, several failed partnerships and a roadmap that led to dead-ends. Until, that is, he discovered UpdateMe

First Serve — The Prototype
The clock was ticking. Time was of the essence. In just three months, UpdateMe rallied its tech gladiators to develop a prototype, faster than you can say 'scrum.' The tennis player could now demo his dream to investors without breaking a sweat.

Match Point — The Full Experience
Interest among investors started to brew like a storm on the horizon. It was time for the big play. UpdateMe unleashed its UX/UI ninjas to evolve the prototype into a mobile app and a Progressive Web App (PWA), worthy of stadium applause. Now, fans had the power to 'blow the whistle' on refs, revolutionizing the spectator experience.

The Final Set: Game, Set, Match
Still in its fledgling stage, Blow The Ref is already becoming the talk of the sporting world. Investors? Lining up as if it's Black Friday at a tech store. Traction? More gripping than a rugby scrum. All of this was only possible with the digital wizardry of UpdateMe. As the tennis player stands on the court of his own invention, he knows this isn't just a win for him; it's a win for sports fans around the globe. And as for UpdateMe? We're just warming up. Game on!"

Frik van Schalkwyk Attorneys: The Verdict is Digital Liberation!
A well-established law firm, Frik van Schalkwyk Attorneys, ensnared in a web of digital ambiguity. Their online presence? Missing in action. A tangled mess of domain hostages and unclaimed Google Maps real estate. In walked UpdateMe, the Harvey Specters of the digital realm.

Taking Back the Gavel — The Domain Rescue
Other companies had claimed the firm's digital territory like it was a free-for-all land grab. UpdateMe's digital SWAT team stormed in, negotiated, and won back the domain rights, freeing Frik van Schalkwyk Attorneys from their cyberspace captors.

On the Map, Finally
In a pivotal moment of revelation, UpdateMe set up their Google Maps listing, plotting them firmly on the digital landscape. No longer were they a ghost in the virtual world; they were now a destination.

Blogging for Justice
The firm needed a voice, a beacon to reach clients and share insights. Enter UpdateMe's BlogSquad™. Regular updates, valuable legal tips, and industry commentary transformed their online persona from mute to eloquent.

The Grand Finale: The Verdict
As the gavel strikes down, Frik van Schalkwyk Attorneys have found their rightful place in the digital universe. Their firm is not just a nameplate on a building; it's a digital fortress accessible from anywhere.

Security

How We Secure Your Data
We use Anthropic and Google Gemini enterprise tiers. That means your data is processed under strict contractual guarantees: no training on your data, no retention after processing, and full audit logs on every interaction. Your prompts go in, your answers come back, and nothing is stored or learned from.

For organisations where even that isn't enough, where regulation or policy requires that data never leaves your network, we architect on-premise solutions using self-hosted models. No external calls. No exceptions.

Our Security Principles

  • Enterprise-Grade by Default — All AI integrations run on enterprise API tiers with contractual zero-retention and zero-training guarantees.
  • On-Premise When Required — For regulated industries that need it, we deploy self-hosted models inside your infrastructure. Your data never crosses an external boundary.
  • Full Traceability — Every prompt, every response, every decision is logged and auditable. We build the paper trail so you don't have to.
  • Compliance-Ready — Whether it's POPIA, GDPR, or industry-specific regulation, our architectures are designed to satisfy your auditors from day one.

We've delivered secure LLM solutions for insurers, legal firms, and financial institutions across South Africa. If your data matters, so does how it's handled. That's not a feature for us. It's the foundation.

AI Coaching

We don't just hand you tools and walk away. We sit with your developers. We teach them how to prompt. How to review AI-generated code. How to merge without fear.

Prompt Engineering for Real Teams
Your developers aren't writing research papers. They're shipping features. We train them to write prompts that produce production-ready code, not toy examples. Context setting, constraint framing, iterative refinement. We turn your team into prompt-fluent engineers.

AI Code Review Confidence
The hardest part of AI-assisted development isn't generating code. It's trusting it. We teach your teams how to critically evaluate AI output: spotting hallucinated logic, catching subtle bugs, and understanding when the AI is confidently wrong. Your developers become the quality gate, not a rubber stamp.

Merge Without Fear
AI-generated PRs shouldn't sit in review purgatory. We embed workflows that give your teams the confidence to review, approve, and ship AI-assisted code at pace. Automated test scaffolding, structured review checklists, and clear ownership models. Every merge feels deliberate, not reckless.

Ongoing Enablement
This isn't a one-day workshop that gets forgotten by Friday. Our coaching retainers give your teams continuous access to AI specialists who evolve with them. New models, new techniques, new pitfalls. We keep your team sharp as the landscape shifts.

Pricing

We believe in clarity. No hourly guessing games. No scope creep surcharges. You know what you're paying before we write a single line of code.

Fixed-Fee Transformation
Every engagement starts with a clearly scoped discovery phase. Once we understand your challenge, we quote a fixed fee for the full transformation: architecture, development, deployment, and handover. The price doesn't change. The goalposts don't move.

Proven on legacy systems in finance and insurance. Cut delivery from months to weeks.

Monthly Coaching Retainer
Ongoing embedded AI coaching: daily support, prompt refinement, code reviews, and velocity tracking. Your team ships 2–5x faster, without adding headcount.

Ideal for regulated teams. Secure, auditable, compliant with internal policies.

No Surprises
We've worked with enterprises that have been burned by ambiguous billing. That's not us. Every deliverable, every milestone, every cost is agreed upfront and documented. If something changes in scope, we talk about it before the bill does.

Ready to discuss your backlog?
Email info@updateme.co.za.
We start with a no-obligation discovery call.