Creative thinking 🧠 meets learning that works - smart, flexible, and designed to evolve as you do 🪴
What started as a small web agency grew into something much bigger when we took on a single e-learning project in 2016. Since then, we’ve helped companies across South Africa and beyond transform the way learning happens. Today, as a Totara Partner under our new brand LATERAL, we bring creative thinking, open-source roots, and real-world experience to every learning challenge we take on.
Where it all started.
Back in 2015, we launched a web agency called BitSavvy. Our focus? Building clean, reliable websites. Over time, we expanded into e-commerce, CRM integrations, and marketing automation. We always leaned into open source tools and custom solutions that just made sense for our clients. Then in late 2016, things took a turn we didn’t expect.
A large multinational approached us to help with an e-learning project for their South African team. It was our first step into learning and development, and we were hooked. We built a custom portal, created the content, and delivered something that worked really well. That one project opened a whole new world for us.
Finding our way into learning.
Since then, we’ve helped companies big and small roll out digital learning in practical, impactful ways. We’ve built platforms for a listed South African company (still running their cohort-based programmes today), delivered custom learning solutions for a major bank, and helped multinationals reach their teams across Africa.
We’ve also supported course creators offering school subjects like Maths, Physical Science, and Accounting to Grade 10 to 12 learners. We didn’t come from a traditional L&D background. But that’s part of what makes our approach different. We’re problem solvers first, and we always aim to keep things clear, flexible, and built around what actually works.
What we stand for
- Creative problem solving – We find fresh ways to tackle old challenges
- Practical solutions – No fluff. Just tools and ideas that actually work
- Partnership over products – We care about the people we work with and the outcomes we create together
Why LATERAL?
We created LATERAL to focus on what we’ve grown to love: helping people learn and grow at work. The name is inspired by lateral thinking, a way of solving problems through creative thinking, fresh ideas, and seeing things from a different angle. That’s exactly how we approach every project, with fresh thinking, curiosity, and a genuine drive to make things better.
We don’t do cookie-cutter solutions. We work with you to understand what your people really need, then build learning experiences that are useful, engaging, and aligned with how your organisation works.
Why Totara?
By late 2024, we knew we needed a more powerful and flexible platform to support the kind of complex learning environments we were now building. After exploring our options, Totara stood out. Its open architecture matched our open source roots, its flexibility let us build exactly what clients needed, and its partner support program is honestly one of the best we’ve seen in the industry.
With Totara, we could confidently support large South African enterprises while still offering the same hands-on, creative service we were known for.
We officially joined the Totara Partner Program in early 2025, and that’s when LATERAL was born.
“Creative thinking involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”
Edward de Bono
Built for People. Led by Purpose.
At Lateral, our leadership combines deep experience and practical knowledge to create learning solutions that meet real needs. We focus on designing platforms and content that make a meaningful and lasting difference for the people who use them and the organisations they support.
Francois Wessels
CEO & Lead Learning Strategist
As CEO & Lead Learning Strategist of LATERAL, I help organisations build learning platforms and digital tools that make a real difference for their people and their performance.
I’ve spent more than 20 years working in web development, learning systems, and information design, always at the point where technology meets people. I started out by founding BitSavvy, a web development agency that’s still active today. Over time, my focus shifted from websites to creating learning systems that help organisations grow and support their teams.
I studied BCom (Law) at the University of Pretoria and later completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Information and Knowledge Management (cum laude) at the University of Johannesburg. I’m also a certified SAP consultant and have worked across industries like transport, finance, manufacturing, and hospitality, building everything from intranets and CRMs to learning platforms and local payment systems.
As CEO and Lead Learning Strategist at Lateral, I lead our client learning strategies and platform design while also managing the day-to-day operations and long-term direction of the business. This includes growing our strategic partnership with Totara and shaping our future in the learning technology space.
I focus on the structure and design of learning platforms, how people use them, and how they support long-term learning and development. Above all, I believe technology should make things simpler, more useful, and more human.
Hanno Wessels
Director & Technical Lead
As Director and Technical Lead at Lateral, I lead the implementation of Totara’s learning platforms, translating complex requirements into practical, scalable solutions that make a real difference for clients and their teams. Alongside technical leadership, I also contribute to learning content creation, crafting engaging and effective training materials that complement the platforms we build.
My journey into tech started at 16, building websites and experimenting with digital tools. That early curiosity turned into a career built around systems that work. I spent close to a decade at Bitsavvy, where I grew from data entry to leading large-scale LMS implementations for clients across banking, automotive, and public sector industries.
During that time, I helped deliver cost-effective, scalable learning solutions that gave organisations real ownership of their platforms and greater control over how they delivered and supported learning at scale. Working closely with complex systems and high-stakes environments shaped the way I approach every project: with clarity, accountability, and a focus on practical outcomes.
My focus is on designing systems that are not only efficient and effective, but also intuitive and genuinely useful to the people who rely on them. I believe technology should be built around people, not the other way around.
