Johannesburg, 15 Mar 2011
Bytes Systems Integration, part of the Bytes Technology Group, wholly owned by JSE-listed Altron, has announced that its local authority ERP suite, SAMRASclassic, is now available in two forms: one on a Microsoft operating system underpinned by Microsoft SQL Server, and the current AcuVision running on Linux.
The availability of a Microsoft version is in line with client requirements and industry trends, and ensures existing customers' investment in SAMRAS is future-proofed.
SAMRAS has been in the market evolving and renewing its ERP for four decades, says Marina Hall, local government and SAMRAS GM at Bytes Systems Integration Cape Town.
The company has invested significantly in modernising SAMRAS. The new, Web-enabled SAMRASplus draws on the four decades of experience encapsulated in SAMRASclassic, a fully integrated, GRAP-compliant financial management system, and operates on top of the classic ERP application.
"Since 1970, we have rewritten and re-architected SAMRAS four times to reflect changes in customer requirements, legislation and regulations, and the changing South African landscape," says Hall. "We were due for a fresh approach to SAMRAS, which came out of the world of financial management. It has evolved into an ERP system for municipalities, with modules for payroll, general ledger, billing and expenditure, investment register, asset management, supply chain management, financial reporting management, and more."
SAMRAS (the South African Municipal Resource Administration System) is in use at 36 local authorities across South Africa, including seven of the 11 most successful municipalities in terms of service delivery as rated by Municipal IQ. Local authorities are under severe pressure, from President Jacob Zuma down the chain of command, to improve their performance and deliver services, says Hall. "They are under particular pressure to improve their financial performance in line with the Clean Audit 2014 initiative. They have since 1994 gone through tremendous change. There has been a high degree of churn in staff, and as a consequence they often require assistance to implement compliance changes. SAMRAS can help bridge this by putting information and business intelligence in the hands of the CFO and managers so they can enhance transparency and reporting."
SAMRASclassic includes statutory and annual financial statements and operational reporting, directly from the income, expenditure and personnel modules, underpinned by an integrated financial estimating and budgeting function.
The new SAMRASplus is fully integrated with SAMRASclassic, and adds the ultimate in user-friendliness in terms of Microsoft SharePoint-powered Web portals. This approach allows applications to be deployed and displayed through the portals. It features workflow and alerts, National Archiving-compliant document archiving and management, and a high degree of collaboration, which is inherent to SharePoint Portals.
Also native to SAMRASplus is excellent business intelligence, with executive dashboards, the ability to plan budgets and report on actual performance and variance, and drill down to granular detail. "SAMRASclassic operates in client/server mode," says Hall. "As SAMRASplus is Web-based, it can be accessed from the Internet or intranet."
Portals and self-service are at the very heart of SAMRASplus. There are community portals for ratepayers, who can register to see all details of services and the current status of their account, and for suppliers who want to see the status of their orders and account.
"We have enabled self-service as much as possible," adds Hall. "We have taken the system out of the realm of IT to give people easy, transparent access to information themselves." Internally, intranet portals allow management to improve contract management and performance management, and the personnel intranet portal eases leave and overtime management - it is an application and approval system with immediate updates directly into the leave system. Importantly, as not all workers have access to PCs, the system can also deal with non-computer-based workers. Through this portal, management has a clear and graphic display of personnel availability.
Other features of SAMRASclassic and SAMRASplus:
* Existing and new modules easily interface into more than 200 third-party subsystems, such as prepaid electricity, parking and geographical information systems.
* Information on cash flow is enhanced. At a glance, management can see accounts due, debtors, creditors, receipts, which towns have the greatest debt, and which ratepayers and towns are the most delinquent.
* The performance management module enhances service delivery. Management can set budget and align this with the implementation plan. Management captures performance measures by setting KPIs against them, allocate tasks against the KPIs, and use the power of SharePoint to set reminders and act on them.
* Enhanced overtime management, based on the local authorities' rules and legislation and operate through a workflow.
* Procurement policies, which are integrated into the supply chain and rigorous contract management systems. Three municipalities have adopted and are implementing the new version of SAMRAS, Hall reports. "Whenever we present the new suite, we enjoy an enthusiastic response. We expect most existing and many prospective clients to adopt it as their budgeting cycles permit.
"In a country characterised by local government failing to meet its service delivery obligations and adopting costly international ERP systems, SAMRAS not only meets all the requirements of local government, but it is Proudly South African, and priced way below international competitors. Today, customers also have the assurance that their applications are future-proofed," concludes Hall, "while embedding the rich South Africanised functionality built up over the course of four decades."
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