Standard Bank, one of the largest banks in Africa, recently implemented and went live with a SAP Enterprise Management System roll-out.
This initiative involved a number of capabilities including Materials Management, Financials, Management Accounting and Strategic Enterprise Management.
The project, which was undertaken in 1999, took a total 21 months to complete and has provided Standard Bank with a complete picture of its business. The delivery of the first live business unit took nine months from the start of the design phase.
The implementation has allowed the organisation to automate many administrative financial tasks and has also resulted in the formation of a successful financial shared services unit. The deployment to 1 200 users was effected on time and within budget.
Prior to the implementation, Standard Bank utilised a number of disparate systems to handle its financial transactions such as management reporting and reconciliation of its financials. Based on feedback and the support of business units, the organisation required a solution that offered an integrated view of the company, superior functionality and a reputable local and international support base. SAP Africa met all the criteria and also had an impressive local market share and user base.
"We wanted access to technology that was rich in functionality and would enable Standard Bank to easily drive the process and implementation internally," says the Executive Sponsor, Dr Piet Oosthuysen, a Director in Group Finance at Standard Bank.
"MySAP.com helps organisations streamline business processes and adapt best business practices embodied in highly flexible standard software. Through the technology offered by SAP, organisations can achieve integration across business units which will in turn automate the financial supply chain using the Web and new electronic service models," says Lloyd Chisholm, General Manager - Financial Services, SAP Africa. "By integrating the power of the mySAP.com collaborative e-business platform, finance functions can add value to business and increase efficiency at the same time."
According to Ronald Myburg, Project Director, Standard Bank undertook a two-phased approach in the deployment of the solution. Initially the solution was rolled out to Standard Bank Properties. Included in this phase was a front office application for property management (SAP Real Estate). Based on the success of this roll-out, the mySAP.com solution offering was implemented throughout the organisation with no unnecessary down time occurring. From the outset Standard Bank decided to adopt a "vanilla SAP" approach and the focus was on changing the process and not the system.
"The benefit of this strategy is that it offered the organisation the ability to standardise processes, which meant that we have been able to develop best practice modules with very little source code change, and the system proved to be stable in a very short period of time," says Oosthuysen.
Through the implementation of mySAP.com and the add-on components, Standard Bank employees have the ability to drill-down into information, as the system allows for the quick and accurate retrieval of data. "Internally, people now seem to have a greater understanding of their functions and roles, due to the transparency and knowledge sharing that the product suite has afforded us, this means people are increasingly empowered to take ownership for their figures," says Oosthuysen.
Presently Standard Bank is driving systems optimisation in terms of information delivery in tandem with process optimisation around the further upskilling of its people. Additionally, Standard Bank will deploy further SAP capabilities, namely the Strategic Enterprise Management Business Planning Simulation component (SEM BPS) during the second quarter of 2002.
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