Johannesburg, 22 Nov 2006
Sun International, South Africa's largest tourism, leisure and gambling group, has enhanced project management in its IT business unit (SunIT), allowing the group to allocate IT resource costs accurately and easily, through the implementation of Replicon Web Timesheet, supplied and supported by local distributor DVT Gauteng.
SunIT has a team of 60 IT resources providing IT support and project services nationwide to the hotels, resorts and casinos in the group.
Although SunIT runs its operations on a zero-profit basis, it has to recover all of its costs. This has necessitated a sophisticated, highly accurate time recording system, as resources can be working for a number of internal clients and projects at any one time.
"We had been running our own, internally developed, MS Excel-based system," says Keith Williams, Commercial Manager: SunIT. "Due to the increasing utilisation of project resources, though, it became clear to us that we needed a more efficient system. We had two choices: develop our own, or seek an application. We found Replicon Web Timesheet, and the fact that it was locally supported by DVT clinched the decision for us."
SunIT's in-house system had resources populate their tasks, hours, billable project and project phase into MS Excel, and submit this to their respective line, or project managers for approval. All approved timesheets would then be forwarded to the administrator for processing. Much of this was a manual process.
"While this system had sufficed, we now needed a solution that would ease the capturing and administration of timesheets; and that would allow staff to capture tasks against projects and to generate reports of time and costs automatically apportioned across projects on a task and business unit level," says Williams.
"The new system we were looking for had to allow staff to capture their costs online, in a user-friendly manner, with minimum effort. It also had to be flexible enough to be able to accommodate new projects, users' roles and rates. Web Timesheet met all these requirements and more."
Benefits Sun International IT has enjoyed include:
* Accuracy of timesheets, as the data is captured online, in real-time. This accuracy is vital as it allows for precise billing.
* Ease of use: "This is huge," says Williams. "Timesheets are always a burden for staff. But Web Timesheet is so easy to use we've had total buy-in and it has been adopted by everyone."
* The embedded workflow has enhanced the timesheet submission and approval process: management can now easily see who has submitted them, which ones are outstanding, which have been approved, and which rejected.
* Ease of charge-out, down to portions of billable hours, and transparency of billing for internal clients, along with the ability to analyse project costs, and flexible and detailed reports.
* The reporting simplified capture of recorded time into the SunIT Accpac-based project accounting system.
Return on investment has been easy to identify, adds Williams. "If we save just one hour per resource per month, Web Timesheet pays for itself in six months."
Williams adds that support from DVT and Replicon has been outstanding: "Implementation was a non-event, and the software is so easy to use that we required little training."
"Replicon's Web Timesheet is the best productivity tool we have ever seen," says Derek Hughes, MD of DVT Gauteng. "As Sun International has found, it rapidly pays for itself, and delivers an enormous range of benefits. We have been using it ourselves for more than a year, and can confirm that it has also paid for itself in next to no time. It is the ideal tool for any company which has a significant number of people working on projects."
JSE Securities Exchange-listed Sun International reported revenues of just under R6 billion and headline earnings of R467 million of in its most recent financial year, ended June 2006. It owns and operates or has majority shareholding in 15 hotels and casinos across South Africa. More than 40 000 people visit Sun International resorts every day.
Share