Johannesburg, 17 Aug 2010
On 6 July 2009, the implementation of the SAP Document Management System (DMS) module commenced at the Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) in Botswana.
The project team comprised consultants from NokusaEI and ICL Botswana (Botswana partner of NokusaEI) and was based in Gaborone. The mission was the design and implementation of an ECM solution for the whole of WUC - an organisation that spans the entire Botswana.
The project was named Project Sefalana. In Setswana, Sefalana means silo - a storage area used for storing bulk materials; and in agriculture, it is used to store grain. The name therefore symbolises the storing of information, past and future.
After a number of records surveys and audits highlighted information management challenges within various WUC departments, it was recognised that ECM and records management specifically needed to be addressed within WUC. As a result, ECM was prioritised as a weakness within the corporation's 2008-2010 business strategy. The result was the selection of SAP ECM as the solution that would take the corporation's document and records management to another level!
The Chief Executive's priorities for the system were to manage all customer files and all personnel records. Customer service is an area of high strategic priority to the corporation and it is cognisant of the importance of the customer in the service delivery process, and therefore to its business overall. The corporation is therefore committed to effective communication with its customers, with proper customer service record management being key.
In addition to the prioritised areas mentioned, the rest of the corporation departments had to be catered for as well, in order to ensure that most of the business documents would be securely stored in an electronic system. An additional requirement was that of a Library Management System that could manage the procurement and borrowing of books and other library media.
The biggest challenge that faced Project Sefalana was the migration of all of the current paper documents into an electronic format, and the uploading of the data into the SAP solution. This is currently an ongoing task that will still take some months to complete.
The project went live on 21 April 2010, and can be considered a very successful project. Key success factors included the commitment to the project by the steering committee and project sponsor, and the buy-in of the solution throughout the corporation.
“Going through the implementation of the ECM project was a huge learning curve for me personally as a project sponsor, the project manager, the team and all the employees involved. The project, through 'As Is' and 'To Be' stages, afforded us the opportunity as a corporation to have a re-look at our processes, critique them and come up with best practice for the betterment of our operations. Data storage, accuracy and most of all accessibility of data, had always proved to be some of our major challenges, but with the implementation of the ECM project and its usage so far, one gets renewed hope that these challenges will become a thing of the past. The knowledge transfer from the consultants to the team has been great, generating so much enthusiasm that with some of them one gets a feeling that soon they may want a career move,” said Wilhemina Pheto, Project Sponsor, Water Utilities Corporation.
“Before the project officially kicked off, WUC showed tremendous eagerness for this project to succeed by requesting details of tasks that they could start with in preparation for the 10-month project. During the Project Preparation phase, we saw very good strategy workshop attendance and participation from senior and middle management, which set the tone for the months to come. Good business resources where identified to be part of the project, which was key to project success. Two of the major challenges that we faced during the project were data migration and the geographical spread of Water Utilities Corporation across the whole of Botswana. WUC has put major emphasis, focus and effort into getting all the paper documents scanned, classified and migrated to SAP DMS, and is continuing to do so with a detailed plan on targets to be reached per time period.
It was a fantastic project to be part of and a great honour to have managed a group of knowledgeable and competent consultants and business resources, without which, the project would have not been such a success,” said Riaan Horn, Project Manager at NokusaEI.
“This is the first of many projects for NokusaEI in Africa, and we have enjoyed working with ICL Botswana and with WUC in the implementation of this solution. The commitment to the process and entire project has been unrelenting from all parties, and it is with pride that we list WUC as a client of NokusaEI's,” said Michelle Momberg, Managing Director of NokusaEI.
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