New York, 01 Aug 2016
Infor, a leading provider of beautiful business applications specialised by industry and built for the cloud, today announced that the University of the Western Cape, based in Bellville in the Western Cape, South Africa, has chosen a suite of Infor business applications incorporating Infor LN, Infor BI, Infor EPack, Infor ION and Infor Ming.le.
The suite of applications will be implemented by Softworx, an Infor partner, and is expected to help the University of the Western Cape greatly improve financial and procurement controls and processes, to enable the sharing of critical business information more effectively, and to enhance analytics and reporting on an operational and strategic level.
The University of the Western Cape (UWC) is a national university, alert to its African and international context as it strives to be a place of quality and a place to grow. It is committed to excellence in learning, teaching and research, to nurturing the cultural diversity of South Africa, and to responding in critical and creative ways to the needs of a society in transition.
The Information and Communication Services (ICS) department of the university, supported by the university's executive, has embarked on a significant program of work aimed at leveraging information and communication technologies (ICT's) to position the university favourably in the digital era, support learning and teaching with technology, improve the student and staff experience, improve operational efficiencies and ultimately, to support the long-term sustainability of the institution.
The Infor Masterpiece financial management application has formed the backbone of UWC's financial management and accounting system for many years. However, times, processes and requirements change, and based on current business-critical requirements, consideration was given to implementing a new solution to mitigate the risks associated with technology obsolescence, to provide a greater scope of functionality, and improved reporting and business intelligence capabilities backed by a robust service level agreement.
The UWC working group that led the due diligence process used the following guiding criteria in their evaluation of possible solutions:
* Web-based software architecture, providing a mobile-friendly and device agnostic solution, giving users the flexibility to access the system from a variety of devices and operating systems via their Web browser;
* The solution had to comprise of loosely coupled modules in support of ease of integration with other university systems;
* The solution's design had to provide user-friendly, intuitive, graphical user interfaces (GUI's) that facilitated rapid user adoption; and
* Full compliance with South African legislative requirements coupled with local regional support; Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis over seven years.
The comprehensive Infor suite of applications from Softworx was chosen for its rich functionality in a variety of areas including: Infor LN and Infor PM solutions provide for financial accounting, budgeting, consolidation and controlling as well as VAT handling; procurement, job costing, document management and enhanced centralised controls are enabled; management of capital projects across different cost centres and multiple financial years will now be possible; comprehensive reporting and BI capability is provided by Infor BI; the solution provides integration between finance and HR (Payroll) as well as UWC's in-house student administration system (SASI); The provision of workflows allow for full traceability and governance.
Overall, the solution suite will provide improved data reliability and auditability, and the embedded training tool will enable access to business process knowledge as part of the system.
"The Infor solution suite proposed by Softworx, emerged head and shoulders above its competitors, based on the functionality, professional services, support, and very competitive 7-year TCO analysis. The UWC working group also conducted a number of customer site visits as part of the due diligence process, interviewing other South African customers who had implemented Infor solutions to gain insight into the operation and value derived from their systems, as well as Softworx's track record pertaining to project delivery. We were encouraged by the feedback obtained from customers, most of whom had successfully implemented Infor in complex, multi-site operations. It was evident that the Softworx team had demonstrated a commitment to their customers, which had resulted in long-term partnerships being formed. UWC chose Softworx based on a superior packaged offering, Softworx's proven track record in project delivery, its wide industry knowledge and the commitment and high levels of professionalism demonstrated by its people," said Errol van Staden, Head of IT Strategy and Planning, UWC.
Heilet Scholtz, BU Executive, Infor Sales, noted the following, "At Softworx, our philosophy is to form long term partnerships with our customers. We do not leave any stone unturned to fully understand the business requirements in a specific organisation, before we propose a solution that would bring the most value to our customer's environment. We are delighted to have entered into such a partnership with UWC."
View the article here.
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