Altron subsidiary Bytes Universal Systems (BUS) plans to revamp its South African Municipal Resource Administration System (SAMRAS), used by 34 municipalities across the country.
SAMRAS - an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution developed by Bytes - is deployed in municipalities in the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo. The system was developed according to specifications outlined by local government authorities and helps manage finances.
Brian Brougham-Cook, GM for SAMRAS at BUS, could not divulge the exact amount to be invested by parent company Altron, but says it is a "multimillion-rand figure". He says the refresh will move SAMRAS onto a multi-tiered architecture, enabling "easier upgrades of individual components in the future, as well as a Web-based front-end".
"The end result will be a state-of-the-art ERP system that is fully compliant with all regulations relating to municipal accounting, and automates reporting to National Treasury," he adds. The 34 existing SAMRAS clients will be updated by July 2017 to meet the National Treasury's deadline for the new Standard Chart of Accounts (SCOA), adds Brougham-Cook.
BUS says the changes to the system will ensure that SAMRAS becomes compliant with the SCOA, which contains municipal accounting guidelines for SA. Municipalities that already run SAMRAS are set to get an upgrade as part of their regular maintenance fee.
'Ensure transparency'
Treasury notes the SCOA regulations are part of its measures to ensure transparency and expenditure control in different spheres of government by introducing generally recognised accounting practice, uniform expenditure classifications and uniform treasury norms and standards.
Municipal IQ - a Web-based data service analysing the performance of SA's 278 municipalities ? noted in its report at the end of 2013 that Cape Town and Johannesburg metropolitan areas had the best financial governance, followed by KwaZulu-Natal's eThekwini. However, seven out of 10 top-performing local municipalities were in the Western Cape.
In January, Bytes and Altech outlined plans to integrate municipal billing into the ERP solution in a bid to speed up processing for areas where SAMRAS is deployed. Altech's NuPay e-payment option was introduced to municipalities in March, linking directly into existing administration processes by capturing payment details.
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