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NamPower leads African continent in enterprise information management


Windhoek, 04 Aug 2015

Namibia's national power utility, NamPower, has successfully rolled out a company-wide enterprise information management (EIM) system, enhancing and centralising the management of content related to almost all of the business processes within the organisation.

With the assistance of high performing and secure ICT solution provider, Datacentrix, NamPower's EIM rollout is a landmark project for the continent, marking the first successful African implementation of OpenText's SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management (SAP xECM) on a consolidated EIM infrastructure.

Fact sheet
Solution: SAP xECM
Industry: Power utility
Provider: Datacentrix Holdings
User: NamPower

Isac Tjombonde, chief officer of corporate services and project sponsor at NamPower, explains the EIM project underpins the company's strategic "Vision 2030" objectives of economic efficiency, process improvement, community upliftment and regulatory compliance, and also forms the foundation for its ISO certification.

"Based on these needs, NamPower embarked on a document and records management programme in 2009. This programme consists of two major phases; a four-year initial assessment and preparation phase, followed by a two-year technology implementation project for electronic documents and records.

"The first phase of the document management initiative assisted NamPower to achieve the goal of implementing an integrated manual document management and records management solution, which would ultimately pave the way for an electronic system. Here, our objectives were to improve transparency and accountability, earn internal and external stakeholder trust, and preserve the NamPower corporate memory. We also wanted to safeguard our investment in intellectual capital, establish standardised filing practices, ensure the efficient life cycle management of all records, encourage the sharing of organisational knowledge, improve productivity through efficient records retrieval, and protect organisational and stakeholder legal rights and obligations," Tjombonde continues.

The aim of the second phase of the project was to: improve information management practices and apply records management controls to all business content; provide secure storage and easy access to all records; speed up the retrieval of information; establish process transparency and allow for accountability; create a paperless office environment; and to achieve the overall business drivers.

Says Tjombonde: "Since going live on phase two of our EIM project earlier this year, NamPower now has a 360-degree view of all enterprise content - both structured and unstructured. Our record and documents are uniformly managed, in line with records management principles, and thereby compliant with the National Archives Act.

"Aside from this, our search capabilities are faster and more efficient, transparency and accountability have been greatly improved, processes are streamlined, and we have seen gains in productivity and collaboration between NamPower information workers."

According to Michelle Momberg, EIM business unit manager at Datacentrix, NamPower is setting a strong example for companies based in Africa wanting to drive innovation through information management. "Through its EIM implementation, NamPower is well on track to realising its long-term digitalisation vision and is now better able to leverage its existing SAP investments. This programme will continue over the next two years, with ongoing business improvements and upgrades."

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Datacentrix

Datacentrix, a JSE-listed company, is a leading systems integrator and ICT solutions provider with proven execution capability. The company is a partner of choice to a significant customer base in both the private and public sectors. Datacentrix was recently recognised by Frost & Sullivan for its foresight, industry knowledge, value-driven offering and strong overall performance. The company's value offering encompasses its execution capacity, high level of technical expertise, innovation and unswerving service delivery.

Datacentrix has maintained its level two (AAA) B-BBEE Contributor status, with 125% procurement recognition. For more information, please visit www.datacentrix.co.za.

Editorial contacts

Nicola Read
PR Connections
(083) 269 2227
datacentrix@pr.co.za