Johannesburg, 17 Oct 2017
Karabina has been selected by the South African Water Research Commission (WRC) to deliver a new Grants Management Solution, utilising Microsoft Dynamics 365, and designed to transform the way the WRC delivers funding services across applications, approvals, finance, procurement and customer service functions.
The contract supports the WRC adoption of digital technologies, including cloud, mobile and analytics solutions. After a competitive tender process, the three-year contract was awarded to Karabina in light of its expertise in moving customers to Microsoft cloud technology, in alignment with business strategy.
Goals of the Grants Management project
The goal of the Grants Management project is to help the WRC improve customer centricity, reduce operational costs, increase operational efficiencies and improve and raise service levels through the adoption of new technology applications and processes across its Grants Management functions.
""This is an exciting project that will enable the WRC to embrace opportunities for best practice ways of working in line with other world class organisations. We look forward to working with our implementation partner, Karabina, to achieve improvements which will simplify processes and free our people up to deliver the important work of the Commission: to ensure that the organisation remains proactive in addressing society's current and future needs for water-related problem-solving initiatives," said Deon Thirumalai, CIO of the Water Research Commission.
Utilising Microsoft Dynamics 365 cloud platform
The Grants Management system will be configured using the latest Microsoft Dynamics 365 cloud platform, drawing on Karabina's approach in implementing efficient and digitally enabled customer engagement functions and accelerators.
Commenting on behalf of Karabina, Mo Areff, who leads Karabina's Customer Engagement business, says "We are delighted to be selected for this project and look forward to helping the WRC meet its digital transformation goals through the deployment and use of Microsoft customer, cloud and mobile technologies. We know that a successful solution implementation of this nature, requires expert skills and experience in customer relationship management, data management, business intelligence and workplace productivity. As a key Microsoft partner, Karabina will bring all these capabilities together to ensure not only project and programme success, but the overall success of WRC's overarching goals and objectives for water sustainability in South Africa."
The scarcity of water - availability and quality
The Water Research Commission was established in terms of the Water Research Act of 1971, following a period of serious water shortage. It was deemed to be of national importance to generate new knowledge and to promote the country's water research purposefully, owing to the view held that water would be one of South Africa's most limiting factors in the 21st century.
Currently, South Africa is still under threat of a lack of sufficient water, while water quality and availability issues are becoming more acute. However, the country is much better prepared to deal with this problem owing to the WRC's meaningful contribution to the development of the capacity of the water sector, the broadening of the country's water-centred research and development base, and the WRC's continued commitment to direct and fund research on critical issues.
Karabina is excited to be awarded this contract and is looking forward to assisting the Water Research Commission in achieving their objectives.
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