Durban, 13 Aug 2013
SAPREF, the largest crude oil refinery in southern Africa, is seeing significant benefits and efficiency improvements just three months post the automation of its request process for capital investment project development and approvals. IT solution provider, Datacentrix, partnered with SAPREF for this project, implementing a workflow and business process management tool to meet its requirements.
SAPREF is a joint venture between Shell SA Refining and BP Southern Africa. Located in Durban, it holds 35% of South Africa's refining capacity.
Says Mark Skea, senior ICT project manager at SAPREF: "A major benefit of this roll-out is being able to search for, and find, all project development documents in one place. Losing paper-based files and incomplete documentation is now a thing of the past, as process integrity is enforced by the new system. This success, plus the positive feedback from users, has emphasised the need to make further electronic workflow deployments across other manual business processes within SAPREF."
Shakeel Jhazbhay, business unit manager: Enterprise Information Management (EIM) and security solutions at Datacentrix, explains that the customised solution enables enterprises to build and run business applications, including forms, workflow, data and reports. "It provides powerful capabilities that facilitate the integration of applications with line-of-business systems and scale those applications according to an organisation's needs.
"Prior to solution selection and implementation, a considerable amount of time was spent studying SAPREF's ICT strategy and consulting with the organisation to ensure the careful selection of a 'no-regret' solution for its electronic workflow requirements," he adds.
"This in no small way contributed to the great success of the project," Skea continues. "It is rare to find a company that volunteers to put this much effort into studying your environment, and partnering with you, to ensure an appropriate solution from your perspective. Datacentrix won the contract based on our technical evaluation of its bid, and solid feedback from other Datacentrix reference sites. It turned out to be the correct selection of vendor."
SAPREF has praised the efficiency of the implementation, and the end result. "This 'first time right' implementation was as a result of particularly good teamwork and excellent technical development skills on the Datacentrix side. Attention to detail, good communication and client satisfaction remained key focuses throughout the project, ensuring that the new application was very well received and readily embraced by around 100 users."
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