Bytes Systems Integration unveils SAMRASplus

Bytes Systems Integration (SI) recently hosted a successful SAMRAS conference for South African municipalities. The conference launched its SAMRASplus offering and highlighted the efforts made to more efficiently harness the capability of its financial planning and resourcing system.

The two-day conference hosted at the River Club, Cape Town targeted executive decision-makers in the local authorities, and was attended by delegates from across the country. The conference focused on the offerings and benefits of SAMRAS and SAMRASplus as financial resource planning tools.

The SAMRAS and SAMRASplus systems are developed and distributed by Bytes SI. SAMRAS stands for South African Municipal Resource Administration System and is a locally-developed comprehensive resource planning and financial system that caters specifically to the needs of South African local authorities. With the current economic outlook, there has never been a more crucial time to be able to assess income and expenditure to allow municipalities to gain clarity, meet financial management requirements and to comply with statutory reporting requirements and returns, including GRAP compliance and National Treasury returns.

“The main objective of the conference was to share with our clients what efforts have been made to enhance our product and make it more relevant to the decision-makers out there,” says Marina Hall, general manager of SAMRAS for Bytes Systems Integration. “The conference was a huge success and really demonstrated the power, features and benefits of SAMRAS and our next-generation capability SAMRASplus to chief financial officers, municipal managers and other decision-makers at the local authorities. Having access to current key business intelligence via sophisticated Web portals provides them with the ability to monitor their key performance areas, view trend analyses and other key indicators at the click of a mouse button.”

The conference also showcased the other capabilities of SAMRASplus, as an extension to the traditional SAMRAS offering, powered by Microsoft's SharePoint. Besides having a comprehensive CFO Web portal that integrates with the traditional SAMRAS modules such as payroll, HR, billing and expenditure etc, it also offers extensive document management and workflow capabilities, as well as various reporting tools and dashboards for information workers. The tools within SAMRASplus change the way information is retrieved, shared and managed within local authorities, and will ultimately be an enabler for improved service delivery.

Other presentations at the conference included introducing delegates to CaseWare, a top‑rated financial statement reporting tool used by the Auditor General's office, SARS and some of the top auditing firms, as well as sharing insights into the necessity of data cleansing, software asset management and the advantages of a shared services model.

Bytes SI, in partnership with Verticle, showcased its very sophisticated IN.spec toolset, which can offer the local authorities unique data cleansing services that not only inspect and identify inconsistent or suspect data, but can clean the data and offer an ongoing data monitoring service to provide early warning of data issues.

“We found that some customers were not receiving optimal results from the technology they were using. This proved to be a direct result of their limited experience on these particular systems. This conference really succeeded in lifting the veil on how IT tools can help local municipalities keep close track of their key performance areas and get the most out of budgets and financial planning,” adds Hall.

Sharing their expertise at the conference were keynote speakers Jean Viglietti and Johan Olivier, both solutions architects at Bytes Systems Integration, as well as Silma Koekemoer, advanced specialist business development for Municipal ICT Blue Print from State Information Technology Agency (SITA), and Adam Rabie, divisional managing director, advance infrastructure and licensing solutions, Bytes SI.

“Bytes SI has undertaken to make this conference an annual event to help our customers gain the most out of the SAMRAS and SAMRASplus. As the supplier of the SAMRAS product, Bytes SI has a history in local authority computer-based solutions dating back for over 40 years, and we really believe this gives us unrivalled expertise in local authority financial systems,” ends Hall.