CCH Infrastructure Services has installed FacilityCenter from NASDAQ-listed Peregrine Systems Inc to facilitate its own business, and in particular to help it fulfil the terms of its Old Mutual head office infrastructure management contract. The Old Mutual contract is conservatively estimated to be worth between R50m and R100m.
Sister company CCH Enterprise Solutions, the South African distributor of Peregrine Systems, facilitated the licensing of Peregrine.
CCH Infrastructure Services (CCH IS), formerly Infracom, is one of the largest infrastructure management companies in South Africa. CCH IS offers a broad range of infrastructure management services including planning, design, installation and maintenance of infrastructural components such as buildings, grounds, private roads, electricity supply, and telephone and computer communications supply infrastructure. Other key clients include Vodacom and Telkom.
The initial 190-seat licence will be extended as and when required.
Once this pilot project at Old Mutual is completed, FacilityCenter will be rolled out to form CCH IS`s core infrastructure management backbone countrywide.
"We evaluated several systems worldwide and concluded that Peregrine was the most comprehensive and effective system for our requirements," says CCH IS joint CEO Chris Grib.
"When we were awarded the contract to manage Old Mutual`s head office building in Pinelands last year, it offered us the ideal opportunity to begin the rollout of Peregrine across our business," says Grib. "The Old Mutual head office houses 7 500 staff members and is one of the largest single corporate sites in South Africa. The compact nature of the site is an ideal incubator for testing Peregrine`s power and scalability.
"Peregrine`s versatility will be tested vertically and horizontally in the facilities and asset management infrastructure at Old Mutual since our core competency is our ability to manage a vast army of sub-contractors and suppliers to meet our obligations," adds Grib.
Grib believes Peregrine FacilityCenter will help CCH IS to achieve its strategic goal of delivering a world-class service and becoming a global player in the infrastructure establishment and management arena. As it is fully Web-enabled, staff at CCH IS head office in Pretoria will be able to oversee management activities countrywide.
CCH IS recently repositioned itself as an infrastructure establishment and management company. This was in recognition of the revolutionary changes in business management worldwide.
Peregrine realised that a system developed to manage one aspect of infrastructure, such as the IT communications backbone, could just as easily be applied across the board for managing all infrastructural business, including bricks and mortar.
"It was a similar revelation that resulted in our own repositioning, and from there it was fairly logical that Peregrine would be the solution to our own operational requirements," says Grib.
Peregrine will eventually allow CCH IS to manage not only vast tracts of physical property, but also telecommunications and IT installations spanning the entire country, such as the Vodacom cellular network and Telkom cabling running along the national and provincial roads.
"In time most companies will understand the benefit of outsourcing their infrastructure management, since the emphasis now is on cutting hidden costs many of which are to be found in asset and infrastructure management," advocates Grib. "We are set to benefit through Peregrine from economies of scale that cannot be equalled except by the largest national or international organisations. For most of our clients, investment in a system as efficient as Peregrine would be overkill, but not having the system means resorting to semi-manual processes, non-core staffing expenses, lower productivity and even sub-standard service delivery."
Today, even the global giants are examining their capital outlay and discovering it makes sense to restrict their investments to areas and activities that directly benefit their ability to compete.
"In the meantime," predicts Grib, "the convergence of IT, communications and business management is opening the way for anyone who understands the new economy to find a niche for the delivery of goods and services based on brilliant underlying IT administration engines. Peregrine FacilityCenter is one such system."
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