Gobisa MWS goes for 5%-7% bottom line growth with SME ERP package from SAP

Gobisa MWS, a specialist engineer-to-order black empowerment company supplying maintenance and manufacturing services to large corporates such as Sasol, Iscor, Afrox, Anglo Platinum and Impala Platinum, is gearing itself for rapid growth by implementing one of SAP's new industry-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for mid-market companies. The company projects a 5%-7% improvement in its bottom line.

Known as BPS Engineering and Construction, the solution is powered by mySAP All-in-One - a set of best practice templates based on SAP's experience in 180 industry sectors during the past 30 years. It is designed to give South African engineering and construction companies affordable access to sophisticated enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools to make themselves more competitive.

BPS has added local experience and content, packaging the entire solution - including hardware, software, customisation, training, implementation and support - in a single box. BPS also offers the option, as in Gobisa's case, of hosting the solution for clients.

Gobisa director for organisational optimisation, Werner Barkhuizen, says that, with very few competitors in its specialist areas, Gobisa had reached the point at which it had to decide whether to stay small and reasonably comfortable in its niche or grow into a major organisation. "We decided on growth - which meant putting ourselves in a different league in terms of business sophistication in order to be more efficient and more effective.

"For instance, Gobisa was initially formed from a management buyout of the Sasol mechanical workshop and has remained integral to Sasol's maintenance programmes and processes. But, Sasol's processes are managed by mySAP ERP. Our not being SAP-enabled created a lack of integration between their systems and ours which was time-consuming and costly for both companies. With BPS Engineering and Construction, our job scheduling, procurement and operations management will automatically be in sync with their planning, because the integration between the two systems is so deep."

With revenues of R42 million and 200 employees, Gobisa has a head office in Sandton and factories in Sasolburg and Vanderbijlpark. "Being able to electronically link all our employees and facilities and thereby get an integrated view of operations is also going to help us eliminate human error and administrative backlogs, boosting productivity by an order of magnitude and making us extremely competitive," Barkhuizen says.

SAP SMB manager, Patricia Martins, agrees that the benefits to mid-market companies of being SAP-enabled go far beyond the ability to integrate with customer organisations. "Yes, we are seeing more and more corporates insisting that their suppliers have compatible systems. Exchanging information electronically speeds up projects, increases accuracy and quality, reduces risk, cuts costs and improves productivity for both supplier and customer. And it's not just a question of sending out electronic invoices and receiving electronic payments. It's about integrating policies and planning at both fundamental and strategic levels of operations in order to optimise investments and boost profitability.

"But, more than that, SAP-enablement creates security for the supplier in his relationship with a customer. It's just so much easier to do business with a supplier who operates according to the same principles and methodologies that organisations will think twice before switching to a supplier that can't offer the same automated compatibility."

Acknowledging that most medium-sized business are reluctant to incur the cost of an ERP system, BPS sales and marketing director, Duan Fourie, points out: "In Gobisa's case, for instance, the cost of BPS Engineering and Construction is less than 1% of their annual turnover, and they will see a return on that investment in a year or less. From then on, every cost saving and market-share benefit that accrues from the system will go straight to the bottom line."