Iron, steel and mining giant Iscor saved R1.3 million within 195 days on its human resources datamart project, the first of seven projects it has undertaken with the Acta data management solution, a 33% return on the original investment.
Acta, a data management solution with a worldwide user base, was supplied to Iscor by Global Business Technology Intelligence, part of the JSE-listed Global Technology group. GBI represents Acta in SA.
"We were faced with severe cost restraints in bringing the previous state-owned operation into the fully commercial sector," said Andrew McEwan, manager, information and technology architectures at Iscor.
Speaking at a recent one-day seminar for Acta users and potential users, hosted by GBI at Johannesburg`s Monte casino, McEwan said Iscor faced a number of serious IT issues which included headcount pressure, the decentralised nature of Iscor`s operations, a significant investment in legacy systems and a commitment to SAP R/3 at the transactional level.
Before implementing Acta, Iscor was running a wide variety of database applications. "Critical core information was difficult to access; the multiple sources produced multiple answers and there was an explosion of ABAP codes being created," McEwan said.
"The complex legacy warehouses had a high support cost and were unresponsive to our changing business needs, and the decision was taken to have only SAP R/3 and a few rationalised workgroup solutions across the enterprise by 2005," he said.
The solution was to acquire Acta, a package that met all of Iscor`s specific ETL requirements, which included the ability to extract from legacy environments, matching, transformation, process auditability, scheduling and reconciliation. "In addition the tool had to have metadata capacity and have minimal network impact," he said.
Acta was selected by a joint panel consisting of Iscor specialists and AST, Iscor`s IT outsourcing partner, based on the ready availability of local support from GBI and Acta`s ability to handle heterogeneous sources and targets.
"Acta can also load SAP BW, ACTA E-Caches and own-built marts, providing us with one centralised metadata repository with decentralised administration," said McEwan.
Although only started in December 2000, Acta has already completed four of the seven projects Iscor identified as most urgent. These included the MillSAP human resources project; the VDBP customer data for Internet; the management cockpit; the Zincor human resources mart; and remedy extraction. Some Adhoc applications and an e-Procurement project business case are still in progress.
"The tangible benefits, when totalled up in terms of man hours, time and other savings, show that Iscor recovered a third of its initial capital outlay within the first 195 days of implementation," said McEwan. At this rate, Acta will not only have paid itself off within a year, but will in the near future be generating real savings as well.
"There are additionally a number of intangible benefits," McEwan continued. "The reduction and elimination of dependence on ABAP skills is enormous, as Acta generates its own ABAP code."
"Our data integrity and flexibility has increased along with reporting speed, allowing our personnel more time for value-add functions," he said. Finally, Acta had shown its value in both large and small applications," McEwan concluded.
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