Despite delays of over a year, the City of Johannesburg says the implementation of its new billing and revenue system is a success.
The city is migrating its systems onto an integrated SAP platform, in an effort to improve its problematic metered services, billing, collections and customer service.
The move forms part of the city's Programme Phakama transformation initiative. While the project was implemented in February 2006 and scheduled to be completed in 2008, it was delayed due to limited resources and skills shortages in the municipality.
The city now says the pilot initiative, which was rolled out in the western areas of the city, has not revealed any glitches. Roll-out to the rest of the city and municipal-owned entities will run according to schedule, the city says - with phases being rolled out between February and April 2010.
As part of the project, customer information and billing services are provided to 160 000 residents, in areas such as Roodepoort, Northgate and Constantia Kloof, through the new system.
The city says the SAP system will centralise billing databases and replace its multiple, disparate IT systems, which hardly interfaced with each other. Accuracy and completeness of the billing and invoicing process would improve along with levels of collection, the city states.
Clients would also be able to get information about their utility bills from a contact centre. A customer relationship management system would also be implemented to help improve the management of the city's customer information and relationships between municipal-owned entities.
While services will be rolled out in phases, the system will affect billing due dates for customer accounts; meter reading periods for electricity and water; electricity statements, which will be issued by the city and not the municipalities; customer debit orders; and new bank accounts for municipal-owned entity customers.
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