Metrobus, the recently corporatised bus service of the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council (GJMC), is implementing the Oracle Application suite of applications to support its new focus as a fully functional business with set commercial deliverables.
In the first phase, CCH Enterprise Solutions is implementing Oracle`s finance, HR and payroll applications on HP 9000 servers in an investment of more than R4 million, and aims to go live with the new system on 1 December.
Metrobus (The Johannesburg Metropolitan Bus Company (Pty) Limited) carries on average 90 000 passengers a day on its fleet of 540 buses whose average age is 16 years. 45% of all operational costs are incurred just keeping vehicles on the road (Metrobus`s 915 employees take another 40%).
Its vision, as developed in conjunction with the GJMC, is to "provide a safe, reliable, efficient service to residents of GJMC, with reduced financial burden to the Council".
"There was no way we could fulfil this vision with our existing IT systems," says Metrobus MD Asokan Naidu. "Through the implementation of the Oracle applications, we are aiming to improve our level of service to the residents of Johannesburg, reduce our Council subsidy through improved income flow and reduced potential for fraud, and through innovative financial strategies to recapitalise our fleet."
In addition, Metrobus is moving from a supply-side to a demand-side transport model, in terms of which it identifies routes of greatest need.
Metrobus`s previous systems, as implemented by former finance and HR departments, were largely manual, standalone and internally focused, mainly on revenue collection. They lacked detailed information the business needed, including route profitability and passenger volumes, as well as financial information and revenue statistics which typically had a six-month lag.
"Without appropriate HR systems we also had no management tools for staff, especially in terms of their productivity and career growth potential," adds Naidu.
Metrobus went to market with an RFP (request for proposal), and after receiving a number of proposals, narrowed it down to a shortlist of three. CCH Enterprise Solutions with its Oracle-HP solution won out against other leading bidders due to the integrated nature of its solution.
"Given the tight deadline, we were fully aware of the potential risks involved in implementing such a financial system," says Naidu, "so our solution partner had to demonstrate a high level of commitment to the project. This CCH did with the appropriate level of pre-sales consulting and user workshops. CCH had the business expertise, and we had the domain expertise. Through its mix of skills and solutions, CCH has been able to assume responsibility for integration of all aspects of the system, which significantly reduced our risk and has helped ensure we`ll deliver the project on time."
The system CCH delivered comprised Oracle Financials, HR and Payroll deployed against the Oracle 8i database; an HP 9000 multiprocessor Unix server with 3GB RAM, tape library and 250GB disk, to function as the production machine; and a second, uniprocessor, HP 9000 configured with 512MB RAM and 36GB disk as the development machine. Metrobus also contracted with CCH for all consulting and implementation.
Oracle is being deployed at three depots, with an initial 40 concurrent users. Once fully implemented and used correctly, it will grow rapidly, Naidu predicts.
Now, with Phase One complete, Metrobus is looking to launch fleet management and customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives, and is looking to CCH to consult and supply solutions on both fronts.
"e-Business, with all its complexity and inter-dependencies and attendant applications such as CRM, needs a highly reliable and accurate digital backbone," says Barno Nel, Oracle GM at CCH Enterprise Solutions. "The Oracle Applications suite, combined with the reliability of the HP hardware platform, provides just that, giving Metrobus a foundation for business innovation with back-end integrity. And this is after all what customers are asking for."
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