Rand Water is getting as tough on managing their project costs as it is committed to managing the country`s water resources. With their recent decision to implement Walker`s Project Cost Management (PCM) software, they will be stepping up the efficiency of managing several multi-million rand projects across the country. The Project Cost Management system is the latest addition to a purely Walker-developed financial application line-up currently being used at Rand Water. Bateleur Financial Solutions (Pty) Ltd will be responsible for carrying out the implementation and support of the new product at Rand Water this year. The company was previously involved with PCM`s implementation at Telkom.
The decision to use the new software forms part of a general corporate strategy by Rand Water. John de Meillon, Rand Water`s Group Financial Manager, comments, "We have embarked on corporatising our firm and this new PCM software is a building block towards achieving this - it`s evidenced in our marketing, the approach to our customers, its also in our interaction with other stakeholders. We`ve set up forums where we interact with people, externally and internally. We have embarked on proper internal controls and we are complying with the King Code. We have already complied with the South African Generally Accepted Accounting principles and our aim is in the next two years to comply with the international accounting standards. We expect that Rand Water will become an exceptionally well-run organisation. There is no doubt that Rand Water, technologically and from a financial project control point of view, is the most astute player in the water industry in the country and also by far the biggest."
Showing the flexibility of integration of PCM across platforms, the product will use a direct transaction data feed from Rand Water`s existing project management solution, Microsoft Project. This will allow real-time control of project expenses and cash flow, as well as enhancing security for the orders placement system.
"In the past, our project cost management was part of our General Ledger," explains de Meillon, "but this meant we were limited when it came to interrogative information gathering, generating detailed reports and keeping both management and engineers simultaneously in the loop regarding project expenditure. We researched several packages and asked our engineers to assist with evaluating the new software. PCM found favour with both our financial and technical staff because it is able to provide views of the same data which everyone can work with, and because of the support which Bateleur Software is able to provide."
Bateleur Director Deidre Stoop, who is also the product manager for PCM, says, "Project Cost Management was brought to market as a result of a development consortium being formed between Walker and seven of Walker`s clients. The motivation was to use the benefits of Walker`s highly flexible and scalable architecture which allows easy integration with multiple vendor systems across platforms. The result was that PCM was developed to the requirements written by project companies in a live environment. In effect, the programme was written by end-users.
"Virtually every business environment today has had to become increasingly focused on operational project management. Whatever the type of business your are in, whether you are a large retail organisation or engineering company, projects vary in size and complexity and ultimately affect the quality of service or product your organisation delivers. To efficiently manage these projects, one needs to make decisions based on project-specific operational and financial data. In short, one needs timely access to information unavailable from traditional financial systems, as well as an adaptable system. PCM is especially flexible as its operational systems integrate naturally into PC real time and various applications such as Unix and others."
De Meillon says that Rand Water is looking at improving efficiency and that immediate savings and cost of the package were not at issue: "The overriding philosophy at Rand Water is about managing resources. Saving or managing water in this semi-arid country of ours is as important as managing funds - that is why we are focusing intently on improving controls and efficiency across the board. Not only can we interpret historical data and at the same time keep abreast of current developments for all our projects using PCM, but we are now able to forecast future expenditure far more accurately than ever before."
Perhaps the main factor for De Meillon was "the stability in transactional processing that one gets with all the Walker financial applications in use at Rand Water. We realised that what we needed to do is to find client server environment tools from which to extract management information and leave the mainframe to process the transactions because of the mainframe`s stability. The flexibility is needed in the reporting, not in the transactional process."
Although Walker developed PCM to compliment their Tamaris Smart financial product suite, one of the greatest advantages for companies using this software is that a company need not have a Walker platform from which to run it. In fact, any other platform will do as PCM`s particular strong point is its compatibility with almost all other financial applications. At least six large overseas-based clients using the PCM package, one of which is Shell Services International, run PCM within a financial management system not developed by Walker.
Some examples of established overseas-based PCM software users that use the Walker Management System include PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia, Amtrak National Railroad, Delta Airlines, KMART Corporation and Abbey National PLC - Finance.
In South Africa, PCM is being used successfully at Telkom, fulfilling their need for high-volume cost-management reliability. Telkom are running at least 25 000 projects through PCM at any given time, with a recorded peak of just over 50 000 projects. Walker PCM was foreseen as one of the most vital systems in financial control at Telkom, and is integrated with the Walker smart financials Tamaris product suite. PCM was originally selected because of its exceptional project cost monitoring and tracking functionality. Pierre de Greef, Executive Asset Management TNS at Telkom, on being asked why PCM, comments; " Reliability and it`s friendly (user-friendly)."
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