Roshcon, an infrastructure and waste company operating throughout sub-Saharan Africa, is implementing Industrial & Financial Systems (IFS) South Africa`s financial systems solution to drive its business as it prepares to restructure as a privatised company jointly owned by Eskom Enterprises and a black economic enterprise.
The order is the first IFS Applications 2002 Financial suite to be placed in SA and follows a seven-month investigation into enterprise systems. It is being implemented to help the company keep control of its ongoing growth.
"We have grown enormously over the last 12 years and our old financial system no longer suited our business. We needed to make the investment in this new system, to keep control of our business," says Mark Cawood, Roshcon`s managing director and sponsor of the financial systems project.
In addition, being a widely dispersed company operating throughout southern Africa, Roshcon was looking for a financial solution that allows centralised control of these dispersed operations, while at the same time, enables its remote management to access the system so that they can control their own operations.
"One of the reasons we bought IFS was that it is a totally Web-based system allowing our managers to use the full functionality of the system via a browser wherever they might be based," he adds.
The 12-year old company, with an annual turnover in excess of R390 million, has regional offices in East London, Durban, Lusaka, Maputo and Johannesburg. Roshcon has been involved in complex engineering projects throughout southern Africa, including Mauritius, Tanzania, Uganda, and Swaziland and is currently involved in contracts in Mozambique, Lesotho and Zambia.
Other key criteria that IFS met was the need to implement a system that would enhance its business and operational processes and integrate easily with in-house developed systems.
"These were big pluses for us," says Rendo Nell, project manager at Roshcon. "We have to get our processes under control because there is too much duplication of effort. Also, easy integration is essential.
The added functionality with regards to reporting and having real live and reliable on-line information that will empower our managers to make good decisions is also key. We cannot get clear reports from our old system," adds Nell.
In choosing IFS Financials, the company is also keeping an eye on its future IT needs in that, as IFS is part of a comprehensive enterprise suite of business solutions, Roshcon has the option to implement other IFS modules on a step-by-step basis if required.
"A great benefit of selecting a product that is part of a suite such as IFS offers is that we can implement what we want to without having to worry about integration. We will certainly be looking at other aspects such as inventory, maintenance and marketing," says Cawood.
The IFS and Roshcon implementation team, which includes two international IFS consultants, is targeting a rapid, four to six month roll-out of the system with a go-live of 1 January against an industry norm of six to 12 months.
"Phase I has just been completed ahead of schedule and what we have found up to now is that the user-friendliness of the system allows us to train and implement in a very short time," says Nell.
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