SAP's success in public services based on transformation tools

Growth of 28% during 2004 for the Public Services division of business solution giant, SAP AG, is based on the company's ability to supply information and communications technology (ICT) tools that enable governments to become more agile.

So said SAP's President of Public Services, Tom Shirk, who in April 2005 visited South African national, provincial and local governments to discuss their specific requirements of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

"For the past five years, SAP Public Services has had continuous growth and consistently grown faster than the company as a whole. That allows me to drive SAP's public sector research and development and create a portfolio of solutions that very precisely delivers on our customers' expressed need to be able to reduce costs and improve service delivery."

Just on 70% of SAP Public Services' revenue comes from about eight countries, including SA.

"In fact, through the City of Cape Town's SAP ERP project, SA has provided us with a best in class example of how powerful SAP's transformation tools are - by demonstrating how comparatively easy it is to consolidate multiple municipalities and save the resulting integrated organisation millions of rands every year in streamlined back office processes," Shirk said.

Although all governments are focused on transformation - whether in the specifically South African sense of political and social transformation or in the more general sense of moving from cumbersome bureaucracy to streamlined, flexible operation - Shirk believes that transformation is a means and not an end.

"Transformation has to deliver something - a return on investing in it. In government that return on investment (ROI) can be measured in three different but related ways: operational, social and political.

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"Operational ROI happens when you become more efficient and effective. You reduce costs or create some sort of saving, either human or financial. Social ROI happens when your community is enhanced, either through more bridges, roads and dams, or more teachers, nurses, doctors and police. Political ROI comes through an improved ability by politicians and other public servants to give more relevant, purpose-driven direction at the operational and social level in order to create a better quality of life for the nation at large."

Shirk defines ICT's role in government transformation as the enabler of all three types of ROI. "Not so much through automation, because simply automating inefficient processes only advertises the underlying inefficiency - in the way that putting lipstick on a pig simply emphasises the pig's unattractive features.

"ICT's real value lies in its ability to impose best practice process across an entire organisation and, therefore, to very accurately align resources and objectives. The core of that ability is ERP software, because it is inherently integrative. It therefore enables data, people and processes to be synchronised and harmonised, without limiting the variety of ways in which they can be used.

"In other words, different government departments can build on a basic ERP foundation common to all departments their own unique applications - or adapt common applications to their own specific needs.

"What's important is process - thinking about activities in terms of how they impact one another and how they flow from an employee or department to the citizen and back. Whether you're in the Justice Department or Water Affairs and Forestry or Child Welfare, if you get the process to flow right, you're going to get your service delivery right.

"And that's where SAP Public Services is so successful - providing the technology tools that enable effective process flow, no matter what government discipline is involved."