MIH Internet Africa, together with UCS Solutions as its SAP Implementation Partner, was selected as the Gold winner of the SAP Quality Awards in the Small Implementation category in Africa. This award was presented at the SAP Saphila 2012 Conference, hosted by AFSUG over the period 28 to 31 October 2012, at Sun City.
The SAP Quality Awards acknowledge SAP customers and partners who have embraced quality in their SAP software implementations with the objective of maximising business value from the project and optimising their return on investment by delivering through SAP Implementation Best Practices and aligning to the underlying 10 Quality Principles.
"Quality software projects are underpinned by a number of critical success factors, but the essence of the MIH SAP FI project success was based on the single team mindset and the collaborative input and effort from both UCS and MIH in chasing a shared vision in what proved to be a very dynamic and challenging environment," says Mark Ruthel, UCS Programme Manager.
"Technology also played a key role in this project's execution excellence by leveraging European fronted cloud infrastructure to produce a continent level footprint for our SAP solution. With the distraction of infrastructure removed, we were laser focused on the application level implementation, ultimately becoming more agile and lowering the total cost of operational ownership," added Michael Needham, Project Sponsor and CTO, MIH e-Commerce Africa and Middle East.
With a focus on cost reduction, quality delivery and maximum end-user adoption, the project was structured with a very lean project team that operated within a well-structured project framework with a clear strategy and open communication channels yet also embraced agile principles.
"The relatively flat project hierarchy had customer and partner senior management 'on the ground' with the project team. This approach facilitated quick decision-making and practical risk management to ensure the project aligned to the deliverable objectives of time, cost, quality and scope," says Patrick Kerr, MIH Programme Manager for the implementation.
UCS Solutions is a SAP VAR (Value Added Reseller and Business All-in-One Partner) that has developed the Ready to Retail SAP template that is used as a best-practice accelerator for SAP implementations in the mid-market sector of the retail industry. MIH Internet Africa, a leading e-commerce business in the region with properties such as Kalahari.com, contracted UCS Solutions to implement a SAP solution for the re-platforming project. The solution implemented covered SAP financials and retail processes, together with other systems covering the e-business. Together, MIHiA and UCS took the SAP FI project stream live on 2 April 2012.
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