Uganda National Water and Sewage Company chooses Scala ERP suite

Uganda's National Water and Sewage Company (NWSC), a utility parastatal 100% owned by the Government of Uganda, has chosen and implemented Scala Business Software's ERP suite to take control of its daily operations. According to Shamik Sinha, CEO of Scala Africa, NWSC has been using Scala software since 1998 and recently upgraded its systems to take advantage of product and technological updates.

"The effective control and administration of water and sewage is a critical function in any country. Properly managed clean water is a prerequisite for sustainable development and the health of a population," says Sinha. He notes that it is testament to Scala's proven software and established support capability in Africa that it was the choice of NWSC to handle this critical function.

Established in 1972 following a recommendation by World Health Organisation, NWSC has a mandate to operate and provide water and sewerage services on a viable and sound commercial basis. According to managing director Dr William Muhairwe, the NWSC operations were initially in the three key towns of Kampala, Jinja and Entebbe. In 1988, four additional towns of Mbale, Tororo, Masaka, and Mbarara were handed over to NWSC by the then Water Development Department, WDD, now known as the Directorate of Water Development. Today, the NWSC serves a total of 12 key towns in the country.

Vaibhav Gupta, Country Manager at Scala East Africa, explains that among the requirements from NWSC was to consolidate billing and reporting from geographically distributed offices. "Many high profile software vendors were evaluated by NWSC in the procurement process, but Scala was selected owing to its openness and collaborative capabilities," says Gupta.

He notes that flexible reporting capability was another factor in Scala's favour. "Additionally, this project was sponsored by a German NGO, GTZ, which had had previous successful experiences with Scala in Africa," adds Gupta.

Gupta explains that NWSC uses Scala software as its business management system and for statutory reporting, its MIS system, and to consolidate accounts for various countrywide branches. "It is a stated mandate of the NWSC to be a sustainable company, hence accurate and efficient billing is of vital importance to the company," notes Gupta.

On a more technical level, Gupta explains that the NWSC Scala implementation is part of a bigger project where the Scala system is to be integrated with the Custima billing engine. "This will result in a complete, integrated system which keeps in line with the best of breed philosophy," says Gupta. He explains that the Custima application runs on the Unix platform while Scala is on Windows. "The integration allows for data movement into Scala from Custima for the consolidation of accounts. Currently NWSC is awaiting the upgrade of Custima to move into this phase of the project," he says.

Through Scala's financials and logistics modules, and business process management, NWSC has effectively reduced misappropriation by improving processes and procedures, while enabling it to render a better service to its customers.

"The integrated business management system is a direct result of Dr Muhairwe's efforts to turn the NWSC around to become a sustainably profitable company. The results have already been seen: the NWSC has gone from recording a loss to profit making due to better management and control of its business processes with Scala being rolled out to the whole organisation," concludes Sinha.