Business solution implementer Warwick Africa is part of a consortium that has won a contract with Johannesburg Water, worth R40 million, to install and integrate enterprise software for the municipal utility, which supplies water and sanitation services.
Allan Kromm, Warwick Africa MD, says the company also hopes to hear soon about being short-listed for another Johannesburg City contract worth about R400 million to supply a shared revenue service system for its utility suppliers.
The Johannesburg Water project, called Watersolve, will involve the integration of several modules of utilities management software from Hansen Technologies - a US supplier of municipal utilities and asset management software - and SAP resource planning software from EDS Enterprise Solutions.
Also included in the consortium is document management software from Waymark and laboratory management software from Labware.
Kromm says the impact of the changes on the organisation`s human assets must be managed and Warwick Africa, in addition to being the local solution provider for Hansen, will run an organisational change management programme over the duration of the project.
"Any organisation implementing an enterprise solution has specific benefits that are expected as a result of the implementation," Kromm says. "Johannesburg Water has a clearly defined vision and we look forward to helping them achieve their strategic objectives."
He says the project, which started on 31 March, will run for nine months, after which there will be a two-month post-implementation phase. The project will run on the Oracle platform.
Black empowerment group HCI bought a 25% equity stake in Warwick Africa in November last year and Kromm says his company`s objective is to be 51%-owned within four years.
"We have taken a serious view about black empowerment and are in negotiations with HCI to increase its stake to 45%. If this does not happen, then we will exercise our other options to increase black ownership of the company," he says.
Other utility-type contracts that Warwick Africa is aiming for include a municipal project in Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal and another with the Zambian Electricity Supply Commission.
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