In a R1,2million deal, Murray & Roberts (M&R) has chosen Hill Cunnington`s AccountAbility as the back-office accounting application for its construction companies. AccountAbility forms part of a three-year enterprise-wide upgrade of M&R`s operational systems.
M&R has licensed AccountAbility for an unlimited number of sites. It has also licensed ReportAbility and AdaptAbility, two add-ons from the same stable.
Hill Cunnington, part of the JSE-listed Ixchange stable, will also develop custom applications to handle areas of operation unique to the construction business, such as the management and payment of subcontractors.
Implementation has begun on the project, which involves integrating AccountAbility with other applications, including:
- Construction Computing Services` estimation and site management application;
- Custom-developed plant, subcontractor and materials management packages;
- HR Vantage, a human resources management package;
- MarPay, a payroll package; and
- Several project planning applications.
Signoff is expected around April 1999. The platform will be Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 on Windows NT 4.0 servers.
"We chose AccountAbility because of its guaranteed 100% data integrity and transaction security," says Daan Vermaas, who heads up M&R`s IT programme. "It was also important to have a strong local support base as we need high-level, intensive, ongoing support."
Hill Cunnington MD Tony Cunnington comments: "M&R wanted the compatibility of AccountAbility`s development language, as well as its ability to run on SQL Server. There was a strong requirement for interoperability between AccountAbility and M&R`s internally developed systems, many of which M&R customised for the construction industry."
M&R has completed pilot testing and begun implementation at local and international sites. AccountAbility will operate on a standalone basis in certain project sites, communicating with the rest of M&R via dialup lines, cellphones and disk.
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