Johannesburg, 15 Jun 2012
Wesgro, the official destination marketing, investment and trade promotion agency in the Western Cape, recently deployed Sage ERP Accpac 200 financials in addition to adding Norming Assets and AccTech Procurement eWorkflow to its ERP solution.
“Wesgro has experienced exceptional growth in addition to key acquisitions in the market, which necessitated the need for an enhanced enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to support our business,” says Ian Blackie, Chief Financial Officer of Wesgro.
Located in Cape Town, Wesgro serves as the official destination marketing, investment and trade promotion agency for the Western Cape. Wesgro effectively keeps a firm finger on the pulse of business and tourism in the Cape region, being the first point of contact for foreign buyers, local exporters and investors who wish to take advantage of the unlimited business potential in the region.
One of the critical success factors on the brief was a need to automate Wesgro's procurement process to include reimbursement functions such as travel expenses and project expenses, to name a few.
“Improved financial control was high on our agenda, as our current accounting system and procedures were not providing the necessary control that we wanted. It was largely attributable to the rapid expansion of the organisation, having to account for geographically complex activities that were not prevalent before,” explains Blackie.
Wesgro decided on AccTech Western Cape as its vendor of choice, due to the company's ability to deliver solutions that will support Wesgro's changing and challenging business processes.
“Our ability to provide solid accounting support services garnered additional leverage,” says Henri Hattingh, CEO of AccTech Western Cape. “We provided a proven procurement workflow solution to Wesgro that was strongly and thoroughly underpinned with training and support for all levels of staff members within the company.”
The result has been improved financial control with paperless application of business policy and procedures across diverse geographical boundaries, says Blackie. “The fact that our company executives can approve or reject procurement requests from mobile devices plays an important factor in increasing productivity of travelling executives. We also believe this is a wise application of tax funds. By building procurement rules into the system, the risk of human error has been greatly reduced.”
At the core of Sage ERP Accpac 200 is strong financial, operational, business intelligence and customer relationship management features and capabilities, says Keith Fenner, Vice-President of Sales for Africa, Softline Accpac and Sage MMD Africa.
“The system excels at supporting companies that operate from multiple locations with international requirements that makes it an ideal fit for Wesgro. Sage ERP Accpac 200 was designed for small to medium-sized companies with up to 20 users and provides a scalable set of ERP solutions that can grow as the company grows,” says Fenner.
Wesgro's solution was fully implemented during the first quarter of 2012, with further expansion of its procurement workflow capacity having taken place during April and May 2012.
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