June 2010
In the two years since the implementation of Pastel Evolution the uMgungundlovu District municipality has received two consecutive clean audits...
At the end of 2007 uMgungundlovu District Municipality was operating four different financial systems which, combined, still left gaping holes in its billing, financial and other management processes. No water billing system existed at district level, its 400 employees were not being tracked and monitored by any kind of human resource software and there was a desperate need for better supply chain management. To compound the situation, GRAP was being introduced and the existing systems were not compliant and the Auditor-General continued to raise a string of concerns about the municipality's financial statements.
"One of the audit queries raised in the 2007 Auditor-General report was the misstatement of financial information which was largely due to the fact that the district did not have an ERP system," says Leon Rolls, the chief information technology officer for uMgungundlovu.
Waterwise system needed
uMgungundlovu District Municipality is the biggest district in Kwa-Zulu Natal and includes Pietermaritzburg, the province's capital. Because it had no water billing system of its own, the district relied on the local municipalities to do the billing and as a result, was losing a substantial amount of money annually.
"We needed to incorporate water into our billing system and realised the value that a fully integrated business planning and management system could bring us," says Rolls who embarked on a comprehensive assessment of four enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.
The successful bidder would be required to deliver a system that could seamlessly bill 33 000 water consumers, speed up delivery, minimise fruitless expenditure and improve procurement and human resource management systems. Of course, a clean audit was also essential.
South African solution solves the problem
Pastel Partner was already being used by the council to manage and monitor its financials and ran parallel with the municipality's other systems. The Pastel Evolution solution could offer the municipality all of the modules it needed.
The fixed assets register was already running through Pastel Partner and the payroll module, which comes standard, offers a human resource management function.
And because Pastel is a South African company, its in-house development team was able to develop customer-specific enhancements quickly.
"The Evolution team did a proof of concept for us which proved the system's capacity and would also mean a faster implementation. But what really stood out is that Evolution can be easily shared amongst local municipalities at very little cost."
Easy implementation
"Because Evolution's municipal billing module is geared towards the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) and GRAP we have over 60 municipal clients so we were confident that our system was the best fit for uMgungundlovu municipality," says Ashley Pillay, divisional director for Pastel Evolution.
The implementation of the core module was fast and easy says Rolls. The system was up and running in a matter of weeks but because the data received from local municipalities was inconsistent and had to be cleaned, it was a bit more challenging.
"Because the Pastel team worked closely with us they were able to meet all of our needs," says Rolls.
Two consecutive clean audits
It's been two years since the implementation of Evolution at uMgungundlovu District Municipality and in that time it has received two consecutive clean audits.
So, is the customer satisfied?
"More than satisfied," says Rolls. "Pastel has delivered beyond our expectations and continues to do so. Evolution has empowered the municipality to manage its finances in an straightforward and transparent manner and we are thrilled to be able to account for all public funds at the click of a button."