COUNTRY FOCUS: SOUTH AFRICA
Cape Town has long
been known as one
of South Africa’s most
beautiful cities and has
been presented as a well-
functioning place to live
and work, like a ‘Smart
City’. With this in mind, two
leading experts explain how
technology is being used to
benefit the city’s citizens.
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SAP mobile technology
enables innovative ‘smart
city’ solutions for Cape Town
O
meshnee Naidoo, Director
of Information Systems and
Technology, City of Cape Town,
and Andrew Fisher, Solution Architect, HCL
Technologies, have told delegates how
the City of Cape Town has used mobile
technology in its road, storm water and
traffic signals asset management operations,
with overall business benefits. “All back-office functions were automated
at this stage. Maintenance field services
remained fairly manual with works order
processes being processed through
manual paper-based documentation and
subsequently captured through back office
administration staff. There was also a lack of
visible reporting or updates being made by
the field services teams.
Recently, the solution has also been used as a
foundation to enable fleet management. “There was significant change management
that took place over a 12-month period
post go-live of the solution with the field
workers and depot management teams on
the solution and the benefits and efficiencies
that could be gained from the exercise.
A ‘Smart City’ is the designation given to a
metropolis that incorporates Information
and Communication Technologies (ICT) to
enhance the quality and performance of
urban services, such as energy, transportation
and utilities, in order to reduce consumption,
wastage and overall costs. “The City
invested in Asset Management and Plant
Maintenance as the start of its SAP ERP
journey back in 2002,” said Naidoo.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
“As we’ve matured our maintenance processes
over time, we’ve made changes and went to
market to invest in mobility management.
Value for money was an important factor, as
was performance, and there was always a
need to take business processes to the field.
“Functional benefits have come with these
solutions, including a shift to preventative
maintenance and real-time visibility
through the use of the mobile device,
which allows for immediate feedback, as
well as significantly increased data and
improved compliance abilities. A kilometre
of road, for example, costs tens of millions
of rands to build, and by moving to
preventative maintenance, this extends the
life cycle of the road and obviously saves a
lot of money.”
Naidoo outlined other benefits of the move
to mobile solutions:
• Assets can be repaired faster, or
failure avoided, through
preventative maintenance
• Seasonal preventative maintenance has
allowed for better planning, for example
carrying out storm water clean-ups during
dry seasons to prevent flooding during
rainy seasons
www.intelligentcio.com