The SAP Quality Awards, launched in 2005, celebrate and recognize customers across Europe, Middle East, and Africa that have excelled in the implementation of their SAP software solutions in accordance to the German company’s 10 principles of quality.
The 2019 SAP Quality Awards held in Johannesburg last August 21 recognised some of Africa’s most innovative public and private sector SAP customers. One of the key outcomes of the awards was that African enterprises are focused on establishing their Intelligent Enterprise capabilities while leveraging opportunities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“All entries underwent stringent assessment and were judged according to our ten principles of quality. The high standards on display point to a bright future for technology-driven organisations operating in Africa,” said Nazia Pillay, Head of Active Quality Management for Africa at SAP Africa.
Pillay shared that in the awards’ 15-year history, this year showcased nominees that are one of the strongest fields yet.
A total of 19 organisations from West, East, and Southern Africa were recognized this year for their outstanding results across many successful implementations.
Since 1982, SAP has been supporting innovative African enterprises and has grown massively across the continent working with more than 1800 customers across Africa, collaborating with 500 partners in 20 countries. SAP continues to help local enterprises, governments, SMEs, and NGOs build Intelligent Enterprise capabilities in the 21st-century digital economy.
According to Pillay, in recognising African enterprises’ efforts in the on-going global talent war, SAP has added a new category this year for outstanding projects using SAP SuccessFactors. He further explained:
“Judging by the quality of submissions in the new category, African enterprises are making great strides toward attracting and retaining the continent’s growing talent pool, one that is expected to be the world’s largest in the coming decades.”
2019 SAP Quality Awards overall winners are:
· Umeme – Fast Delivery category (Gold)
· Standard Bank South Africa – Transformation category (Gold)
· The City of Cape Town – top honours for Innovation
· Discovery Group, SuccessFactors category (Gold)
“This was a business project, not an IT project, and it has supported the business by introducing completely new functionality. This project was such a success that, for our next phase, we will simply try to repeat the success of this first phase,” said Roger Bentley, CIO at Umeme, a Ugandan electricity distributor.
“Most importantly, they understood what our end-goal was: to build the best people capabilities by combining data, skills, and technology to attract and retain the best talent,” Kammy Sing, Head of HR Operations at Discovery Group, shared.
Sing also said that the implementation team worked seamlessly with the Discovery team.
Manager Dawn Msibi of the ERP Support Centre at the City of Cape Town said:
“Well done to the implementation team, who integrated the value of our assets, the cost of work done and the scheduling of the work to create a single view that has empowered the City of Cape Town to improve service delivery to its citizens.”
“Together with our partners including SAP, we took on a big undertaking with this project. Without their help and support, and that of our executive sponsors, we would not have been able to achieve this success in such a short space of time,” said Karuna Kuni, SAP Platform Manager at Standard Bank.
According to Pillay, the extent of business value achieved through each implementation, their time to value, how well they employed change management throughout and to what extent the implementations have achieved business readiness are the factors that made these projects stand out. He added:
“The fact that we’ve nearly doubled our winners’ list compared to last year only reasserts the level of quality inherent in this year’s group of nominees.”
SAP Africa Managing Director Cathy Smith expressed that the promising future for Africa’s public and private sectors is evident in the quality of entries this year. She explained:
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution will create enormous opportunity – at the same time, it brings immense challenges. Encouragingly, African public and private sector leaders are taking up the challenge and are deploying technology in innovative and groundbreaking ways to solve problems and future-proof their business strategies. We look forward to continuing our close collaboration with customers and partners in the years ahead.”
2019 SAP Quality Awards winners are:
Fast Delivery:
Umeme Limited (Gold)
MWEB (Silver)
Dangote (Silver)
Mukwano (Bronze)
Builders Warehouse (Finalist)
Business Transformation:
Standard Bank SA Limited (Gold)
RCL Foods (Silver)
Rossing Uranium Limited (Bronze)
Britehouse (Finalist)
Delta State (Finalist)
Rural Electrification Authority (Finalist)
Innovation:
City of Cape Town (Gold)
The Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation (Silver)
Sodiam (Bronze)
KCB Group (Finalist)
SuccessFactors (new):
Discovery Group (Gold)
AECI (Silver)
Liberty Group (Bronze)
PG Group (Finalist)
