This chapter presents the findings and the discussions in response to the research questions (refer to Table 1.1). The findings are given in the form of a narration that details them along thematic lines. These findings brought to the fore the following:
4.8.1 Summary of findings
The key findings can be summarised as follows:
The Municipality has successfully implemented the back office part of the ERP system and residents are already enjoying the related benefits, such as a single customer record. The foregoing is a demonstration of the capabilities and functionality of an ERP system in a municipality.
Citizens now have a one-stop shop when it comes to interaction with the City. This was enabled by the interdepartmental and disparate systems‘ integration. This is currently very crucial when citizens pay their different bills such as water, electricity, etc.
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The Municipality now has increased efficiency and effectiveness as it has timeous information availability for decision makers. Reaction to service requests and turn- around time on business processes is now sustainably improved.
The citizens can now access some of the City services through ―multi-channels‖ that are consistent and standardised. They can now e-mail, send SMS, log on to the website, or even call for free to communicate to the same service request business process.
The high level of transparency and accountability enabled by the ERP system usage eliminates corrupt activities. This is done through consistency and standardisation of accounting policies and procedures. Unqualified audits are evidence of this notion.
The City has an improved governance structure. This is supported by an efficient budget and lower IT operational costs, resulting in long-term financial sustainability.
Business process configuration facilitated migration from the legacy systems that were already outdated and functionally inadequate. This means that besides solving problems for the City, the ERP system brought about functionalities.
The City is busy with raising awareness among the public of the existing benefits through local radio stations, awareness campaigns, road shows, newspapers, etc.
Residents can now find vacancies and apply for jobs, on their own without any official intervention. Ninety per cent of the City‘s recruitment is now being done online through the portal, with the support of the ERP s
Citizens now have quick, reliable and equal access to the City services, especially the previously disadvantaged citizens. This is extended by multi-channel access to a single customer record within the City services database.
4.8.2 Integrated view of benefits
After reflecting on the findings, several important issues emerged concerning benefits and the management thereof. These are:
The financial sustainability, effectiveness and efficiency of the Municipality are at the core of the ERP system implementation.
The sustainability benefit is within a pool of tangible benefits (e.g. accurate profiling of citizens, improved service delivery, etc.). There are dependent on intangible ones (e.g. business process configuration, organisational transformation, etc.). In other words, front-end depends on back-end operations.
The intangible benefits are an integral component of the ERP system benefits (e.g., the integration of disparate systems, control of corruption, etc.) which propelled the Municipality into implementing the ERP system to glean the benefits of financial sustainability for the City as well as other tangible benefits.
All these benefits findings are directly associated and interwoven within the benefits management findings, which determine the accessibility of all these benefits. No benefits can be extended without proper planning and management, either directly or indirectly.
This summary of these relationships is illustrated in Figure 4.7, which illustrates how the different benefits are conjointly related.
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Figure 4.7: The relationships among the four findings
The Municipality then is required to effectively manage indirect benefits in a way that will enable their transformation to direct benefits, which can be easily associated with the citizens. This section above summarises the key findings, and indicates how they relate to each other. This is the foundation for the Benefits Management Checklist that will be presented in the next chapter.
An analysis of these findings above in comparison with the capabilities of the ERP systems documented in the literature shows that there is a gap between the current and the intended system. The ERP system has currently enabled far fewer citizen benefits than the potential benefits that can be extended by the ERP system, even if we compare them to the benefits
Effective Benefits Management Findings
Indirect ERP System Benefits Findings
Direct ERP System Benefits Findings
Efficient use of Public Funds Findings
Municipality ERP System Overview
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planned by the Municipality. The gap emanates from the fact that the overall potential benefits are not yet realised. Whether the residents are aware of the benefits extended to them or not or whether they know that they are being enabled by the ERP system is not important. What is important is the resultant citizen benefit. Most importantly, citizens benefit when there is a successful municipal administration in place but they do not care what will be driving the success.
The Municipality has the back office working, efficiencies are there, and duplication has been minimised through integration. This sets a solid foundation for ensuring that the other ERP system functionalities can now be implemented, and that this is being planned. This implies that the Municipality should now start to enable the front-end benefits, as they are the ones that bring more of the direct and tangible benefits that ordinary citizens will easily associate with. Benefits such as RSS feeds, an integrated bill, benefits enabled by mobile technologies, etc., will directly influence the lives of citizens. The ERP system will help not only to extend routine services, but also to solve problems that may arise. This is a point when all the promised benefits will materialise. The next chapter details the conclusions and the recommendations that emanated from these findings.
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CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSIONS, EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS