SAP AFRICA REGION - “DRIVING EFFICIENCY & EFFECTIVENESS IN AFRICA”

It is universally recognised that in order to achieve a world-cIass sustainable economy countries need to ensure that the backbone of their economy, namely Government, Utility and Infrastructure Services are delivered in a streamlined and cost effective manner. In order to do so, these organisations require World Class business software applications to support their business processes. Delivering maximum public value to your stakeholders is the never-ending challenge in these sectors -- and the never-ending pressure.

In line with the efforts focussed on achieving globalisation and the significant transformation taking place in the IT industry, African organisations at all levels have the implicit need for Enterprise-Wide Business Applications. From Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to industry specific solutions for amongst others Public Sector, Utilities, Travel & Transportation SAP provides world class unified solutions, flexible technology, to help organisations excel with while maximizing public value.

SAP Africa Region has recognised this implicit need for world class solutions for organisations within the African continent. As a result SAP has invested heavily in expanding its’ operations into Africa and has opened several offices within Africa – staffed and managed by local indigenous residents.

Vision and Mission

The vision statement of SAP Africa Region in Sub-Saharan Africa is:

• To contribute to the sustainable development of African continent through the use of SAP products and services in ICT supported reforms.
• To make SAP technology and know-how available through:
  • Knowledge transfer and capacity building.
  • Support for indigenisation initiatives.
  • To help our clients leap-frog from "no-systems" to 'state-of-the-art' technology.
  • To support an environment that upholds accountability and integrity.

SAP’s business applications suite of software provides a framework for leveraging economies of scale through the standardization and automation of administrative services ("back-office") and service lines of business ("front-office") services common to multiple agencies and departments. The end result is improved, shared outcomes at a better cost for the stakeholder, and higher public value.

SAP business solutions have already enabled integration within thousands of single organisations: now SAP delivers collaboration to entire markets by spanning enterprise boundaries. This reflects the SAP commitment to African business - a significant step beyond the typical manual business systems that are often found in African organisations. The flexible SAP offering can be implemented to fully integrate an organisation's operational business processes from finance, human resources and manufacturing to sales, and distribution; while enabling the company to reach out to its customers and business partners along the value and supply chain.

SAP Africa Region and Innovation
Within Africa, SAP has been highly successful in providing the benefits of its business application software. Over 75,000 customers, including many of Africa's prominent enterprises, effectively run their operations on the SAP software, using best business practices from around the globe. The success of these installations is primarily due to the partnerships that SAP Africa has enjoyed with its customers, partnerships that will continue as these customers move to take advantage of the Internet age.

SAP Africa Region has become synonymous with innovation within the SAP world, with several key global initiatives being driven from the African continent.

Perhaps the most critical of these is the role based education initiative, a core education project focusing on enabling continuous leveraging of business benefits following implementation of the SAP solution. Indeed, the concept of role based education was established through the joint efforts of SAP Africa and its customers, with the subsidiary being named as official SAP curriculum development factory for the initiative.