Chitungwiza Municipality has made great strides towards improving the ease of doing business by integrating enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems into its operations.
ERP refers to a type of software that helps organisations automate and manage core business processes for optimal performance.
Local authorities use ERP to manage day-to-day business activities and processes such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management, compliance, supply chain operations, engineering, housing, administration, and urban planning.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) manager Mr. John Mapani has told Chitungwiza News that the council managed to integrate the Local Authority Digital System (LADS) with Sage Pastel 200 Evolution, making the ERP “bigger and better.”
Sage is an accounting and ERP software that empowers businesses with streamlined financial management, enhanced accuracy, time and cost savings, real-time insights, and seamless scalability.
“Our intention is to automate and integrate all the processes and activities in Chitungwiza by eliminating all manual ways of doing things and to grow the ERP to become bigger and better to achieve our vision of becoming a world-class smart city by 2030,” Mr. Mapani said.
“LADS is an ERP designed locally to do that and answer many problems in local authorities. It is scalable. It has the capacity to add on to other systems in order to grow or evolve to become bigger and better. It is a disruptive innovation because it has the capacity to change the old way of doing business within local authorities.
“The departmental processes and activities that can be integrated together to become one big ERP in LADs include financial systems, engineering, urban planning, housing, and administration systems.”
Mr Mapani said that the Sage modules integrated with LADS are the general ledger, which is now in the programme-based budgeting, billing, receipting, procurement, and creditors and debtors.
LADS housing modules that have been automated and integrated into Chitungwiza’s ERP are waiting list management, cessation, property database, lease, stand allocation, and cemetery management.
Engineering modules that are being implemented currently are plan approval management, building inspection, urban planning (Geography Information System), water meter reading app, customer relationship management, and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot.
“Administration modules that we are currently implementing and integrating into our ERP are online payroll, debt management, business licenses, employee self-service, and the time and attendance system.
