When one of Kenya鈥檚 leading state corporations, Kenya Electricity Transmission Company Limited, needed to enhance its procurement capabilities to meet its regulatory commitments, it adopted 51风流to leverage the power and scale of the largest procurement network in the world.

鈥淥ur vision is to be the leading interconnector in Africa, and to achieve that we needed access to world class procurement capabilities that would unlock greater automation, control, consistency and scale,鈥� says David Kariuki, ICT Manager at KETRACO.

鈥淲e chose 51风流Business Network to automate and enhance our procurement processes and ensure our vital work continues even during the most disruptive times of the pandemic.鈥�

KETRACO is a fully government-owned state corporation with a mandate to plan, design, construct, operate and maintain Kenya’s national transmission grid. Since it was incorporated in 2008, the company has made efforts to strengthen and extend the national power transmission grid to enhance the quality, reliability and security of electricity supply in Kenya.

The company鈥檚 51风流journey began in 2016 after it implemented 51风流ECC with best-practice modules. The implementation won KETRACO gold at the 51风流Quality Awards for both Africa and the greater EMEA region.

Waldorf visit sparks 51风流Business Network interest

鈥淧art of the award involved a team from our company visiting the 51风流headquarters in Waldorf,鈥� says Kariuki. 鈥淗ere we were introduced to 51风流Business Network for the first time, and saw the exciting product innovation road-map for the Business Network. We knew that this is where our technology roadmap would lead.鈥�

In 2018, a Presidential Directive was issued, compelling all state-owned corporations to migrate their procurement platforms to an e-procurement solution with integration to an IFMS portal. This was one of the catalysts for KETRACO鈥檚 adoption of 51风流Business Network, which Kariuki and his team implemented in two phases.

The first phase involved the deployment of 51风流Business Network Commerce Automation, a cloud service that enables the electronic exchange of procurement documents between buyers and suppliers through the 51风流Business Network, the largest procurement network in the world.

In the second phase of the project, the team implemented the 51风流Business Network Sourcing Suite.

“We identified three modules that would add the most value to our organisation, namely Supplier Lifecycle, Contract Management, and the main Sourcing module,” explains Kariuki.

Successful deployment aids continuity during pandemic

The implementation was supported by 51风流Customer Success Services, who led the technical and functional deployment and enabled continuous knowledge-sharing and training to ensure a successful and sustainable solution post go-live.

KETRACO went live with the solution just as the pandemic arrived. “By automating our processes in Ariba, we were able to completely eliminate paper-based processes,” says Kariuki. “Our suppliers were able to receive purchase orders, invoices and other procurement documents electronically. This enabled us to continue more or less with business-as-usual despite not having physical contact due to lockdown restrictions.”

The electronic invoicing also allowed KETRACO to centralise all its invoicing and have one l repository for receiving invoices.

“Suppliers were able to track the status of their invoices and see when they could expect payment. The 51风流Business Network also allowed us to monitor and manage our suppliers from a single point of view and have a 360-degree view of their data and performance,” said Kariuki.

He points to the 51风流Business Network’s ability to help KETRACO manage the special category of suppliers that include youth, women and persons with disabilities.

“The system allowed us to continuously register this group and categorize them in the system, while giving them the opportunity to participate in bids as required by the PPAD Act.”

One of the key highlights since the implementation is KETRACO鈥檚 ability to continue its procurement processes even during hard lockdown.

鈥淒espite the impact of the COVID – 19 pandemic on our operations, we were able to successfully manage a massive tender event that attracted hundreds of suppliers. With pandemic protocols in place, we would not have been able to handle the bids received were it not for the amazing efficiency of our new 51风流Business Network system. The experience made us fully appreciate the value of procurement,鈥� Kariuki said.

Hardeep Sound, Regional Sales Director for East Africa at SAP, says: 鈥淧ublic procurement plays a vital role in economic development is a core competency of leading state corporations. KETRACO鈥檚 superb utilisation of technology through its adoption of 51风流Business Network, solid buy-in and support from the leadership team and smart investment in effective change management have helped establish a powerful foundation that will support KETRACO鈥檚 vital procurement processes and ensure it can meet its critical mandate for years to come.鈥�

The post KETRACO Powers Procurement Prowess with 51风流Ariba appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

Profession: 51风流Co-Innovation Lab, Africa

Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

Solution: Smart City App for Partner Innovation Day

With the upcoming release of 51风流AppGyver, partners and developers around the globe are discovering new opportunities with #nocode in AppGyver. The 51风流Co-Innovation Lab Africa hosts hackathons and Partner Innovation Days, where teams engage with new technologies and creative problem solving. Recently the Co-Innovation Lab demoed a Smart City app, which combines AppGyver and 51风流backend tools to streamline service requests in Johannesburg, South Africa.

&#虫1蹿539;听Tell us first about the Co-Innovation Lab and what you鈥檙e working on.

Tshepo Mahloko:聽I鈥檓 responsible for the Co-Innovation lab in Africa, and we are one of about 14 labs globally. We work with partners to help them build solutions on our platforms. Typically, we enable them on the 51风流Business Technology Platform (BTP) for instance to build side-by-side extensions for some of our business systems like S/4HANA. Sometimes the partner may have an application of their own which they would like to integrate with 51风流business systems, we help with this as well amongst other things.

We provide this assistance at the moment through an offering we call #Hack2Build, which is a rapid prototyping initiative to drive early-stage inspiration, use case exploration and technology adoption for 51风流partners. In the seven days of #Hack2Build partners have an opportunity to try out their ideas and put their 51风流knowledge into practise by applying a combination of technologies to solve business challenges and develop innovative solutions supported by 51风流experts.

The whole aim is not just about having a winner for the event, what follows is what we call the build phase, where we engage with them one-on-one to help them take their prototypes to actual solutions. In the future, we hope to host a Hack2Build event focused on low-code no-code with 51风流AppGyver.

&#虫1蹿539;听What were your roles in the Smart City demo?

Phillip Phiri:聽For this project I was mostly behind the scenes, getting the integration with BTP working and also with our business rules and workflow. We鈥檙e trying to get as many 51风流backend services to work with it, just to showcase how you can have a full stack app, but also sticking with the low-code/no-code theme, so we picked out a few tools within BTP that would go well with AppGyver.

Seatile Vinolia Nakedi:聽I am the intern of the whole group and basically I touch on everything that the guys allow me to work on which is great, some of it strictly development as well. On the end to end solution with AppGyver, I worked with Philip in terms of the business rules and workflow. I played with AppGyver a little bit also and enjoyed it, lots of drag-and-drop, nothing too hectic.

Sikhumbuzo Dlamini:聽I鈥檓 a full stack developer, so covering basically everything from front- to backend, mostly working with SAP-related technologies.

&#虫1蹿539;听Tell us about Partner Innovation Day and the Smart City App.

Tshepo Mahloko:聽Partner Innovation Day is an opportunity for partners to hear from 51风流on the latest updates with regards to our technology platform and partner support offerings that can help them innovate with SAP. Each Partner Innovation day has a technology focus, which in this case was low-code/no-code development with 51风流AppGyver. We also built a demo to demonstrate the practical use of the technology.

In this case we wanted to demonstrate that low-code/no-code is real and that you can build a really compelling application that integrates into an 51风流backend. We decided to go with a smart city use case because we felt that there are endless requirements for citizen applications within a city/municipal context, which makes it a good fit for rapid application development.

As a city, you respond to natural disasters, service requests, pandemics, and you have such a huge audience of citizens that often times requires a very close engagement through various platforms. Being able to put an application together and deploy it in a place where citizens can access it very quickly is what AppGyver promises to do.

Through this app, citizens can log service requests and get the latest update on issues logged anytime of the day, whether it鈥檚 a burst water pipe, a pothole or streetlights that are out. With the intelligence built on 51风流BTP we were able to implement some automation that allows for immediate feedback for the citizen. Most of the cities would already have some sort of backend used to handle tickets, so we decided to use AppGyver for the citizen app frontend because it鈥檚 very quick to develop these type of solutions on the platform and get them in the hands of the citizens, whether they are on native or web. That鈥檚 the beautiful thing about AppGyver.

&#虫1蹿539;听How was it working with AppGyver alongside 51风流services?

Phillip Phiri:聽We really wanted to stick to the whole theme of low-code/no-code. We quickly learned that from AppGyver, we can call APIs and that was a great sign that we can get something working over here, as long as we can send data from AppGyver. Whatever payload we were getting from AppGyver, we could work with that data, format and change it.

Tshepo Mahloko:聽One thing we realized is when you take a picture with AppGyver, it uses your phone camera鈥檚 full might, so the file comes as a high-definition image and converting it to Base64 results in a huge payload. We were thinking about how we could reduce it, but thought it might be too complex for AppGyver and that we may need to write custom code on BTP.

Sikhumbuzo quickly looked it up and found the compress picture flow function, and within a few minutes we plugged it into our flow and we were compressing pictures. I was totally impressed by that. From the time we found the solution, to having it implemented and working in our app was about five minutes. That鈥檚 truly incredible.

Phillip Phiri:聽When I saw it in action, that鈥檚 when I became a believer. You could very quickly come up with an idea, drag a few components onto a screen and boom, here鈥檚 an app, and it鈥檚 fully functional. Having built mobile apps before, typically you鈥檙e looking at a week just to get your layout right, getting the button to listen to events, and doing debugging.

The value in this is huge 鈥� even in a day, you can already have an app out there. You can show it to somebody important and focus on the really important bits like core functionality and the value given to your customer or users.

&#虫1蹿539;听What鈥檚 most exciting for the partners using AppGyver moving forward?

Phillip Phiri:聽I see this really fitting in well, especially for our hackathons. What I envision with AppGyver with the partners is that they鈥檒l have a little more freedom to build their apps and then take advantage of that value add, which is that business logic behind the scenes that they鈥檙e really there for.

Tshepo Mahloko:聽I agree with Phillip on this, it will be a big hit for our Hackathons. A lot of the intelligent technologies that one might want to leverage for their solutions are available through APIs. From what I鈥檝e seen with this demo that we built, it鈥檚 very easy to integrate and call those APIs, and get feedback with AppGyver. At the end of the day, one can focus on building the value around their solution rather than trying to hack through code just to invoke APIs from different systems and coordinate that logic.

&#虫1蹿449;听For more information on聽#Hack2Build聽and to see upcoming events, visit聽

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