‘Consolidated IT systems the way to go’

Transport companies should not under-estimate the importance of a consolidated IT system, said Sylvester Samuel, Arivia.kom customer operations manager. Addressing the Transport Forum in Johannesburg last week, Samuel said it was essential that companies realised the role an integrated and consolidated IT system could play in reducing cost and increasing efficiency and capacity. “We have business plans but no strategy for IT, which is often the heart of a business. In today’s era of cost cutting and saving, a consolidated IT system is a necessity.” Samuel said the benefits ranged from having an improved decision-making system in place to being able to reinvest funds quickly. “It leads to a saving on your resources and improved security within any organisation. It is much like your home – if you have one door to your home there is much less of a risk than when you have ten doors.” Samuel, who does much IT-related work for Transnet, said not having solid systems in place in the long run definitely affected the bottom line. “It comes down to rands and cents – how long can your organisation run without a consolidated IT system? In other words if the system you have in place goes down now, how long can your company survive?” He said while many claimed it would just be business as usual, the truth was that most would not survive. “Companies often say they will just go back to a paper system, but you can never go back. Transnet Freight Rail, for example, cannot release a train from the yard without its consolidated IT system working. Practically that means the ship in the dock is going nowhere until that train arrives. This means penalties. It definitely affects the bottom line.” According to Samuel, servers and storage platforms, data centres, applications and business processes as well as databases are all areas where one can easily consolidate.