CASE STUDY – Assets Managed Zulu Style.
The Kwa-Zulu Natal Provincial Administration (KZN), one of the nine provinces (and thus provincial governments) in the Republic of South Africa, has been using the Hardcat asset management solutions for 20 years and still going strong. They are now in the process of migrating from the CatScan asset capture and auditing mobile app to the MiCatX Mobile App for iOS and Android devices.
In order to meet the statutory requirements of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA Section 38(1) d), a framework was developed to promote the effective management of assets. The framework is primarily intended to assist financial managers to interpret and implement sound asset management principles. These principles give rise to a business problem for which KZN required a “tool” for their resolution and this resulted in the decision, in 2004, to acquire the Hardcat Asset Management System.
Asset management is the process of guiding the acquisition, use, safeguarding and disposal of assets, thereby maximising their service delivery potential and managing the related risks and costs over their entire life span. KZN’s analysis of various software solutions led them to the Hardcat asset management solution as the best “tool” to achieve this.
The KZN Provincial Administration required all their assets to be managed in a manner that facilitated:
- Custodian accountability for assets
- Cost savings by extending the life of assets where appropriate
- Avoiding unnecessary purchases and using the “just in time” principle
- Security of assets – knowing where all assets are and monitoring the movement of asset
- Asset replacement decisions to ensure that required service delivery levels are maintained
- Avoidance of litigation by, inter-alia, ensuring that the condition of assets is closely monitored
- Making appropriate leasing decisions to assist the Administration in keeping its asset procurement within budget
The Hardcat asset management system has supported the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government in these endeavours continuously since 2004 (20 years). The government consists of 13 departments that together have over 1,000,000 (1 million) assets supported by Hardcat!
The assets are formally audited every year (PFMA requirement) using KZN’s own personnel equipped with over 200 mobile barcode scanners that consist of a mix of older devices (running the CatScan app) and new Android devices as the migration to the new MiCatX Mobile App takes place.
Using the Hardcat System, the entire administration has been phenomenally successful in achieving regular annual “clean” asset audit reports from the South African Auditor General’s office and is looking forward to the same result for the 2023-24 financial year.
