Harare, (New Ziana) -The Harare City Council is installing a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system on its computers, an official has said.

ERP is usually referred to as a category of business management software—typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities.

Ii tracks business resources—cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll.

The Harare City Council failed to get its US$578 million 2024 budget approved by the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works for not having an ERP, among other shortcomings.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa last November launched the Local Authorities Service Delivery Blueprint titled “A call to action – no compromise to service delivery. First stage of interventions to modernise the operations of local authorities towards a vision 2030.”

Updating a full council meeting on the ERP system this week, ICT manager William Mugobogobo said the local authority had signed a contract to implement a new server infrastructure which is already being installed.

The system is expected to assist the Harare City Council with a better server and collecting revenue more efficiently.

“The new server is being put in place and we will be using it alongside our existing server infrastructure,” Mugobogobo said.

“This is part of our strategy to improve the performance and reliability of our ERP systems. We have faced too many challenges with our current ERP servers, leading into core municipal services. With the new server advancements that are taking place, previous challenges that we faced are going to be settled.”

The city’s old ERP systems were seen as contributing to broader challenges that it faced in areas like revenue collection, service delivery and overall municipal governance.

New Ziana