Sameer Africa Limited (SAL) was recently awarded the Africa SAP User Group Impact Award in the SME category at a glittering ceremony held in Sun City. The Impact Awards, which took place during SAP’s SAPHILA conference, recognize those customers that have driven innovation by adopting SAP’s technology solutions.
Sameer Africa, an East African tyre manufacturer (Yana Tyres) with offices in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, was awarded the coveted prize after demonstrating the positive effect the implementation of SAP technology had on its business, both in terms of ROI and the development of best practice.
 
“Since implementing SAP (Best Practices) All-in-One, we have transformed SAL into a lean, efficient and productive company – a feat that was impossible to achieve using our previous system,” says Shishir Kumar Saraf, SAL’s CIO. “We process thousands of transactions every day, and with SAP’s work flow and release strategy, all of these transactions can be counter checked to ensure accuracy and data integrity is maintained throughout. We have also been able to free up human capital that used to be engaged in the analysis that the software now completes for us, and have started engaging them in more productive activities.”
Despite its huge scope, the implementation of SAP took a mere 123 days to complete, which also lead to SAL being awarded an SAP Quality Award in the SME category earlier this year.

Andrew Waititu, General Manager of SAP East Africa, said after the ceremony: “SAP strives to make businesses of all sizes ‘best run’, and we are thrilled at the success SAL has achieved since implementing our software. The company has experienced rapid growth in recent years, and with this came more and more challenges. Businesses – especially small and medium sizes ones – thrive on timely, relevant and accurate information, and SAP has given SAL access to just that. The speed of implementation was astounding, and the results speak for themselves. The Impact Award is extremely well deserved.”