South African T-Systems healthcare solution certified for SAP HANA

South African T-Systems healthcare solution certified for SAP HANA

In order to obtain certification, T-Systems had to meet rigorous qualification criteria and ensure sufficient numbers of certified consultants are available who can deploy the solution. The solution must also be deployed in accordance with SAP’s stringent development standards, as SAP must be in a position to offer third-level support to any end-customer of the product.

T-Systems South Africa announced its SAP healthcare solution has been certified on HANA. This achievement is a major milestone for both the organisation and for the South African healthcare sector, certifying that T-Systems has the capability to deploy their solution on HANA, which is set to become the platform for all future SAP solutions. In addition, it represents the first localised healthcare solution to be certified on HANA, enabling both public and private healthcare organisations in South Africa to embrace future technology offerings.

“Our healthcare template is a repeatable template solution that localises and enhances the SAP healthcare offering built on their traditional ERP stack. It is fully customised for the South African market in terms of billing rules, taxation, compliance, medical aids and more, and thus requires no configuration. This enabled us to rapidly deploy the full SAP suite at a local hospital and have them fully up and running within three months,” says Shubna Harilal, Head of Horizontal and Future Solutions at T-Systems in South Africa.

“Since SAP’s roadmap is to move all traditional ERP stack solutions onto the HANA platform, all organisations will need to migrate to HANA by 2025. We have pre-empted this move by re-templating our solution on HANA, enabling us to deploy new customers straight to this platform and create a migration path for existing customers for their future journey,” she explains.

While HANA was originally an in-memory relational database engine, it has been optimised for both analytical and transactional processing too, and is the core platform for future ERP deployments. The future roadmap of SAP is to migrate all solutions to HANA by 2025, and general licenses are set to expire. T-Systems has begun this journey in order to assist hospitals to move toward future-proof technology and real-time data analytics. In addition, the HANA migration will enable the creation of multi-channel solutions including on-premise, cloud-based, web and mobile.

In order to obtain certification, T-Systems had to meet rigorous qualification criteria and ensure sufficient numbers of certified consultants are available who can deploy the solution. The solution must also be deployed in accordance with SAP’s stringent development standards, as SAP must be in a position to offer third-level support to any end-customer of the product. All required documentation must be in place before certification is granted.

“This certification is in line with our new innovation programme that is focused on re-templating all of our SAP offerings on the HANA platform. By achieving this certification, T-Systems can now deliver a reliable SAP certified partner solution to both public and private healthcare clients, which is aligned with SAP’s new technology direction. This in turn enables SAP to entrench themselves in the South African healthcare vertical,” says Harilal.

T-Systems HANA-based healthcare template allows customers to move toward a real-time environment in all areas, including patient admission information, financials, inventory, human capital and more. This improves turnaround time for data processing, speeding up decision-making ability and enables hospitals to become more agile when reacting to changes in their environment. Real-time data analytics also provides the ability for more effective patient management, and opens up new avenues such as patient self-admission portals. It also offers a more in-depth view of all assets and where efficiencies can be improved, driving increased competitiveness in the market and enhanced profitability.

In addition, accuracy of medical aid submissions can be assured to minimise rejected invoices, and revenue assurance can be achieved by ensuring all billable elements are accurately charged for, minimising lost income.

“Since our healthcare offering is template-based, it is entirely predictable in terms of rollout, duration and budget, making it a cost effective solution that helps hospitals improve internal processes as well as external customer services. This provides the ideal first step for hospitals embarking on the journey toward digital transformation,” Harilal concludes.

T-Systems in South Africa is part of the Deutsche Telekom group of companies, which puts the company in a unique position to combine information technology and telecommunications into replicable, cost effective solutions. Since its inception in South Africa in 1997, T-Systems has cemented its position as one of the most successful companies in the group outside of Europe. T-Systems South Africa employs between 1,000 and 1,500 professionals. The head office is located in Midrand, Gauteng, with a second major office in Cape Town and several representative offices in locations throughout South Africa.

Browse our latest issue

Intelligent CIO Africa

View Magazine Archive