Integrated Order and GIS
Mapping System for SASOL

SASOL Nitro, a division of SASOL responsible for the manufacturing and distributing of explosives as well as fertilizer, had the need for better business intelligence within the organization to be able to do better strategic planning. For example it needed to be easier to make decisions such as where to deploy additional marketers and market managers, where to create or decommission product stockpiles and warehouses and where to create additional manufacturing capability. Based on previous experience with working with SiQ, SASOL Nitro requested SiQ to assist with this need.

What was needed was to link the company sales data, as well as other data such as warehouse locations and marketer areas, to physical spatial locations so that modelling and analysis of the data could be done on a tabular and spatial level. It was also evident that this data will have to be maintained as dynamically as possible, with the least effort possible.

The best way to achieve this was to create a system which could be maintained in the course of duty of the personnel of the company, without too much additional effort, and while providing much added benefit to the user. It was thus decided to develop and integrate a new order and GIS customer mapping system into the SASOL operations. This created a multitude of benefits to the personnel responsible for the updating of the data, such as the provision of reports on a near real time basis and the complete replacement of a paper based system with a computer based system. Personnel no longer had to telephone the head-office for day to day customer information as it was available at their fingertips.

SiQ were tasked with the complete development cycle of the project, including determining the business requirement, user requirement, drafting a user requirement specification and developing and testing the system. SiQ also performed all modelling and analysis on the data gathered with this system and produced a multitude of maps that was used by management as well as by individual marketers in the company.

The project was done in a phased approach with development and distribution of the electronic order and GIS mapping on the client side as the first phase. Later phases included enhancements to the system as well as the integration of the dataflow to and from the current SASOL legacy (e.g. SAP) systems.

The mapping software is based on the ESRI ArcGIS Engine components and includes the functionality to select farm portions on the Surveyor General cadastral farm layer and assign these to specific SASOL farmers.

The details for these farmers (e.g. Postal address, VAT number etc) are also captured and maintained by the agents in the field as part of the order process and the client database (including GIS data) is thus being maintained and updated on a continuous basis.

Various offline analysis could be done later on the spatial data that was obtained in this manner, e.g. to determine the sale distribution etc.

The system simplified the process of compiling an order for a farmer for the sale of fertilizer and assures that a quality order was being sent to the head office by means of the following:

• Automatic calculation of certain fields, e.g. product price based on spatial conformities
• Warnings and errors where necessary
• Limited options to choose from for certain fields
• Leads user through order process (wizard based)

Due to security and bandwidth constraints, the data was synchronised with a centralized server via the internet and communication costs for the field agents were thus kept to a minimum. The centralized server also served as a mid-point between the company secured servers and the various individual agent computers in the field.

The Agent had the ability to generate reports that enabled him to review his clients, the sales for specific periods etc.

As part of this project, SiQ was also appointed to do the helpdesk support. This involves first, second and third line support and a dedicated support division was established in SiQ.

Future phases that were being investigated included inter-alia the integration of a fertilizer recommendation application as well as automated routing capability for the transport companies. Unfortunately after many years of operation the system was decommissioned when the competition commission required SASOL to adopt a different sales model.

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