Top ICT tenders: Cape Town targets ‘complex’ SAP ERP refresh

The City of Cape Town’s latest tender calls for a service provider to supply, install, operationalise and provide post-go-live stabilisation support for the SAP ERP solution.

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With the year’s end firmly on the horizon, activity on National Treasury’s eTenders Portal is starting to shift to projects that will be considered in 2026.

However, there is still work to be done before the traditional December break, with three of the six tenders with 2026 closing dates featuring briefing sessions this side of the new year and a further four tenders requiring submissions over the next few weeks.

Amid the traditional year-end slowdown, the City of Cape Town (CCT) is considering what it believes to be the “largest and most complex” project in its strategic core application refresh (CAR) programme approved by council in June 2022.

The CAR programme aims to digitally modernise the city by replacing aging IT assets and improving its digital experiences with its stakeholders, including residents, service providers, suppliers and staff, its tender documentation explains.

The city’s latest tender calls for a service provider to supply, install, operationalise and provide post-go-live stabilisation support for the SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.

This solution supports the CCT’s core business processes, including finance, budgeting and treasury, asset management including plant maintenance and fleet management, portfolio and project management, human resources, supply chain, procurement, revenue collection that includes but is not limited to property tax, utilities and water as well as sundries billing, customer relationship management, contract management, services and reporting.

The city’s current platform is SAP ECC6, including public sector records management (PSRM), supported by complementary SAP solutions such as CRM, BW, HR, real estate, IS-U, e-Services, web-based internal and external portals, mobile and mobile field services with numerous interfaces to non-SAP systems. The environment has a high level of complexity due to extensive custom code, multiple integration points and large data volumes, CCT reveals.

“CCT refers to the transition from the current SAP solution landscape to the future SAP Business Suite (current SAP naming) landscape as SAP HANA, which includes the SAP S/4HANA for the ERP and specialised SAP Cloud Product solutions. CCT will issue two tenders in respect thereof, one being this tender for implementation, and a second separate tender for procurement of SAP licences for the core financial and operational systems,” the tender specifies.

It is anticipated to first do a full technical upgrade of the current SAP solutions that includes ECC including PSRM, corporate CRM and BW systems to SAP HANA as a minimum viable solution to replace and decommission functionality of current SAP solutions.

“This approach includes remediation of current SAP solutions components that will not migrate; the migration of the current SAP solutions’ data and deployment of new SAP HANA functionality where existing current SAP solutions functionality cannot be remediated, or does not cater for functionality required by SAP S/4HANA from specialised SAP cloud solutions or where migration is not cost-effective,” it suggests.

The city will hold two non-compulsory briefings on 5 and 8 December, respectively. Interested parties have until 17 February to submit bids.

Other tenders that make this week’s top 10:

• The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) continues its digitisation and modernisation project with its invitation to service providers to submit a firm, fixed bid price proposal for 365 document and image scanners with maintenance and support for its Western Cape region. Delivery of equipment, licences, software and warranties are to be completed within 10 weeks of the purchase order date.

• SASSA’s KwaZulu-Natal region is advertising for the supply and installation of queue management system infrastructure for its local offices, as it seeks to streamline the grants application process to be more efficient. The specifications include 28 tiny form factor desktops, 56 indoor speakers, 28 outdoor speakers, 28 amplifiers, 56 power plugs and 28 network fly leads.

• Gauteng Provincial Legislature wishes to appoint a service provider to conduct a comprehensive assessment of its information and communication technology (ICT) landscape and draft an ICT strategy covering the 2025-2030 period, aligned with its strategic outcomes and the ICT service delivery mandate. The strategy is expected to conform to international best practice, address the foundational issues related to ICT systems and technology readiness and capacity, such as governance and management, ICT architecture and systems, information security and business continuity, among others, it says.

• The South African Weather Service is looking for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) backup solution. This solution will be used to backup all user devices, on-premises server workloads, Azure workloads and for M/O365 platform. The solution must include disaster recovery capability for failover and recovery, as well as an on-premises instance for quick and easy restores. Installation, commissioning of the solution as well as training and five-year licence and support are also required.

• The South African Post Office (SAPO) requires the renewal, maintenance and support of its existing Trend Micro enterprise security solutions to ensure continued protection of its IT infrastructure and data assets. SAPO notes the scope has been expanded to include both appliance and virtual options to support its strategic transition to flexible, cost-effective architectures.

• Sasria is calling for bids for the implementation of data governance, architecture optimisation and enablement services. The implementation of the data enablement phase within the data intelligence programme is essential to advancing Sasria’s strategic objectives, it says.

• The State Information Technology Agency (SITA) is inviting proposals for the procurement of an advanced cyber security solution for the South African Police Service. This tender is driven by the need to address evolving cyber threats, improve real-time visibility, enhance data protection and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, SITA says. “The increasing complexity of attacks, including ransomware, zero-day exploits and fileless malware, requires advanced threat detection capabilities beyond traditional signature-based security.”

• SITA also wishes to appoint a service provider for renewal of Inet/Winet Emulator software licences, including maintenance and support for five years for the Department of Correctional Services. SITA reveals the department has been using the emulator software for Persal and Logis transversal system. “INET/WINET Emulator is a terminal software package used to connect to a mainframe,” it explains. The renewal will prevent downtime and ensure officials continue using the software without interruptions and also have access to the latest features.