Brand-South Africa - Annual report 2015 - 2016

and south africa Annual Report 2015/2016
Information Technology
The global nature and impact of Brand South Africa’s business
necessitates impeccable Information Technology (IT) services
and governance. For this reason, the IT Division is governed
by the strict IT Governance Framework of the Public Service
Corporate Governance of Information and Communication
Technology Policy Framework. This framework informs Brand
South Africa’s Business Continuity Programme and Business
Continuity Management Strategy.
During the period under review, the IT Division continued to
ensure compliance with the above-mentioned framework by
proactively managing IT risks, controlling IT assets and applying
security and IT policies.
Even though information technology reports to Corporate
Services, the oversight function falls within the remit of the
Audit and Risk Committee. Reporting is done on a quarterly
basis. The purpose of quarterly reporting to address the
appropriateness and relevance of the IT infrastructure, monitor
and further the progress of major IT projects, information
security, the design and maintenance of disaster recovery.
On an annual basis, the IT systems are subjected to a detailed
annual external audit by the Auditor-General of South Africa
(AGSA), which are reported on to the Board. The entity has
started with the implementing of an integrated enterprise-wide
resource planning system (ERP). The rationale for the software
integration is to provide a single view of the organisation’s
information, thus improving its service offering to employees,
stakeholders and the Board by (1) providing an integrated
solution which will work with the current applications; (2)
reducing the number of stand-alone applications; and (3)
providing a single-sign-on functionality. Brand South Africa
currently has the following applications installed: (a) VIP
Premier; (b) Pastel; (c) Microsoft CRM; (d) Microsoft SharePoint;
and (e) SmartHR.
The organisation developed, implemented and tested an IT
Disaster Recovery Plan which is aimed at reducing the impact of
a major disruption on key business functions and processes. The
plan is based on risk and an understanding of potential business
impacts, and addresses requirements for resilience, alternative
processing and recovery capability of all critical IT services. It also
covers usage guidelines, roles and responsibilities, procedures,
communication processes, and the testing approach.
A backup and restore strategy exist to ensure that critical data
is backed-up, backups are stored off site, backup registers
exist, periodic restores of backups are performed and backup
logs are kept. A service provider was appointed to provide
the work area recovery and IT disaster recovery sites, which
are part of the updated Disaster Recovery Plan that will be
updated and implemented.
Legal
The Legal Division continues to ensure that Brand South
Africa’s business activities and practices are reviewed and
benchmarked on an ongoing basis to ensure compliance with
local and international legal and regulatory requirements.
Notable achievements during the past year include:
• Registration of the pay-off line, ‘Inspiring New Ways’, in
43 countries (71.6%) to ensure that Brand South Africa
owns the trademark in these countries and protects
its intellectual property. Efforts to register the payoff
line in the remainder of the identified countries is
ongoing. Registration of the pay-off line in Brazil, Malaysia,
Singapore and Thailand was declined by the relevant
authorities in those jurisdictions
• Monitoring the compliance checklist to ensure that the
entire business complies with all the applicable legal and
regulatory requirements. The organisation is currently at 98%
compliance with the relevant legal and regulatory prescripts
• Successfully resolving all potentially litigious disputes
with its service providers out of court, in favour of and
at no cost to the organisation.
Financial Management
For the first time after three years of reporting a deficit, the
entity has reported a surplus in its books, which is sufficient
to fund the accumulated prior year deficit. This was achieved
through a concerted effort from the management team
utilising the reprioritisation principles. Three main cost drivers
were reduced, namely retainer fees for brand agency; scope
reduction and alignment of media partnerships; and smaller
scale of research. The reprioritisation outcome did not have
an adverse effect on the execution of the annual planned
activities; instead, more synergies were sought, both internally
and externally, and achieved.
The current year’s surplus was not only sufficient to finance
the prior year’s accumulated deficit, but was committed
for contracts that were concluded in the last quarter, the
execution of which is planned for the first two quarters of
the next financial period ending March 2017. The details of
these activities are disclosed in detail under the ‘Commitments
Note’, in the Annual Financial Statements.
There were only two major deviations (more than R1 million
threshold) reported this year due to cancellation of a retainer
contract to ensure continuous services. The planned and
approved procurement plan was implemented and executed
successfully, with one deferment to the next financial period.
To improve and strengthen compliance in the organisation, the
Supply Chain Management Unit organised a training session
dealing with supply chain management (SCM) committees to
all internal key stakeholders. During the year under review,
the entity’s risk management processes were robust.
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