Significant strides have been made with the new Revenue Management System (RMS) which is anticipated to go live in eThekwini soon.

This is according to a report, on commendable progress presented to the Executive Committee this week.

The proposed new billing system reached an important milestone recently when the migration of data achieved the 100 percent target sought after. This included transferring millions of records from the old system to the new one.

The system aims to streamline the City’s revenue billing and will allow officials greater flexibility in terms of billings and detailing rendered services.

This updated system would make the City’s billing more accurate and efficient.

Leepy Shabangu, owner of the consultancy responsible for implementing the project, said in the presentation while there were issues with data initially they have been overcome.

A hybrid system

Shabangu said the next phase was conducting a parallel run which will start on 4 October 2015. This is the final stage before the system goes live.

“We must ensure what we are doing on the current system we can do on the new system and achieve the same result. By running the two systems parallel we can verify that the information is the same. We will have a report back once this is done.”

“Relying on one system is too risky in case something goes wrong. We have decided on a hybrid and will run the two systems in parallel and if they reconcile we can totally migrate.

He said the parallel programmes will be run from next month and if it is a success, they will cutover. If any red flags are raised during this period they will run the parallel run into the following month while addressing the issues, he said.