CiMS formalises the process of determining needs in a municipal area and applying capital to alleviate the most important aspects economically, technically and politically. It is a software solution that incorporates web technology to assist municipalities with defining community needs, prioritising them and applying capital.

CiMS is built around the South African municipal process that follows the candidate project life-cycle from the conceptualisation point through prioritisation and budget fitting, until implementation is complete. Various external factors play a part in capital project planning, such as municipal strategies, long term plans and community needs. CiMS assists the decision maker with taking all of this into account. This formal decision making process accelerates growth and service delivery to ensure transparency and improves reporting.

CIMS is a holistic solution – it formalises the complete lifecycle of all your capital projects and assists you with each of these four lifecycle phases:

• Capturing Candidate Projects.
• Prioritising Candidate Projects.
• Budget Fitting.
• Project Implementation Tracking.

Information in each of the phases is represented spatially in a Geographic Information System (GIS) – This enables your municipality to visually conceptualise areas of need, areas of capital spending and the location of your assets.

Priority models are used to determine which needs should be addressed first, and which projects are the most important and must receive funding. These priority models are adapted to best serve your municipality’s economical and political agendas – ensuring that you effectively improve the quality of life for your people.

Capturing Candidate Projects

• The CIMS GIS solution will enable the municipality to see the geographical location of projects, the areas affected by each project and will see the capital requirements per ward/ geographical region.
• Candidate projects can span multiple years and enable future planning in line with IDP requirements.
• With CIMS, candidate projects are formalised & centralised; everybody involved has access to the data; everybody understands the data because it is in the same format for each project.

Prioritising Candidate Projects

• The prioritisation model makes use of numerical formulas; question-and-answer sets per region/division/global and with the CIMS GIS solution, priority can be set per geographical region.
• Your municipality can set up different models for different divisions – prioritise for instance, housing projects, on a different model than electricity projects.
• CIMS caters for multiple prioritisation models that can be used per region, per division or globally. You can compare the budgets for different models and strategies.

Budget Fitting

• Budget fitting is automated and fast – it takes only seconds. Multiple runs can be done with different prioritisation models and results can be compared to find an optimum budget that would best suit every stakeholders needs.
• The CIMS GIS solution is used to review budget results in a spatial format. You can instantly see, on a geographical map, needs vs. capital spending per area or region.
• You will be able to perform a global budget fit and a budget fit per division. This will ensure that funding is distributed fairly between divisions and will provide you with tangible reasons for the results and the decisions that led to the results.

Project Implementation Tracking

• CIMS keeps track of your project management information in line with the MIG requirements, making feedback and reporting on cashflow and project progress fast and easy.
• CIMS incorporates an easy-to-use high level project management module that deals primarily with activity progress and cashflow. You can easily compare planned vs. actual project progress and cashflow per project, per region or per division.
• CIMS keeps a detailed vendor list and thus makes it easy to link vendors to active projects. This simplifies tracking of payments.

• CIMS make reporting fast and easy. It has a number of built-in default monthly/quarterly/annual reports for MIG and DORA.
• The reports will assist your municipality in the compilation and updating of your IDP document.
• Reports are built into CIMS in the format specified by your municipality – in a format that you are used to, making reporting municipality-friendly and familiar.