Collaborative Information Systems (Pty) Ltd, or CIS, was spawned early in 2000, out of a need to build customised software. As it turns out, a number of like-minded individuals who shared the same vision about what customers needed, got together and plotted how they could help. Our team has an extensive and appropriate blend of experience and education to cater for the complete software development solution from design to project managed delivery, and everything in between. Specifically speaking, this team has ample experience in the various fields within the logistics and supply chain industries. Since then, CIS have created a number of functional and cost effective software applications spanning many different industries.

It was clear from the outset that many functional gaps existed in the modern systems landscape. There were a host of good financial, inventory management and specific logistics solutions. Many of the medium enterprise level systems were not integrated with each other and typically were operated by companies that could not afford to invest large sums of money into IT operations to achieve this. Even top end financial systems working together with custom written modules, did not offer complete functional coverage and would need to be integrated with other third party applications to cater for specific requirements. Ultimately many of the operations compensated for the lack of integration by recapturing much of the information into the ‘next’ system in the process.

To provide a holistic system, such a system would have to freely share information and be able to communicate and integrate with a large variety of solutions and third party software applications. Clearly any logistics solution would have to be geared to offer any prospective business a value proposition. Technology for the sake of technology is a fool hardy approach. The Collaborative philosophy was created to offer business value within a ‘fitness for purpose’ approach and aim to achieve benefits for any user of that system. Such benefits would include:

• improvement of operational efficiencies and productivity,
• reduction of data capture,
• improved accuracy of information,
• eased overhead processing of administration tasks,
• maximised supply chain velocities,
• manage process and operational exceptions,
• reduced operational cycle times,
• proactive operational management,
• ease of use on the shop floor, reduce risk of error,
• full audit traceability and the supply of management information,
• among many more intangible benefits.

The new philosophy does not advocate the exclusive use of Collaborative created software modules and takes cognisance of existing investment in systems and infrastructure. This allows the Collaborative modules to compliment rather than compete with existing systems in order to offer a balanced combination of people, process and technology solutions being deployed. Simply put, this means that various Collaborative software modules can be configured to work as a ‘stand-alone’ operation, be fully integrated, or facilitate the integration with or between third party systems or hardware infrastructure. Individual system modules can be configured to meet specific operational requirements and offer tailor made solutions. Our chosen technologies are both suited to being hosted or to be run on premise.

The end-to-end approach will require that the origins of all transactions are traced and then proactively tracked to completion. The execution of all instructions and the effective conclusion of those intentions, is the cornerstone of the Collaborative approach.

Collaborative operates in Johannesburg, South Africa and service customers in the Southern African region.

Our philosophy, from the start, has been to create a number of re-useable applications which provide a common logical business thread, which are ultimately applicable to most, if not all industries. All of the design effort has centred on applying generally accepted practices to the complete business process.

We have for example, spent a lot of time and effort building modules geared towards the logistical process, including procurement management systems, courier systems, customs clearing, weight bridge software to name a few – with a view of providing a modular approach to the logistics process. Along the way, we have also carried out a number of successful integration projects into and out of ERP packages. These applications form a suite of products which support another principle close to our hearts, and that is the C to C model.

The C2C (Creation to Consumption) model, follows that ALL industries follow a common logical process no matter what the commodity is, that is, all industries receive commodities and assets into their system that are initiated on a formal order. These commodities, and assets, are stored or utilised one way or another. Commodities coming into or leaving the company may need to be weighed and inspected (weigh bridge and inspection modules). Commodities leaving the stores are either 1) destined to be modified through some form of manufacturing process and are drawn from stock on an official instruction OR 2) have been released on official sales orders. Commodities coming into or out of the system may need to be customs cleared in order to move to another customs area. Commodities moving into or out of an organisation need to be transported. This list of related applications is unlimited - this is where we have focused a lot of our efforts on—that is, to create many of these complementary applications to bridge the gaps.

Recent development efforts have evolved our approach into the harnessing of data stored in disparate systems, interpreting this data and creating mechanisms which expose and present these results in user friendly dashboard formats.

This web site aims to articulate our efforts so far, but obviously the proof of our products lies in the pudding — we like showing what our products can do in live demonstrations - and prefer that the products “talk for themselves” - we pride ourselves on providing easy to use and practical products. In cases where we are called upon to propose solutions, our strong analysis team will provide a complete and professional proposal, which will specifically outline a complete conceptual model of what is expected, so that there are no grey areas with regard to what our mutual deployment plans may be.