Sasol is an integrated energy company based in South Africa with operations in over 30 countries. As one of South Africa’s largest employers, Sasol runs various employee well-ness programs across all their business units.
When public vaccinations against Covid-19 became available in South Africa, Sasol urgently needed a system to support the end-to-end administration of staff vaccinations. The solution had to capture information digitally, communi-cate via SMS and offer easy data importing into South Africa’s Electronic Vaccination Database System (EVDS).
“You've been recognized in the IM Energy Business Town hall for an excellent work done for the Vaccination Program.” - Theodora Mzizi, IM SHE Product Manager (Sasol Energy)
First Digital’s Digital Workplace team specialises in low-code rapid application development using Power Platform.
THE APPROACH
Working closely with Sasol, the end-to-end administration process for vaccinations was agreed. After testing the feasibility of each technology, an appropriate component of Microsoft’s Cloud toolset was mapped to each part of the process:
By using Microsoft’s low-code development tools, such as Microsoft Forms and Power Apps, the user consent form and the vaccination admin interfaces was rapidly prototyped and built to meet the business requirements. The process is linked together and governed using Power Flow to ensure a consistent execution of each instance.
Data is centrally managed from all user interfaces and the process using Microsoft’s Dataverse common data storage. Two Power Platform premium connectors are used for SMS communication from the process, and to integrate into Sasol’s SAP based human resources data.
Having presented various technical options to Sasol, the above approach was selected. Sasol applied an Agile methodology to the project and supplied a SCRUM master to manage the engagement. The project underwent a formal user acceptance test (UAT) cycle with the assistance of First Digital staff. To speed up the project, champion user training was done as part of the UAT. The whole project was delivered in 4 weeks.
SUMMARY AND BENEFITS
First Digital and Sasol used Microsoft’s low-code tools to rapidly build an employee vaccination management system. The solution offered various benefits to Sasol including:
Gaining employee consent at the start of the process & generating Excel output for easy importation into the EVDS system
Manages the creation of appointment slots or controlled arrival and administration of vaccinations and follow-up vaccinations
First Technology Digital is a First Technology group company. We are a future enablement partner specialising in product development, digital transformation consulting and the design, development, and deployment of enterprise solutions to various international clients. We are a Microsoft Gold partner and a proudly South African company.