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For the third year in a row, an African company has scooped top honours at the SAP Quality Awards for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), highlighting the continent's leading role when it comes to qualitative and innovative SAP software implementation. SAP's Quality Awards recognizes the successful planning and implementations of SAP technology by customers who embrace SAP's 10 Quality Principles in such a manner that it results in real business transformation and value. Among others, customers are judged on their ability to achieve quick, low-cost implementations, effectively manage and execute implementations that are characterized by complex technical as well as business process requirements and provide significant business benefits to their organisation. Competition was fierce this year within the hotly-contested large enterprise category, with AngloGold Ashanti waving the African flag high by coming up tops in the category. The company achieved this by demonstrating excellent project management and execution, a strong focus on having IT and business work hand-in-hand, as well as the ability to effectively address the requirements of the business while minimizing complexity. Furthermore, the SAP AngloGold Ashanti partnership also showed a strong commitment to drive innovation, resulting in the firm securing top place ahead of impressive work from Swiss firm, Mondelez Europe and UK-based Asda Stores. Rajendra Dhaniraj, Quality Director for SAP Africa said that the AngloGold Ashanti implementation was a deserving win because aside from the superior project governance and organizational change management techniques applied, the project encompassed an ambitious SAP product scope including financials, human resources management and business intelligence to name a few, as well as SAP innovation cloud and mobility solutions with SAP Success Factors and Afaria delivered across multiple geographies. "AngloGold Ashanti is both pleased and proud to receive these SAP awards. For many people in the wider business, who put in place the aspects of Governance and Change Management that underpin this award, and for the Project Team especially, who put in such an enormous effort during the implementation, this is a wonderful validation of their work. AngloGold Ashanti thanks SAP for the opportunity to participate in this process," said Andrew Crocker, Senior Vice-President IT Shared Services, AngloGold Ashanti Pfungwa Serima, CEO of SAP Africa put Africa's impressive achievements into perspective by commenting that, "African businesses have triumphed for the third consecutive year in the large enterprise category of the Quality Awards EMEA. Africa was also recognized in 2012 for innovation in the field of SAP software implementation. This serves to illustrate the leading role that SAP Africa is playing in terms of driving the innovation and qualitative agenda on the continent and beyond its borders."