Greentree enables multi-national to slash admin costs and double growth
Sun Engineering (QLD) Pty Ltd has an ambitious international growth strategy which bucks global trends. To ensure this wasn’t constrained by an antiquated accounting system, the company installed a fully integrated high-performance business solution...
Sun Engineering has almost 800 staff, in Australia, Papua New Guinea, China and Dubai. It is involved in fabrication and construction for the mining, power, petrochemical and construction industries. Projects are large scale and complex involving heavy equipment and machinery, and highly skilled staff who carry out the work in remote places.
“When we sat down at board meetings and were presented with various reports, we could see straight away that the figures weren’t telling us the truth,” explains Michael Rodwell, business development manager.
In an attempt to connect the stand-alone accounting system to various financial and operational systems, a multitude of Excel spreadsheets had been created to bridge the functionality gap. This resulted in duplication of effort and generated a mountain of paperwork, as staff spent hours entering and re-entering data.
“The local Greentree business partner undertook a comprehensive analysis of our business and made constructive suggestions for streamlining critical business processes. This translated into a best-fit Greentree solution that we know will scale as required,” says Rodwell.
Decision-making confidence restored
With little confidence in the figures appearing in company reports, management decision-making had been stymied. The incumbent system had effectively stifled growth. However, Sun’s decision to choose Greentree has clearly paid off.
Integration and a single data-entry point have enabled a level of accuracy we’ve never had before, says Rodwell, “Greentree has restored managerial confidence in the reporting process. Directors can now take a strategic view of the business and make sound fiscal and operational decisions based on reliable information.”
The overall improvement in the quality and standard of the decision-making process has been outstanding, he says.
100% growth, zero admin increase and zero redundancies
In fact, the impact of a coherent decision-making process has been enormous. It has enabled the organisation to grow from a $30 million company to a $60 million company in a few short years. “This has been achieved without increasing administration costs and by transitioning data-entry staff into purchasing roles, without making anyone redundant,” says Rodwell.
Greentree’s extraordinary reporting capability, single-source data entry and integration have enabled workflow efficiencies we had previously only imagined were possible.
Paper wastage plummets 30 percent
The paper war going on in offices across Sun Engineering was largely the result of the contractual nature of the business. This created a propensity for staff to print out documents which simply could not be viewed on a screen or easily distributed electronically. The environmental downside of this was to grow the company’s carbon footprint.
Since every staff member can now view the same business data from anywhere within Greentree, paper wastage has plummeted by 30 percent. A change in printing behaviour will ensure the company’s carbon footprint will continue to shrink.
At the same time, Approvals & Alerts have transformed purchasing into ‘best practice’. “When a vehicle was required urgently on-site in China, the process for requisitioning a replacement was about as efficient as sending smoke signals,” says Rodwell. But Approvals and Alerts enforces a more disciplined approach to purchasing.
For example, if a replacement vehicle is required on-site in Papua New Guinea, but must be purchased in Australia and the authorising person is in Dubai, an alert pops-up on that person’s screen. The authority is sent electronically, without a single page of paper being printed, which is magical.”
“Approvals and Alerts have turned purchasing into a structured, secure, ‘best practice’ process that the whole organisation has absolute confidence in, says Rodwell.
Future growth
The consolidation Greentree has enabled bodes well for Sun’s ambitious growth strategy, which involves acquiring other companies in the future. The local implementation partner will continue to provide the critical systems’ knowledge required to suggest better ways of doing things, while Greentree the product will maintain confidence in the reporting tools required to support such strategic decision-making. The company is optimistic about the future at a time when others are struggling.
For more information
Graham Hill
1800 000 737
graham.hill@greentree.com
www.greentree.com
updated 9/10/15_ex
At a Glance
>Coherent management decision-making restored and improved to a never-before-seen level because of high reporting accuracy, resulting in such success company quickly doubled in size.
> This rapid growth also meant that no longer needed data-entry staff could be redeployed, so no redundancies.
> Approvals & Alerts have enforced a much more efficient ‘best practice’ approach to purchasing.
> Carbon footprint has shrunk as paper wastage has plummeted by 30 percent.
Further Reading
To read more about this solution provider visit their ERP online exhbit in the ERP Pavilion or their online CRM exhibit in the CRM Pavilion
