BigAir takes off with smooth new ERP system

BigAir began life as a small business of just four people working out of a pocket office in Sydney’s Surry Hills. Since then, the wireless communications company’s accounting requirements have grown hugely...

Big Air has grown tremendously since its early days, to the point where it listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2006, raising $A7.5 million in capital. The wireless communications and ISP (internet service provider) now has fixed wireless base stations in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, the Gold Coast and Adelaide, and expansion plans for other Australian cities.

Revenue is subscription-based, with organisations subscribing to the network services and infrastructure provided by BigAir.

The company started life using MYOB, but found the accounting suite was eventually unable to meet the demands of the growing business, particularly when it came to consolidating monthly financial statements and reporting. Big Air also needed a better fixed-asset management module that could help it help track, and financially manage, key assets and infrastructure.

Matt Carter, BigAir’s financial controller says, “Because we didn’t have a fixed asset module that could handle consolidations we had to do a manual consolidation of our financial statements across the two companies in the group. It would take three weeks at the end of every month, using Excel spreadsheets, to consolidate the group.”

Solving a growing problem
To address its needs, BigAir chose Sage’s Accpac ERP solution, which includes the following modules:

• General Ledger
• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable – they use a stand-alone debtors and billing system called Smile, but enter monthly movements into Accpac AR.
• Purchase Orders
• Inter-Entity
• Norming Asset Manager

The company uses a standalone debtors and billing system, called Smile, but enters monthly movements into Accpac’s AR.

An important element in the success of the new system was selecting a technology partner that had considerable experience and expertise in the solution, and understood the issues BigAir needed to address. It also wanted an implementer with an extensive customer base. After an initial search, it eventually chose Enabling as technology partner for the implementation project.

“Enabling has been very responsive to our issues and quick in solving any problems that have emerged,” says Carter.

“They took to a lot of time and effort to ensure the system was set up properly, particularly in the crucial area of importing the data from MYOB. Obviously, if you set up everything correctly in the first place, then it makes it much easier and smoother to move forward.”

After bedding down the system, and becoming familiar with it, BigAir’s accounting department has been steadily working through the new features that Sage offers to explore ways of getting even better use out of the new system.

Big benefits
It used to take up to three weeks to consolidate its financial statements across two companies, now BigAir’s finance team can do this in a week.

As well as reducing the administrative burden on the accounts department, the other big benefit is in having timely information about the financial performance of the company available. All information about equipment, infrastructure and fixed assets is now stored in one place.

As a result of its smooth new system, BigAir will be able to reduce expenses and improve equipment maintenance. It can reduce new and unnecessary equipment purchases, as well as more accurately calculate taxes, based on depreciation schedules.

“Compared with other accounting packages Accpac stacks up quite well,” says Carter.

It’s fast, reliable and very suitable for organisations our size. We look forward to getting even greater utility out of the solution in the future, where the very practical advice of Enabling will be of tremendous assistance.”





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