The Situation
Efficiency is a word uppermost in the mind of the Electricity Commission. Established in 2003 as the Crown entity charged with overseeing the regulation and operation of the electricity industry, their business landscape is one of regulation, environmental sustainability and encouraging energy efficiency throughout New Zealand. Yet it was in their business accounting environment where several inefficiencies lay.
The Electricity Commission had utilised the finance system running within the Ministry of Economic Development. A switch-off date loomed for the existing Masterpiece platform, and the Electricity Commission wanted to gain independence over their financial systems.
The Pain
The Electricity Commission was constrained by a shared financial platform operating off-site and out of their control. More flexible and dynamic accounting tools were a priority.
Making the switch to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 4 SP3.
Intergen was selected after a rigorous tendering process. As Microsoft gold accredited partners, they were able to demonstrate in-depth knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 4 capabilities. “Intergen was able to convince me that Dynamics NAV 4 had the flexibility to handle the different dimensions we use to manage our financial reporting requirements. They understood the capabilities of the product and translated that into the nuts and bolts of how we work, giving me confidence that they really understood our business,” says Ruth Murphy.
Ruth Murphy cites three key factors behind their decision to go with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 4.
“We were tired of being constrained by limited access to data and inflexible reporting tools. Dynamics NAV offered us a truly multidimensional approach, allowing us to cut and dice information from different angles. We could easily analyse and report on the business by cost centre, project, output and so on.”
“The ability to cut and paste or export data to Excel was also an important consideration, so the Microsoft compatibility was something we rated highly.”
“We needed flexibility for our managers to access financial information and approve expenditure themselves and they can now manage their own cost centres more effectively.”
Delivered to deadline.
A go-live date was proposed in advance of the actual Masterpiece switch-off day.
Ruth Murphy comments positively on Intergen’s commitment to meeting the project deadline, which was tightly timed to occur just prior to their financial year end. “Intergen was able to tackle some pretty challenging issues. One of the most complex was the decision to import the entire transaction history, rather than just totals, to the new platform. This was important, because as a relatively young organisation we wanted to retain all the information we had accumulated to this point. The data manipulation was a huge task, but the team at Intergen put in long hours to make it happen.”
Business as usual?
“More like a quantum leap from where we were.”
Ruth Murphy comments “There are efficiencies that you can measure in terms of days saved, for example NAV enables us to reverse a journal and make a change, something that now takes minutes, not days.”
“Automated invoice approval is another clear gain. A manager can now approve an invoice online, whereas before it was a case of leaving a paper file on their desk and waiting for it to be actioned. It’s saving us time and that’s vital across all our accounting activities. All ties to the existing Ministry of Economic Development platform have been cut.”
The Gain
The before and after is like turning on an energy efficient light bulb – a clearer view of all accounting and reporting activity combined with measurable savings in the time committed to accounting tasks.