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Are you ready to THROW OUT your Financial Software?
In a commercial environment where tradespeople and equipment hire are at a premium, G&S Engineering can allocate resources up to six weeks ahead of its competition thanks to an advanced Enterprise Resource Management solution from Eclipse Computing (Australia). The move is expected to save a conservative $300,000 a year for G&S Engineering, which is based in Mackay, Queensland, and provides engineering services and asset management to the resource and construction industries in Australia and South East Asia. Since it was established in 1995 G&S Engineering had been relying on an in-house system, MIS, which according to MIS Project Manager Mr Brett Pattemore, had met the company’s ERP needs on a task to task basis but did not provide for effective forecasting and analysis. G&S Engineering commenced its search for a new business solution in May 2002 and after an exhaustive evaluation process with approximately 40 applications, the company selected Microsoft® Business Solutions–Axapta® and Eclipse as their supplier, with the implementation commencing in March 2003. Microsoft Axapta is designed to support business operations quickly and cost-effectively and includes integrated functionality across finance, supply chain management, customer relationship management (CRM) and business analytics. Mr Pattemore said Microsoft Axapta would provide an overarching system to tie together the individual functionality previously available in MIS. “We are replicating the MIS functionality within Axapta, hence our choice of Axapta because it’s the only product with a reasonable development environment within the product so we can write applications as if they stand alone, but they actually tie in with the rest of the broad functionality available in Axapta,” Mr Pattemore said. “MIS had done a fantastic job handling individual tasks. The limitation was in getting visibility of all our systems in one unit and that is what Axapta gives us.” This visibility gives G&S Engineering immense foresight in scheduling its multiple simultaneous jobs and allocating staff ranging in size from 350 to 500 people. “We’re just entering a busy period where there is strong demand on tradesmen – everyone is chasing them and sourcing equipment to complete their projects,” Mr Pattemore said. “With this new system we have the visibility to be first in with resources because we know exactly what we will need from very early in the piece which gives us four to six weeks jump on our opposition. “We’re able to predict, from right back at the estimating stage, what we’ve potentially got coming up and what we’ll require for it. We can make good business decisions on whether to tender for work and we can ramp up our resources to make sure we’ve got the crews ready to go.” This foresight also aided G&S Engineering in the most efficient allocation of its existing resources and notice of shortfalls to be filled with hired equipment. “We have multiple work crews on sites with up to 100 members in each crew and they also need to take all their equipment with them to each job site,” Mr Pattemore said. “Because we’ve got multiple jobs that are mobilising and demobilising at different times, Microsoft Axapta allows us to keep track of and schedule in what equipment is available at what times to make best use of our internal equipment. “When we have a shortfall in our own equipment we need to hire it externally so if we can make the best possible use of our internal equipment we can make sure jobs are adequately resourced without spending any extra money which will save us at least $300,000 a year. “Our barcode scanners allow us to check our equipment in and out quickly and efficiently so they can go from one job to the next and speed up the whole supply and logistics phase.” An added advantage for G&S is the ability to scrutinise progress on each project more closely with Microsoft Axapta. “We can now see how our projects are running on a daily basis in terms of labour and equipment costs which allows us to better manage our projects and make sure they stay on time and are delivered at the original quoted price,” Mr Pattemore said. “Previously we’ve had to wait a week or more for accurate figures to be available. On a four week project that meant it could be a quarter of the way through before we were seeing real figures.” G&S Engineering has gone live with financials in Microsoft Axapta and is close to completing the Payroll implementation. The next stages are HR then Supply and Logistics which Mr Pattemore said were expected to be in by the end of the year. G&S Engineering is using an innovative implementation methodology by deploying COM Objects in Microsoft Axapta to migrate from MIS to the new application, effectively running both solutions simultaneously. “Instead of going for a big bang approach we’re progressively taking functionality out of MIS and temporarily integrating it into Axapta so that we’re running the two systems together and we’ll gradually cut over from one to the other,” Mr Pattemore said. “The whole change process has been kept to an absolute minimum so as far as the end users are concerned it’s not an abrupt change. It takes a lot longer to implement the system this way but it will ultimately be a lot more robust and we’ll have fewer problems in change management.” Using COM Objects in Microsoft Axapta to interface with the existing MIS system, G&S Engineering has been able to apply the business logic contained in Microsoft Axapta to the external system. “It makes it very easy to integrate with third party products,” Mr Pattemore said. “That has allowed us to use our current MIS and Axapta at the same point reasonably easily. As an example, we can raise a purchase order in MIS and it comes across into Axapta automatically.” Through its evaluation process G&S Engineering found Microsoft Axapta was the best match out of the box for its processes and formed a positive rapport with Eclipse from the outset. “We wanted the best system to provide fundamental business functionality and also allow us the flexibility to design functions we needed that didn't come as standard,” Mr Pattemore said. “An equally important part of our evaluation process was selecting the right implementation partner. It’s all well and good to have a system that can do it all but unless your partner understands what you’re trying to achieve and is in tune with your business processes, you’re no better off.” Eclipse’s implementation team has worked in collaboration with G&S Engineering’s people to complete the project. “It was a priority for us to have Eclipse’s consultants and programmers work with our internal team on different parts of the project so that by the end of the project there is enough knowledge in our internal team to be able to handle the maintenance and on-going development,” Mr Pattemore said. G&S Engineering expects to quickly realise return on their investment and looks forward to the substantial advantage the Microsoft Axapta project will provide.
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