Pacifica streamlines with Greentree

The business situation

New Zealand’s distance from its overseas markets and the prohibitive cost of airfreight combine to make the shipping industry highly competitive, and as Ashwin Mani, Financial Controller at Pacifica Shipping in Christchurch, explains, it’s also very complicated.

Pacifica’s faithful but outmoded system “couldn’t provide the broad deep and flexible reporting management needed to keep the business at the top of its game as industry leaders”, says Ashwin. He also says that although they could have purchased a system from Singapore, Greentree’s international coverage meant Pacifica could choose a local Greentree partner with the certainty and reassurance of locally provided support. The strategic decision was made to purchase Greentree which, as far as Ashwin could see, provided the sophisticated reporting Pacifica needed to maintain its competitive position.

Flexibility to create and maintain own KPI reports – big plus

Before purchasing Greentree, Pacifica utilised the services of outside consultants to create KPI reports which mostly worked, but this was an expensive necessity and did not provide the level of analysis and control Ashwin was looking for. The flexibility to utilise Excel for smarter data extraction and analysis, coupled with Greentree’s easy user-driven environment, have enabled Ashwin to create its own reports in-house, which has been a “big plus”.

Open Database Connectivity provides easy interface to 3rd party systems and data

Ashwin explains that Greentree’s reporting strength is complemented by the ability to connect to other databases, and these were two key drivers in the decision to purchase it. Essentially, this means data compatibility is a non-issue for Pacifica, and the business can comprehensively extract all relevant data from all systems in order to get a clear and accurate view of the business. There’s no need to manually extract, manipulate and re-key data into other systems.

Pacifica uses a third party in-house transport system simply because it meets the business’s needs, and they naturally wanted to avoid replacing it if at all possible. Greentree’s Open Database Connectivity meant they weren’t ‘held hostage’ by a requirement to purchase a module they didn’t need to replace, and this was another strong point for choosing Greentree over competing offerings. Ashwin is very pleased about the fact that both systems work really well together and says “the future is looking good with both systems”.

Easy implementation with little, if any, disruption to business continuity

Having several new systems implementation ‘tours’ under his belt, Ashwin was very aware of what was required and what could potentially go wrong, which is why it was decided the 1st of April was the best time to ‘go-live’. Ashwin explains that once the financial year had officially rolled over, there was very little data in the system with which anything could go wrong. This meant that staff could be given more or less a free rein without the fear of mucking things up or breaking anything, and Ashwin says this worked really well. Ashwin spoke very highly of the support and expertise provided by the Greentree partner, who implemented the system for them with little, if any, disruption to business continuity.

Inter-company reporting in the click of a button v. ½ a day

Pacifica Transport Group is an integrated logistics company with many divisions, offering a complete transport solution. This means that the business handles a variety of transport scenarios, which can be as straightforward as a local delivery, to a more complex situation requiring the transportation of goods from one end of the country to another.

Pacifica can also ship to the manufacturer or directly to the end-user, and can include warehousing and distribution if required. A number of different companies within the group contribute services and resources to provide the end-to-end solution to customers, and this creates a number of cross-company transactions which must be accounted for. Inter-company reporting capability was another key factor in Pacifica’s decision to implement Greentree.

Greentree’s consolidation capability has reduced the amount of time involved in preparing inter-company reports from a half-day to “the click of a button”, Ashwin says. This has made his life easier, since he now spends a fraction of his time ensuring that Pacifica accurately meets its external and internal accounting compliance requirements.

Since going live a few months ago, Ashwin now has clear evidence that Greentree provides Pacifica management with high visibility of the business as it happens, along with flexible and comprehensive reporting to better inform the decision-making process.