Headquartered in Wellington, with 10 offices in Australia, Leap Australasia (formerly Hepworth New Zealand) manufactures and distributes market leading piping systems for plumbing and civil applications.

Established in 1989, Hepworth was the first to break into the Australian plumbing market - a market firmly held by copper based products - with a polybutylene plumbing system.

They were able to do this by innovative development to achieve compliance with rigorous Australian standards. In doing so they gained a market advantage of around five years on their competitors - and the company’s ground breaking product range has been used in a number of high profile projects, including the Melbourne Crown Casino and the Endeavour replica sailing ship.

“Comparing Greentree to other Tier 2 ERP solutions, we found it offered excellent functionality, strong thin client capability for remote offi ces - and used industry standard Microsoft Excel for financial reporting and analysis.”

Hepworth had used their previous accounting software, CBA from Greentree International for ten years when their UK parent company installed a Tier 1 fi nancial product. The Tier 1 system was unfortunately difficult to maintain due to being non-Windows based and Hepworth accounts staff found its modules cumbersome and diffi cult to learn. The system also didn’t eff ectively support remote data entry, a key requirement for the company’s Australian offi ces. In addition, as the hardware platform required to maintain the system was costly, Hepworth was forced to abandon their remote site access strategy and deploy multiple servers.

Three years on, Managing Director Jay Wester purchased Hepworth from its UK based parent. He quickly abandoned the Tier 1 product and went in search of a fl exible solution that would better suit his company’s remote offi ce strategy - as well as being easy and cost eff ective to support. Jay found Greentree, and when compared to other Tier 2 ERP solutions he found it off ered excellent functionality, strong thin client capability for remote offi ces - and used industry standard Microsoft Excel for fi nancial reporting and analysis. The company has recently undergone a further name change, now sitting under the umbrella of Leap Australasia.

To support the product, Jay contacted a Wellington based Greentree Business Partner and found them not only knowledgeable but flexible and supportive when working with him to analyse his requirements. Once Greentree was chosen, the Greentree Business Partner had just six weeks to implement both software and hardware and within this time frame they achieved what was needed, including staff training at all locations. Jay admits he was somewhat taken aback when things came in on deadline. “To be honest six weeks is an extremely short time to implement a changeover,” he says. “But really we had no problems at all. I was extremely surprised as I thought it could easily stretch out for three months – but no, they did it in six weeks just as they said they would.”

“Pivot tables connected with Greentree are an excellent way of analysing information and for the first time in my 20 years of accounting I’ve seen the sales figure on the sales analysis report equals what’s on the general ledger report. That’s something I’ve never seen happen before.”

According to Jay, the key attributes of success after the implementation have been Greentree's reliability, support for remote access from Australian offices (from Perth to Darwin and North Queensland), and its ease of use. "Because Greentree uses a Windows driven menu our store persons find it really simple to use,” Jay continues, “The setup of the screen can be customised for each individual storeman. They can change the icons they want to see, the size of the columns - and even the position of the columns. After that they just save their personal settings and that’s the screen that greets them every time they log in. To top it off I can access the system from wherever I am."

Perhaps the greatest leap ahead, says Jay, is Greentree’s management reporting. “We’re now using the pivot table and charting capabilities to analyse our sales and profitability effectively,” he says. “This approach to intelligent reporting allows us to see more and in a different light. For example you can choose which product category you want to see and which customer you want to see and the system will only display that information.” With 24 users, Jay says these features were an added bonus he hadn't thought of. “Pivot tables connected with Greentree are an excellent way of analysing information and for the first time in my 20 years of accounting I’ve seen the sales figure on the sales analysis report equals what's on the general ledger report. That’s something I’ve never seen happen before.”

After a cost analysis following the attempted theft of their previous server, Leap has opted to have their system hosted at the Greentree Business Partner’s secure data centre. “A guy had broken in and was running down the road with our server under his arm when the security company caught him,” says Jay. “We didn’t lose any information, but it became crystal clear to us then just how valuable that data was.” Off site hosting provides a number of benefits, he says, including the piece of mind of knowing their equipment and data is secure from theft and is backed up without the need for specialist IT staff on the Leap payroll. Furthermore, Leap requires a 24x7 support service, which the Greentree Business Partner is able to deliver, as the company must allow for the five hour time difference between offices in Wellington and Perth.

Commenting on the future direction of the company, Jay says he will be adopting more Greentree modules. "We plan to add the WebStore suite to provide internet ordering capabilities for customers in the very near future," he says. As many of Leap’s customers are large this will also allow them to completely automate the processing of their purchase orders, resulting in packing slips being printed in the warehouse automatically – and a reduction in manual handling. Leap is also considering the addition of the Greentree customer relationship management suite to enhance their sales and marketing capabilities.

About Leap Australasia

Headquartered in Wellington, with 10 offices in Australia, Leap Australasia is a leading supplier of quality piping solutions for residential, industrial, and civil applications. Their products include a range of innovative plumbing and civil products. Some well-known projects undertaken to date include the Melbourne Crown Casino and the Endeavour Replica sailing ship.

For more information visit www.leapltd.co.nz