The competitive pressures and demands of 21st century business practices had created a mismatch with this shipping company’s 20th century technology. Looking to avoid any potential disasters management made the proactive decision to implement Greentree with little, if any, disruption to business continuity.

When the vertical market systems offered to the shipping industry couldn’t match the flexibility of Greentree’s Excel reporting and integration, the decision to migrate from CBA to Greentree was “fundamental” says Ashwin Mani, Financial Controller at Pacifica Transport.

The business situation

Pacifica Transport Group pioneered inter-modal transportation in order to offer more flexible solutions to its customers. The incumbent CBA 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. The other option was an offshore-based system designed for the shipping industry but he says “we weren’t comfortable with distance support and the system didn’t integrate to our financial systems and again, Greentree’s reporting capability was simply superior.”

Management were satisfied that Greentree could provide the functionality, reporting and integration required to support the complex requirements of the business but what about business continuity.

Migrating from CBA to Greentree: Critical Success Factors

With the benefit of lessons learned from previous systems implementations, Ashwin explains the other three key factors in the successful migration from CBA to Greentree. The first factor was that support for CBA was provided by the local Greentree partner so expertise and support for Greentree was close at hand. Pacifica could effectively leverage the Greentree partner’s knowledge about both products within the context of an existing understanding of the Pacifica business model and data.

The second factor was the decision to work with both systems in the two months prior to go-live to ensure that the data and outputs in each system were a match. This was a prudent decision since it increased the odds of a smooth and successful transition from CBA to Greentree with no surprises.

The third factor was the decision to go live on the 1st of April. Ashwin explains that once the financial year had officially rolledover on 31st March, there was very little data in the system that anything could go wrong with. This meant that staff could be given more or less a free reign without the fear of mucking things up or breaking anything and Ashwin says this worked really well.

Ashwin is certain, that these key factors combined to create a highly successful migration from CBA to Greentree, with little, if any, disruption to business continuity.

“Greentree enabled connection between the transport and financial systems with superior reporting capabilities from Excel. Add to this, the comfort of expertise and support from a local Greentree partner and we had some compelling reasons to migrate from CBA to Greentree. That decision was sound and the migration seamless.”

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 their 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 important factors in the buy decision. 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 or re-key data.

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 halfday 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, 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.

About Pacifica Transport Group

Pacifica Transport Group is owned by Skeggs Group and is the leading NZ owned and operated provider of coastal shipping and supporting land transport services. Pacifica’s domestic shipping network links nine ports and connects with land transport distribution and storage facilities. Pacifica pioneered inter-model transport links that provide seamless and cost-effective answers to consigning, handling and consolidating freight.

With over 150 highly trained and professional people working on ships and docksides, and in trucks, warehouses and cool stores around New Zealand they are well placed to meet the transport needs of local, national and multi-national producers and manufacturers, as well as international shipping companies providing import and export connections.

For more information visit: www.pacship.co.nz