A simple, single solution
Marnong Estate, named after the aboriginal yam daisy, is a winery, accommodation, conference and wedding facility located 35 minutes from Melbourne’s CBD. Ever-growing with multiple facilities catering to diverse events and dining, the operation recently selected MYOB Advanced as it’s management solution. It’s delivered organisation-wide benefits.

Double handling, no single view
With its growing size and complexity, Marnong Estate was making do with disparate systems for separate parts of its business – Ezy Wines for wine manufacture and Sage CRE – Construction & Real Estate, for example. While each system suited its purpose, the lack of integration required double handling and offered very little overarching organisational oversight.

Marnong Estate General Manager Gerald Ackroyd explains that this was affecting every part of the business. “It doesn’t give you quick easy answers – you can’t see trends. At a micro level you’re transferring information across – you’re doing a lot of double tasking just to get the same result.”

As Marnong Estate grew, Ackroyd knew this limitation would become a real liability.

Managing an organisational structure “on steroids”

What Marnong Estate needed, explains Ackroyd, was something cloud-based that could operate all the separate entities, but still be “integrated back into an umbrella view.”

When Ackroyd went looking for solutions, what struck him about MYOB Advanced was its capacity to grow alongside Marnong Estate. “I’ve used many systems,” he explains. “But what Advanced offers is scalability.”

While Ackroyd could see Advanced would deal with the ever-expanding business’s data needs, it would also scale in terms of complexity. “Other companies start with five entities, maximum, and they’ve got the same chart of accounts so that’s not a difficult scenario.

We’re doing all that on steroids, plus each company is set up with sub-accounts used as departmental accounts. MYOB Advanced itself provides answers to all of it.”

Ackroyd says Advanced is “just as powerful as any other ERP system” but offers more advantages: “It offers flexibility on a greater scale and provides the tools we need to get the business done. And the licensing isn’t out of reach – it’s made things affordable.”

“It’s just as powerful as any other ERP system but offers flexibility on a greater scale, provides tools to get the business done and the licensing isn’t out of reach – it’s made things affordable.”

Big efficiency gains and total picture
More than anything, implementing MYOB Advanced has created a pathway of future growth for Marnong Estate.

Customised reporting collates detailed financial information from their multiple companies – a task that used to be done manually. With these repetitive tasks now mostly automated, Ackroyd says he’s seen an immediate difference in the day-to-day lives of staff.

“It’s made daily tasks more efficient – we’ve increased the capability of the end user, and that suddenly opens up more opportunities.”

Advanced offers the “clean” solution he was looking for, saying it “completes the circle” by allowing each entity to be individually managed, in their own general ledgers and in multiple currencies.

“But it all comes through in the overarching view,” he adds. “That gives us transparency all the way to the end user.”

Like with any big change, Marnong staff needed time to adjust, but found the system “simple.”

“Once people were using it, the help-tools, the support and everything else has been magnificent.”

Marnong Estate is looking forward to implementing more integrations, to feed more data into MYOB Advanced. Integration with their property management system, for example, will deliver seamless data and fewer errors. Ackroyd sees that as ultimately delivering even more efficiency gains.

“It will allow us to streamline our office-based staff to do multi-company management,” he says.

“Once the data’s all in MYOB Advanced, it has the full capability of giving me any level of detail that I want. The opportunity to set up custom reporting will provide the majority of that,” says Ackroyd. “It will mean we can get an all-encompassing report by just pressing a button.”

“It completes the circle. It allows each entity to be individually managed, but it all comes through in the overarching view. That gives us transparency all the way to the end user.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB

A national icon, the Old Parliament House building is home to the Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD). Given a new lease on life in 2009, the building underwent an overhaul to become a contemporary museum where visitors can come and discover the history of Australia’s democracy. By exploring the past and present political landscape, the Museum’s vision is to provide educational public programs that celebrate the success of Australia’s democracy.

Slow, non-intuitive system
“We are a Corporate Commonwealth Entity – we’re owned by the government but we’re required to become more self-supporting by generating our own revenue,” explains MoAD’s Acting CFO, Nick Hetherington.

MoAD faced a variety of management challenges due to a growing number and range of visitor experiences. Its legacy finance system was slow and cumbersome, requiring lengthy training for new staff to be able to use it.

“We knew we needed something more intuitive and user-friendly,” Nick says. “Our finance staff were spending too much time handling requests for information from various departments. There was also a lot of duplication and manual form-filling; one person would put information into the system and then another would have to check it for errors.”

“Using a cloud solution ensures we have a single source of truth, saving time and reducing data errors.”

MoAD generates revenue from fees paid by visitors, school and tour operators. There can be more than half a dozen school tours each day, and each one generates an invoice that has to be processed. All the cash received by the reception desk and the retail souvenir store also has to be entered and reconciled. New permanent and temporary exhibitions require budgeting, but lack of live data made tracking difficult.

As well as needing a cleaner, simpler way of managing its accounts, MoAD wanted better reporting capabilities and for its staff to access information for themselves. The search began for a replacement system.

Solution Flexible, cloud-based SaaS
“At the end of the day our needs are pretty basic, so we were looking for something that wasn’t too complicated with functions that we’d never use, which would just have made our task more difficult,” says Nick. “Some of the packages didn’t offer enough efficiency in work flow – they were either too small or too big for our needs.”

Government agencies are also required to consider cloud-based systems as a cost-saving measure. With MYOB Advanced, the risk in storage and recovery is low, as the data is hosted in Australia.

“We liked its functionality, its simple user interface, and its flexibility,” Nick says. “Using a cloud solution ensures we have a single source of truth, which gives users a central repository for all information saving time and reducing data errors. Everyone is working on the same live database.”

“Without Advanced we would be doing the same old things the same old way.”

MoAD and the MYOB Partner’s consultants ensured a smooth implementation and data transfer process, working together in generating new ideas to MoAD on how to operate its finances more efficiently. “The importance in getting the data transfer right was one of our big focuses and my team worked hard with the MYOB Partner in reconciling and ensuring the data transferred was accurate and complete,” Nick says.

Implementing Advanced enabled MoAD to reassess and improve its work processes.

“Without Advanced we would be doing the same old things the same old way,” Nick says. “In the future we need to be more efficient; we need to streamline processes, which wouldn’t have been possible unless we made the decision to move to a new platform. Now we can bring up live data so we can get straight into the interactions and the analysis of the financial data for the specific questions that people are asking.

“We’re also very confident in the future because we know Advanced can integrate with third party solutions.”

Paperwork slashed, better oversight
MYOB Advanced has transformed MoAD’s financial management.

“We’ve been able to easily, very flexibly, set up a range of new accounts that gives us a whole new level of detail that we didn’t have before,” Nick says. “Advanced is flexible because it lets us go to the level of detail that we need to go, whether it’s in how someone raises an invoice or how we report out of the system.”

Advanced has removed a significant amount of manual data entry by automating purchase orders, AP payments and AR requests. Paperwork coming into the Finance department has been cut by up to 75 percent. MoAD’s finance staff have been freed up from handling data requests, as users of the MYOB system can now go in and extract their own data. While they now have more time for revenue-generating work, the finance team still has access control, to maintain the integrity of the system’s information.

“We have control over what people can and can’t do in MYOB; we can set screen or button-based security,” says Nick. “We’ve been able to give very specific functionality, where in other systems security is very broad or tied down – here we can open it up just enough so people can do the things we want them to do.

“The best thing is that Finance now has oversight of the approval process for invoices; we used to need a separate spreadsheet to track and follow up a person or document to get it signed – now MYOB tracks it all.

“We can spend more time in the quality assurance of the financial data that’s going into the finance system, we can then unlock the secrets of the analysis of that data and provide it back to our cost centre managers.”

For Nick, one of the greatest benefits delivered by MYOB Advanced is its reporting capabilities. “Under the old system, any change for a report had to be done by one of our consultants and they would usually have to come on site to do it, so it would take a long time. Now with the MYOB Report Writer we can customise reports very quickly and easily, and get them to the people who need to see them a lot faster.

“Advanced makes my reporting better because I can tailor my reports for the stakeholders I need to report to. Whether it’s our executive or our board, or our cost centre managers, I’m able to get to the level of detail that I need for the decisions that I know that they need to make.”

Where users previously had the habit of storing data on their own computer, MYOB has become the central data repository. Everyone knows where their data is stored, and so MoAD has an audited record for the future.

To track its capital works programme, MoAD uses Advanced’s Project Tasks module. The task of budgeting and monitoring its exhibition projects has also been streamlined.

“The good thing about MYOB budgeting is it’s very flexible and easy to make adjustments,” says Nick, “so as exhibition time gets closer, the nature of it will change and so the internal budgets need to be adjusted on the fly. It’s good having a platform that allows us to make those adjustments easily.”

MYOB Advanced not only tracks costs against the General Ledger; it also monitors purchase orders so users can get a live snapshot of their project budgets. Income streams from visitor fees, tours, rents from leasing parts of the building, and government grants, are all visible separately. Advanced’s ease of integration with other systems has enabled the introduction of a POS system in the retail shop, and data from that system is easily uploaded into MYOB on a daily basis.

Exhibitions are listed as assets with all their various components, from static displays to audio-visual presentations, and MoAD’s growing collection of heritage items can accurately reconciled to the Curators catalogue system.

“MYOB Advanced has opened up transparency throughout our organisation.”

“The good thing here about Advanced is the tracking of transactions against assets; you can actually see in an asset what AP went towards the creation of that asset, so there’s definitely a lot more transparency from the asset module back to the source modules where assets have come from, which is important for complicated heritage assets, which have an indefinite life and can be made up of many sub-components.”

Nick himself finds Advanced’s cloud access especially convenient. “It creates a flexible working environment where you’re not tied down to your desk; I can attend offsite meetings and still go out and have our MYOB information available, which is important with a small team who are responsible for all accounting functions of the museum.”

MoAD has plenty of future plans for Advanced, from more detailed project monitoring to helping plan new areas of revenue generation. Since implementation the finance team has spent more time being strategic business partners with other parts of the Museum, offering insights and focusing on growing areas of revenue generation to ensure a financially sustainable museum of the future.

“Museums are dynamic and ever-changing environments and Advanced gives us the capabilities to ensure we can advise on, monitor and control the financial activity across the diverse areas of our businesses,” Nick concludes. “It’s opened up transparency throughout our organisation.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB

World Challenge organises international tours for students, who get to experience exciting parts of the world in a safe, well-supported environment. MYOB Advanced provides a cost-effective business system with an emphasis on user-friendly payroll management.

Needs had outgrown the system
World Challenge started back in 1985, and takes over 8,000 students on expeditions to over 40 destinations every year. Its work is strongly influenced by seasonal factors and its payroll fluctuates accordingly.

World Challenge’s offices in Australia and New Zealand manage multiple companies with a complex GL structure and its staff numbers will vary between 40 and 100, depending on the time of year and the expeditions its running. Organising group travel events, with all the associated costs, is a challenge for any financial system. There are numerous expenses to track, along with transactions in foreign currencies.

“We’d been using MYOB AccountRight for a number of years and we’d simply outgrown it,” says World Challenge’s Australian Finance Manager, Shaye Franks. “It only allowed access for one login at a time, it was slow and cumbersome and didn’t provide the reporting capabilities we required.”

World Challenge went looking for a system that could handle all the various sub-accounts in its GL, combined with reliable HR and Payroll management. A cloud-based system was another priority, for scalability and cost saving.

“Our legacy system was slow and cumbersome.”

Easy to access and fully integrated
MYOB Advanced was chosen for its multiple ledger capabilities that enabled consolidated reporting and eliminated the complexities of managing various intercompany transactions. Advanced has given World Challenge the functionality it needed, at a price it could afford.

“It’s great to be able to access the system in the cloud from anywhere,” says Shaye. “Not having to worry about servers and backups gives us peace of mind, and saves us money.”

Shaye also praises Advanced for its user-friendliness and reporting capabilities: “Without training you can easily navigate through and understand the different areas and processes. The drill-through in reporting and being able to attach files and comments has helped us with audit trails.”

“Its great to be able to access the system in the cloud from anywhere.”

Flexibility where it counts most
The Advanced People module stores all the payroll data. It’s easily configurable, to fit a wide variety of employee scenarios, and live data that can be manipulated to cover any special reporting needs.

Advanced has also streamlined the handling of employee records – a vital function when employing so much seasonal and casual labour. It delivers management a single view of every employee, rather than having to search through multiple records. The integration of MYOB People allows World Challenge to assign granular posting classes to the employee, to ensure they are costed to the correct department, programme and tour.

World Challenge prides itself on delivering safe, rewarding travel experiences for young people. Its highly experienced staff in the field are supported by skilled support people, aided by a reliable back-office system that enables comprehensive management and reporting.

“We know there’s still a lot more we can do with Advanced,” Shaye concludes. “We’re looking forward to further exploring its reporting and dashboard functions.”

“We know there’s still a lot more we can do with Advanced.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB

Ronald McDonald House Charities is a global charity, providing accommodation and other support for the families of seriously ill children. In Australia, 13 independent House Chapters are connected and supported via RMHC Australia in a federated structure.

Difficult reporting issues
Ronald McDonald House Australia has an annual income stream of around $21 million. $6 million of that comes from donations and the rest from the national Charities Trust, McDonald’s licensee/corporate community, fundraising activities and government patient transport schemes.

Each House Chapter administers the accommodation independently, runs its own fundraising programmes, and keeps its own set of accounts. To consolidate this at a national level was a laborious manual task, and concern was growing about effectiveness, efficiency and accountability.

“Demand for our services has grown heavily in recent years and we expect that growth to continue,” says Adam Blatch, General Manager, Governance & Business. “We have 394 rooms available and average occupancy is about 70 percent. Some patients’ families stay in our houses for a night, but for others it can be for months or even years.”

All Ronald McDonald House Charities in Australia report its audited financial statements to the organisation’s global office, and it also provides its audited financial accounts to the National Trust along with reports to the Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and the Securities and Investment Commission.

The House Chapters and national office had been using MYOB Premier (donated by MYOB in around 2000). Each Chapter had its own way of accounting for income and expenses, which was becoming an increasing headache for the national office.

“Consolidating all the information into one report could take us up to eight weeks,” Adam recalls. “It was a very messy, complicated process, involving lots of spreadsheets and other paperwork. We wanted a standard chart of accounts and consistent accounting practices, so we started to look for a new business system.”

“Consolidating all the information was a very messy, complicated process.”

Integrated business management
One of the House Chapters had already implemented MYOB Exo, and recommended it to the National office. The whole new system went live at the beginning of 2017.

“We were impressed by the workflow and system integration benefits offered by Exo,” says Adam. “The MYOB Partner integrated Exo with Exceed, our CRM system, and we also added the MYOB MyStaffInfo module to Exo Payroll (aka MYOB Employee Services).”

Exo was set up to provide a central information systems and technology environment that had individual databases for all 13 House Chapters, but with controls that allow that much-needed consistency in reporting across all the separate entities. The national office now runs a consolidated Exo database with a single GL structure.

Exo was also integrated with Phocas, a web-based Business Intelligence software providing live financial information to all House Chapters. Each gets to see its own accounts, which are updated every 24 hours – previously that data was 6-8 weeks old by the time it became available.

The Exo solution was deployed in the Cloud, not only as a cost-saver but to provide web-based communication with all the chapters across the country.

“We were impressed by the workflow and system integration benefits offered by Exo.”

Centralised system, major time savings
Ronald McDonald House Charities now has a standard chart of accounts and consistent accounting practices across all its House Chapters.

“At any time we want, we can run a report from our consolidated Exo account and it pulls together an income and expenditure statement instantly,” Adam says. “It’s condensed weeks of work into minutes.”

Automation and EDI have replaced much of the manual labour and paperwork. This has especially benefited the payroll structure, which is now handled centrally, in-house. The centralised database ensures that any changes to pay rates or workplace legislation are consistently correct.

The integration of Exceed CRM has automated invoicing and eliminated double-entry issues. Exo has also allowed the introduction of analysis codes, for consistency and clarity in reporting fundraising.

“The beauty of Exo is that we can scale it up to whatever each House Chapter needs,” Adam concludes. Exo is providing us the financial business information that we need to work smarter, not harder, and more efficiently than we’ve ever worked before.”

“Exo allows us to work more efficiently than we’ve ever worked before.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB

Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) is the peak national organisation for Australians affected by breast cancer, and consists of a network of more than 120,000 members and 288 Member Groups. Widely recognised for its innovative fundraising activities, the ever-increasing complexity of managing its revenue streams put serious pressure on its business systems. BCNA moved up to MYOB Advanced.

System not geared for future changes
“I wasn’t unhappy with Exo; it just no longer suited the way our organisation was headed,” Allison Southwell, Head of Corporate Services recalls. “In recent years the size of our organisation has doubled. With donors becoming more savvy and wanting more information on what their donations are being used for, the level of detail that we need to provide in our reports has increased.”

BCNA’s frontline support offering comes from its helpline and from printed material, such as its My Journey kit. Thousands of these information kits are distributed to those newly diagnosed with breast cancer every year, at an annual cost of around half a million dollars. About 55% of BCNA’s income is spent on salaries and wages for its support and office staff. Managing its various fundraising projects (Pink Bun campaign, Pink Lady luncheons, etc.) was becoming too much for the Exo system.

“Because we have so many projects on the go, we needed to break down the accounts in detail for each project. We also wanted something that could integrate with our Salesforce CRM system.”

Integration and serious reporting
“BCNA trusted the MYOB brand, and the MYOB Partner recommended a closer look at Advanced.

“It looked like a good package and its reporting and integration capabilities really impressed me,” says Allison. “The consultants we dealt with were more than accommodating. They helped us work through the issues and showed how we could design Advanced to both help us now and into the future. They questioned how we did things and made us realise that we didn’t need to necessarily do it the same way in Advanced, which made us think about our improving our processes.”

Allison wanted to implement a sub-accounts structure within Advanced, to handle the issue of project management. It gave BCNA the capability to produce reports based on any dimension within a project, such as Event, Programme, Source and Funder.

Advanced is a cloud-based system, which saved BCNA significant infrastructure and data migration costs, with the bonus of being able to access the system from anywhere.

“The MYOB Partner questioned how we did things, which made us think about our improving our processes.”

Detailed project costing achieved
Advanced is now delivering the sort of information that BCNA needs to deliver transparent information and handle future growth. “Advanced is very, very user-friendly,” says Allison. “I love its drill-down capability; the fact that I can click on a link and find my way to a source document without having to flick between modules is very good, as well as the ease with which it works in and out of Excel.”

With Advanced’s project costing capabilities, Allison can now (for example) set up projects funded by federal government through Cancer Australia and break it down into various revenue streams, delivering detailed accounts for projects that can run for periods ranging from several months to three years.

“Advanced delivers transparency for organisations like ours.”

Salesforce captures about 80% of BCNA’s income, so integration with Advanced reduces data entry and the risk of errors, while delivering a transparent audit trail. Advanced also opens up a path to great autonomy for system users in accessing live information.

“I want to be able to give my team leaders, managers and senior executives the opportunity to get their own information rather than them having to rely on me to generate the information and interpret it for them,” Allison says. “We have a very engaged board and finance sub-committee, who they take their responsibilities very seriously and so the level of reporting they require is increasing as well. We’re now able to give the board the confidence that the organisation is being well managed.”

BCNA’s board is also embracing the digital future, and the potential to deliver its My Journey information kits more effectively.

“In Australia about 17,500 people are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, which is a lot of kits,” Allison says. “We’re now working on a digital transformation in the way we deliver information. In the cancer area things are changing so rapidly with new treatments and new drugs, and printed material just can’t keep up with the changes. So our focus is about satisfying demands for information and reducing our costs.”

As the population ages, the incidence of breast cancer will only increase. BCNA is looking to increase its range of support services and revenue streams, and MYOB Advanced is giving it confidence going forward.

“The ability to support my team in doing what we do well means I have to have systems and processes in place that work easily, efficiently and can get things done,” Allison concludes. “Advanced delivers transparency for organisations like ours; the ability to empower my managers and executives and through them the board, to be able to make well informed decisions based on real, accurate information.

“My mantra through most of my career has been being able to provide timely, accurate and consistent reporting, and the ability to do that is no different for a corporate giant or a charity like ours. We’re now at a level where we need something that is going to help us grow and I believe Advanced will do that.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB

The New Zealand mid-market is a sector with extraordinary potential for the country. Despite representing only a small number of our country’s enterprises, bigger businesses could transform the future of our economy.

By their nature, these businesses can be more dynamic and highly flexible, able to respond to changing markets while identifying and exploiting new opportunities as they arise. They also have the potential to feed more back into the economy – stimulating job growth, introducing new technologies and reinvesting their profits within New Zealand.

This sector should be where our country’s next big success stories are coming from – particularly on the international stage – as they employ more than a third of our nation’s workers and contribute to around 40 percent of GDP, their success can make a huge impact on our economy.

However, despite the enormous possibilities contained within the sector, at present New Zealand isn’t getting everything it could from the mid-market.

In part, the issue lies within the businesses themselves. As is frequently observed in a country with a lifestyle as enviable as New Zealand, many owners of the country’s bigger businesses are comfortable enjoying the benefits of their enterprise, without taking on the additional risk and stress associated with a growth agenda. Many too – particularly at the larger end of the scale – are satisfied with the level of success they have achieved and focus more on maintaining the position they have achieved in the market rather than pursuing further expansion.

“The issue is less about the attitudes of the business owners and more about the environment in which they operate.”

While a good number are comfortable with a level of growth that will see them dominate their local market or expand throughout the country, only a small proportion of the total number of bigger businesses have ambitions to take on the world.

At the same time, some businesses are likely to be constrained purely by the limits and experience of their owners. With a large proportion of Kiwi enterprises relying on the direction of an individual owner, they are less likely to enjoy the clear benefits of the broader capabilities of an expert management team and the independent experience of a board.

And a surprisingly large number of businesses are unprepared for the levels of disruption we are likely to see through the introduction of new technologies, nor are they willing to invest in the research and development necessary to help transform their own business in the face of rising pressures and a growing skills crisis.

But the issue overall is less about the attitudes of the business owners themselves and more about the environment in which they operate.

If we are truly serious about developing this country into a leading international competitor, underpinned by the growth and development of productive, dynamic and technologically-enabled businesses, succeeding as part of a flourishing knowledge economy, we need to do everything we can to focus on their needs and foster their development.

And this will mean stimulating greater investment in research and development by providing incentives for the businesses that are willing to forego higher profits to focus on developing valuable knowledge and infrastructure.

It will also mean taking serious steps to mitigate the crushing shortage of skilled staff, by investing in training – not just at university but in applied skills – which is responsive and appropriate to the needs of industry. It will also require us to take a nuanced approach to immigration, so we can attract in-demand experience from all over the world, and channel those skilled migrants not just to the major centres but into the areas they are needed most.

But ultimately, it will require us – as a nation – to start recognising the vital importance of the mid-market, benchmarking their success and developing the framework of support they need to go from ambitious entrepreneurs to world-leading powerhouses.

If we can focus on New Zealand’s mid-market not just in terms of the small number of businesses from a broad range of sectors this represents, but instead look at them in terms of the size of their current contribution to the local economy and the potential they embody, we are far more likely to be able to provide them with the resources, support and investment they require to maximise the benefits they can bring for the whole economy.

Growth

Top four long-term business goals

Expand to cover the whole country                                      19 percent

Maintain current market status                                             17 percent

Growth                                                                                       16 percent

Provide a comfortable lifestyle for owners/directors           13 percent

The pressures the sector faces

Top five bigger-business pressures

Finding qualified staff                                  40 percent

Competitive activity                                     30 percent

Attracting new customers                            23 percent

Price margins and profitability                     22 percent

Cost of technology                                         19 percent

Technology

Which technologies do you believe will have the greatest impact on your industry in the next 10 years?

Internet connectivity                                                     37 percent

Cloud computing                                                            37 percent

Automation/Robotics                                                    26 percent

Internet-of-things                                                           26 percent

Artificial intelligence                                                    18 percent

Machine-to-machine learning                                      15 percent

GPS directed automated machinery                            14 percent

Business Management Capability

Who’s responsible for making business decisions?

Owner                                                39 percent

Board of directors                            24 percent

Management team                            22 percent

CEO                                                    18 percent

General Manager                              18 percent

Find out more by downloading a copy of the MYOB Enterprise Insights report here.

Growing a sophisticated manufacturing operation featuring numerous product lines, Tuatara required a new business system, they made the move to MYOB Advanced.

System not geared for future changes
When Annemaree Deed, Finance Manager, joined Tuatara in 2014, the business was going through big changes.

“They had used AccountRight since the beginning to manage finances and IRD requirements” she recounts. “It was great for accounting, however it was cracking at the seams due to the complexity growing business needs.”

In 2014, Tuatara Brewery was at a tipping point in its growth trajectory. Their management team grew to include marketing, sales, packaging, brewing and distribution specialists. A new Operations Manager, Jason Brown joined and wanted to bring in changes to aid the organisations performance.

Their distribution processes included many manual processes resulting in potential errors. The lack of visibility into stock was impacting sales for the Business Brewers on the road and they just wanted more information at their fingertips. In short, they just needed more real time data.

“We just didn’t have the right tools to make the improvements we needed.” Annemaree said. “Because we brew so many different types of beer, we needed to know the costs and profitability of each. We also wanted something to integrate with our logistics provider to streamline the distribution process and ensure the products got to our customers as efficiently as they could .”

“We just didn’t have the right tools to make the improvements we needed.”

An explosion of features at the right price
Early in 2015, Tuatara contacted Wellington business systems experts Walker Scott. With their guidance, they went through an exploration of several products including MYOB Advanced. They were focused on return on investment and wanted the best bang for buck. Cloud software was a must to ensure it was ‘future proof’ and available in any location. In the end they choose Advanced as it met their budget and feature criteria with room to grow.

“We had always been satisfied with the support MYOB had offered and were happy to stay within the MYOB family.” Annemaree affirmed. “For every requirement Advanced had the functionality we needed. I was surprised by the wide range of features at the price point. Going through the evaluation, I knew taking our business to the next level was attainable with this software.”

“Being a cloud product and not having to worry about the costs of hardware was a great plus. We have a lot of staff who work on the road or from home so it was important to have that flexibility.

“We have a lot of staff who work on the road or from home so it was important to have a cloud product that gave us that flexibility.”

Outcome
Advanced now delivers the tools the business needs to perform at a high level and scalability to handle future growth.

“Our beer is manufactured in two stages – raw beer and finished beer in either keg or bottle format. When you multiply that by the number of different beer flavours we produce and the regularity in which we change flavours… it’s a lot of data to track. With Advanced we felt it had the functionality to be able to track all the costs in that process and allow us to report the information we needed to various parts of the business.”

They’ve also reduced over ordering as they have more visibility into inventory on hand.

They use bill of materials functionality to do batch control for brewing to calculate gross profit margins for batches. This helps them predict the costs and profitability of potential new flavours giving management new levels of insight into what products lines in which to invest. It also provides a basis to project future raw material requirements.

Advanced has helped in their stock management. Tuatara now have visibility into stock in multiple locations, stock volumes by individual product line and at different stages in the manufacturing process.

“We can now isolate what stock we have and see what stage it is at,” says Annemaree. “Is it finished beer or in the tank? In the past this was really manual and time consuming which meant it was open to errors. Now we are more confident in the numbers we produce.”

New reporting dashboards built using Microsoft Power BI have helped their teams become high performing groups. Their Business Brewers (sales team) can now use their smart devices to access live information on sales and stock levels whilst on the go.

“The sales team get a lot of value from being able to see sales and stock levels every day,” said Annemaree. “With live data being pushed to their app, its updated hourly so it’s great for the business to also analyse trends which gives us a lot of confidence making sales and promotion decisions.”

MYOB Advanced now integrates via an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) with their distribution partner Toll Holdings. A huge boost to operational efficiency has been achieved as new orders from all customers, big or small, are automatically shared between both systems so they know what is available at the distribution warehouse and what has been shipped and delivered.

“We can now distribute with confidence, it’s just something we don’t have to worry about,” shared Annemaree. “The order can be sent and distributed to our clients in real-time. It’s just a simpler and better way of doing things. If an order comes in we have got live information that we can act on.”

Reporting is faster and smarter. When tricky questions come up, finance can customise reports to provide the information their stakeholders need. When they need to get ‘nitty-gritty’ with analysis they can easily export information into Excel.

“Everything is just quicker to process,” says Annemaree enthusiastically. “Because information is entered in real-time, we don’t need to touch things twice. We’re now more confident in data. I think 20% of our time is saved being able to process things more effectively.”

“Everything is just quicker to process. Because information is entered in real-time, we don’t need to touch things twice.”

“I loved the clickability of Advanced. If I have a report I can now click into it, to drill down into information. I don’t have to go to a different system, it’s all there in one place.”

“We’re only using 75% of Advanced’s capabilities but its good because we know that as we grow we’ve got a system that can grow with us. Like transacting in foreign currencies, we don’t use it often but it will be a big help in the future..”

Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB

Established in 1997, GX2 Technology is an IT services company that has been at the leading edge of designing, developing, implementing and maintaining Wi-Fi networks for a range of tourism and commercial clients, from hotels and backpacker resorts to conference centres. Being very good at what they do has seen GX2 Technology grow to employ 50 staff across Australia, Fiji, NZ, UK and the US.

Improving invoicing
Invoicing is at the financial heart of every business, ensuring cash keeps flowing, so it’s vital that every aspect of this function runs smoothly – especially when multiple currencies are involved. For 6 years GX2 Technology had been running an online accounting system, but a major pain point was the lack of usability and flexibility with data extracted out of the system. It meant there was no easy facility to make changes to things such as the layout of an invoice, so they frequently needed to go to the provider to get changes made. Also, the audit trail was unreliable and essential support was based in Ireland which meant that most problems were an “overnight fix” which didn’t help productivity or anxious clients. Cara O’Neill, Chief Financial Officer of GX2 says, “As a business that prides ourselves on delivering the very best Wi-Fi communications solutions, we demand that every aspect of our own technology is equal to what we provide our clients.”

Functionality and flexibility
Given the large capital outlay involved GX2 did their homework. They decided to put a query through the MYOB website. It soon became apparent that MYOB Advanced Business was the ideal fit for GX2’s needs. Being online was obviously one of the mandatories in choosing the Advanced solution, but it was the other key features, like consolidating accounts for multiple companies, the flexibility of multi-currency management, the project management functionality and inventory management that “sealed the deal” for GX2.

MYOB Advanced is taking GX2 forward
In terms of adapting to the new system it took about 3 months of using MYOB Advanced for the team within the primary trading company (Australia) to become completely familiar with it. GX2 has now replicated the introduction process with all of their other trading companies around the globe. GX2’s decision to change to Advanced has been rewarding says O’Neill, “We’ve improved workflow as well as having greater visibility into all aspects of our business, particularly inventory. We’re finding there’s a lot less reliance now on spreadsheets, which makes life so much easier.” Because Advanced has allowed GX2 to take a lot of information off spreadsheets more information is readily shared across the business rather than being stuck with one person.

A world of difference
Being a cloud-based product has made it easy for GX2 Technologies to deploy Advanced to all of their overseas locations and just as importantly, utilise Advanced to easily consolidate multiple accounts and simply deal with multiple currencies.

”With the new system (Advanced) we don’t have to worry about multiple currencies anymore. It’s no longer a big deal!”

Plus, the flexibility within the system allows for fields to be adjusted and set for different tax structures in different countries. In terms of process and improving efficiency and workflow, GX2 can customise their own forms and invoices without needing to rely on an external party.

“Advanced has been fantastic for our accounts team, we’ve saved days of effort by automating repetitive manual tasks.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB

New Zealand manufacturer Ross Roof Group (RRG) has been a success story in the roofing game since the 1940s. Today, it manufactures, exports or licenses its roofing systems to 80 countries worldwide under the brands Tilcor and Metrotile, and produces millions of roofing tiles a year.

“When you have growth you obviously have more paperwork, which can be quite daunting when you have limited human resources,” says RRG’s commercial manager, George Khoury. “You don’t necessarily want to keep taking on people to handle the growth – you want to use systems that can automate processes.”

“When you have growth you obviously have more paperwork, which can be quite daunting when you have limited human resources”.

RRG had been using MYOB’s Greentree ERP system for several years when the company’s structure changed to accommodate rapid growth. Several new regional companies were created as international distribution agents for its products.

“Rather than create multiple companies with the associated multiple data entry issues, we collaborated with our Greentree Partner to adapt Greentree’s Distribution module to meet our needs,” George says. “We now have single data entry and visibility across all the companies in the group. It works very well.”

Archaic system, data worries
Prior to Greentree, RRG’s legacy system was past its use-by date. Multiple data entry points led to inaccuracies and the system couldn’t handle the rapidly growing inventory.

“We were encountering serious issues with the volume of orders and APs, plus consolidating the financial information from our different companies.” Khoury recalls. “There was too much paperwork from the approval of sales orders and invoices, and automating processes became a top priority.”

“There was too much paperwork, and automating processes became a top priority.”

An ERP system that integrated the business was identified as a crucial tool, but RRG also knew it needed to fill some special requirements to get the level of inventory control it needed between its manufacturing plant and its warehouse.

Seamless workflow
RRG’s manufacturing plant runs as a 24-hour operation. Orders placed in Greentree’s Manufacturing module are visible on screens all around the factory, enabling receipts to be entered as soon as orders are filled and eliminating delays in filling out paperwork.

The integrated Manufacturing and Supply Chain functions handle millions of items. Orders are processed from sales to manufacturing at a press of a button. Endeavour created customisations within the Distribution module to enable simultaneous updating of data across three separate workstreams.

“This saves us a lot of time and effort, eliminating the risk of human error,” says Khoury.

Visibility through the roof
MYOB Greentree Workflow gives real-time visibility across the company, which has been especially valuable for purchasing and credit control. RRG’s approval process is now handled electronically through Workflow, replacing a slow paper trail.

“Our Operations Manager used to get a stack of paperwork each month, which would take him hours and hours to approve,” Khoury says. “That’s not required anymore because he approves POs as they come in.” The addition of eDocs has brought further efficiencies, enabling purchase orders and invoices to be scraped into the system.

The benefits of the systems investment they made are accruing daily. “We’ve saved about five days’ work a month on the month-end process and cut paperwork by around 70 percent,” Khoury says. Greentree IQ* enables RRG’s managers to create reports to see whatever they want at a glance.

“We’ve saved about five days’ work a month on the month-end process and cut paperwork by around 70 percent.”

“There are multiple ways we can slice and dice the data,” says Khoury. “It allows us to make more informed decisions about ordering of raw materials, which is a major cost centre. All our factory orders are also entered into Greentree and read by IQ, which formats them so we can determine what’s needed to fill an order.”

IQ gives management a crystal-clear view of sales performance, and its drill-down capability saves hours of work in compiling specific reports and dealing with any issues. Another big plus is that despite its workload more than doubling in recent years, RRG has not needed to take on more staff.

RRG is forecasting further steady growth and has more plans for where Greentree can help handle it.

“We’re focused on developing forecasting for overseas markets and getting more use out of the CRM and Job Costing systems,” Khoury concludes. “We’re aiming to finish up with a full supply chain scenario where a quote gets done, sent out and turned into a job costing order.

“We’re confident we can achieve this because every day, Greentree enables us to work smarter, not harder.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB

“Everyone has gone a little mad about coconuts, which makes us incredibly happy because we love them,” is the pull quote from Raw C’s website, which in a little more than four years has become Australia’s second biggest distributor of coconut water products. “We’ve been doubling our turnover year on year and that’s going to continue to grow,” says Dennis Ghetto, Raw C’s co-owner, CFO and Operations Manager.

The company imports its products from Thailand, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, and distributes them to supermarket chains across Australia from warehouses in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. Raw C’s MYOB Advanced ERP system has equipped the company to handle major growth now and into the future.

Taking stock
Raw C’s rapid growth soon began to reveal deficiencies in its business systems. It had launched with a basic web-based accounting package that was fine for a start-up, but required too much manual labour with spreadsheets and wasn’t really delivering the financial reports the company needed.

“We needed more consolidated reporting from a sales as well as a financial perspective,” Ghetto explains. “We needed to know we were making money and to analyse our sales data in order to control and grow our business. We needed a fully integrated system because we couldn’t do prepayments in the old system, or find out what stock in transit was coming from our factories offshore.”

Warehouse management was another pain point: lack of live inventory visibility caused problems. Raw C could only determine what was in its warehouses by actually going into them every week and doing a physical stock-take. Handling products with a limited shelf life added further complexity.

“We’re even getting customer profitability reports, which is great, because we’re taking it to a new level – true business intelligence”

“We have to handle the two sets of controls of batch numbers and also use-by dates,” says Ghetto. “There were times when we didn’t notice the dates in sufficient time, and so we’d have to shift the products heavily discounted, which was costing us money.”

C for Coconut (and Cloud)
Raw C went shopping for an ERP system that would link its supply chain and financial management, and ensure compliance with Australia’s very tight health and safety regulations.

“I knew that products like SAP were too big and expensive for our needs,” Ghetto says. “We also looked at NetSuite, but it was too complex and had features we’d never use. Then the MYOB Partner introduced me to MYOB Advanced.”

Advanced was chosen as the best fit for Raw C’s business model, for its user-friendly interface and the promise that the company’s staff could do a lot of modifications themselves without the need to constantly call for a consultant’s help. A cloud-based system was another prerequisite.

“We didn’t want anything server-based,” says Ghetto. “We use web-based systems for everything, even our phones. I’m always travelling and so it’s easy for me to keep in touch with the office via the web.”

A fresh approach
MYOB Advanced allows Raw C to do everything it wants – and more developments are planned.

Ghetto and his staff can now get reports on customer sales and margins, in detail that was not possible before. The products stored in all the warehouses are visible as live information, including batch and use-by details. Products nearing the end of their shelf life can now be flagged in time to be sold at a margin that enables cost recovery, rather than taking a loss.

“Advanced’s reporting capabilities are a great help,” Ghetto says. “We now have detailed profit and loss, as well as sales order reporting. Our warehouse people can also run reports to see where stock is, so if we need to move it to another city to fill an order, we can do it instantly. This makes it seamless, rather than having to check 100 emails and make lots of phone calls.”

Manual spreadsheets are now history; automation gives Raw C’s accountant live data about creditors and debtors, smoothing the process of invoicing, payments and debt recovery. Terms can also be flagged for specific customers, rather than one set of terms for everybody.

“Advanced has every element we need as a business to jump forward.”

“We’re even getting customer profitability reports, which is great, because we’re taking it to a new level – true business intelligence,” says Ghetto.

Paperwork has largely been eliminated, pleasing both Raw C and its larger customers, who’d been lobbying it to adopt electronic ordering and invoicing. The company has been able to handle its rapid growth without having to employ more office staff. As an importer, Raw C does a lot of dealing in foreign currencies. Advanced handles all the transactional calculations easily; Ghetto can now see the true costs. “Previously we’d just pay the bill and hope for the best!” he laughs.

Raw C has also recently entered the fresh produce market, selling fresh coconuts. This creates another level of regulatory compliance from health and Customs officials, which would have been very hard to handle without Advanced.

“All fresh products need health certification before they’re sold and if they’re coming from overseas, they have to go to a government-controlled warehouse for testing,” Ghetto explains. “We now simply attach all the necessary documents to a shipment before it reaches Customs. With Advanced all the documentation is handled seamlessly and to date we’ve never had any problems.”

The MYOB Partner draws praise from Ghetto for their contributions.

“We’ve asked them to do various modifications and there’s never been a problem. They showed us new ways to run our pre-payments and purchase orders, giving us better control and flow-through of data. That helped us to control what’s in the factory, what’s on the water and what’s here locally; we never had that visibility before.

“When we started selling fresh coconuts they did a quick customisation for us to handle all the red tape. They also did a profit and loss customisation so we can segregate our promotions, fixed terms, rebates and so on.”

While Raw C intends to continue its growth in Australia, it also has its eye on markets further afield.

“We plan to expand into other continents, which means new suppliers and warehousing needs. We’ll need more sophisticated tools because we’ll be employing more people, so we’ll need to work smarter on monitoring KPIs, sales and margins.

“We have 100% confidence that Advanced will continue to grow with us. It has every element we need as a business to jump forward.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB