Transport: Pacifica Shipping streamlines multi-mode transport solutions

The Christchurch-based logistics company needed to upgrade its 20th Century technology with little, if any, disruption to business continuity. It turned to Greentree...

 

The business situation
New Zealand’s remoteness from its overseas markets and the prohibitive cost of air freight 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 Mani. He adds 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 Mani could see, provided the sophisticated reporting Pacifica needed to maintain its competitive position.

Flexibility to create and maintain own KPI reports
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 Mani was looking for. The flexibility to utilise Excel for smarter data extraction and analysis coupled with Greentree’s easy user-driven environment have enabled Mani to create Pacifica’s own reports in-house which has been a “big plus”.

Easy interface to 3rd party systems and data
Mani 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 the company naturally wanted to avoid replacing it if at all possible. Greentree’s Open Database Connectivity meant Pacifica wasn’t ‘held hostage’ by a requirement to purchase a module it didn’t need to replace and this was another strong point for choosing Greentree over competing offerings. Mani 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, no disruption to business continuity
Having several new systems implementation ‘tours’ under his belt Mani was very aware of what was required and what could potentially go wrong, which is why it was decided that April 1 was the best time to ‘go-live’.

Mani explains that once the financial year had officially rolled-over 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 Mani says this worked really well.

Mani speaks very highly of the support and expertise provided by the Greentree partner who implemented the system for Pacifica with little, if any, disruption to business continuity.   

Inter-company reporting with the click of a button
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 straight-forward as a local delivery, through 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,” Mani 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 the system went live a few months ago, Mani now has clear evidence that Greentree provides Pacifica management with high visibility of the business in real time, along with flexible and comprehensive reporting to enhance the decision making process.

For more information

www.greentree.com/customers/profiles/
pacifica_transport_group.cfm

Graham Hill
Greentree
Ph: 0800 313 313
Fax: 09 366 3889
Email: graham.hill@greentree.com
www.greentree.com

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At A Glance

Challenge
Pacifica Transport Group needed a modern system with sophisticated reporting capability to better inform management decision making.

Solution
Greentree Business Management Suite

Results
Pacifica’s management now have high visibility of the business with up-to-the-minute reporting across all the companies in the group – this has significantly improved the decision making process. Staff have a modern system which saves them time, automates basic tasks and is really easy to use.

 

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