RJ Hill Laboratories is the largest privately-owned testing laboratory in New Zealand, providing analytical testing services to environmental, agricultural and horticultural clients, and producers of foods and biological products in New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands, Japan, China, and South East Asia.

RJ Hill’s laboratory team works in modern, ergonomically designed laboratory space using state-of-the-art analytical technology. One of the company’s key performance indicators is the turnaround time - the time between receiving samples and sending results. To give its clients reliable and swift turnaround times, RJ Hill needed a new financial system that offered more automation and time-saving processes, especially in the areas of requisitions and reporting.

During a four month review process RJ Hill considered upgrading its existing system, implemented in 1997, to the latest release, or migrating to two competing systems, one of which was Greentree (who were recently recognised as one of 25 global rising stars by MIS magazine). After seeing demonstrations of each product under consideration, the team decided that when compared to the competition Greentree was a better business fit. 

“Greentree was exactly what we were looking for,” says RJ Hill financial accountant Wilma Smith. 

“Greentree’s Business Partner demonstrated the system using our data, and this very professional demonstration met the needs of the team and explained exactly how the system would work for us. It is easy to use and has strengths in reporting with its integration with Excel. The competing system was cumbersome in comparison and the next version of our existing system was too different from the original implementation.”

As a service company, RJ Hill uses an inventory system differently to most companies, but the Greentree package was flexible enough to meet its needs.

Smith says the company required an inventory management system to track the 1,700 different products it purchases by serial number, batch numbers or other reference codes. 

“Greentree is used largely for ordering and managing the chemical products in the system, so being able to ‘tag’ a product to a supplier is important for the team to track the product and reorder the stock from the same supplier for accurate testing.” 

Everything being bought, whether it is a consumable, a fixed asset or a service is allocated to cost centres of different departments using Greentree’s multi-location feature. RJ Hill also makes heavy use of Greentree’s ‘limit stock to supplier’ feature so that once the stock item is selected then the correct supplier is automatically used. 

More automation in the area of requisitions and a reduction on the request-to-delivery lead time were also key requirements for RJ Hill. Greentree’s Requisitions module provides more control over ordering the correct items and delivery times.

“Our previous work practice would involve all staff placing orders with a purchasing officer, who then entered the same information into the system before sending an email to request the items. It was a long process and far too manual,” says Smith. 

Of 140 people in the company, about 50 now have access to the purchasing system. Smith says the team now has a better feel of what they are ordering and the management is more aware of ordering levels and costs. 

“We have also reduced the restocking costs as we have been able to eliminate errors,”  she says.

Greentree’s eRequisitions module provides the requisitions functionality organisation-wide over the internet without the need to purchase a user licence for every staff member. eRequisitions links directly to the requisitions database and allows staff to submit requisitions, search the inventory, and monitor the requisition's status. The laboratory has also implemented eReporting, allowing new purchase orders to be automatically emailed or printed. 

RJ Hill previously managed its extensive financial reporting requirements using Excel in conjunction with its accounting software, but this involved much re-keying of data with all the problems that involves. With Greentre, RJ Hill has now set up a fully automated reporting system.

Greentree also allows the department heads to access their reports electronically, which is a huge improvement in the distribution of management information.

“In the old system, if the data was changed it was time consuming and difficult to adjust things, however as Greentree is date driven it is easier to maintain the reports,”  says Smith.

“The month-end reports used to take three to four days to process. We aim to reduce this time and believe Greentree has the capability to do so. Overall Greentree has provided great time savings.”

For more information

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

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

June 2005

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