Veolia Transport is one of the world’s leading private operators in the passenger transport sector, providing urban, suburban, inter-city and regional passenger services on buses, trains, trams and ferries. Operating in 25 countries around the world, Veolia Transport has more than 73,300 employees worldwide and carries over 2.5 billion passengers to their destinations every year. Veolia Transport Australia is the largest private land transport provider in Australasia, operating the suburban rail network in Melbourne; monorail, light rail and buses in Sydney, buses in Brisbane and Perth and the passenger rail network in Auckland.

The New Zealand operation decided against using the ERP package being used by its international counterparts because of the importance the company placed on issues such as reliable local support.

“We knew exactly what we were looking for: we required a locally supported yet highly capable financial product with the ability to be tailored to suit our needs,” says Veolia financial controller Albert Giorgini.

Veolia had heard about Greentree through word-of-mouth and the vibes were unanimously positive.

Strong reporting engine
After a detailed demonstration, the Veolia management team saw Greentree as the ideal system for their requirements and future plans. Greentree’s local business partner Endeavour Solutions of Auckland was selected to implement the standard Greentree business management system, develop bespoke solutions and provide ongoing help-desk support.

“We liked what we saw - Greentree is very user friendly and flexible, and the reporting tools really stood out for us,” Giorgini says. “We felt Greentree had the nous to provide a strong reporting engine to enable us to satisfy our management needs and future business changes.”

Giorgini says the package that Veolia uses internationally produces good reports but only at the end of an extremely complicated process, whereas reporting with Greentree is simple, helps maintain high productivity and its functionality is comparable to much larger more expensive systems.

“Click, click and drag, and you’ve set up your own template. It’s a very big plus,” he says. Giorgini says Veolia could have installed a large enterprise scale ERP package but when the company compared the functionality and scope of Greentree, that would have been a major overkill. Veolia uses Greentree’s Accounts Payable/Receivable, General Ledger, Cash Management, Purchase Orders and Fixed Assets modules across all elements of its operation including remote based stations. All the information is captured and processed within Greentree from the ticket desks to financial accounts.

Despite the volume of transactions, Giorgini says the system has never fallen over, the system has proved to be very robust and stable.

Smooth, on-time and within budget
“Greentree is a great fit for our business; we understand why it has a strong reputation in New Zealand.”

“Endeavour were focused on meeting our specific requirements and were prompt in delivering the fine tunings we needed. Their staff are very proactive and the outcome has been a great success. One of the key elements is that the team delivered the system in time for us to go live. They understood our goals and met the timeframe and budget.

'Just the ticket'
A useful feature being exploited by Veolia Transport is Greentree’s ability to use a Scanning module. Invoices are scanned and saved in the system, which means when you have a query and drill down to an invoice, a copy of the physical invoice is attached. This saves Veolia staff a significant amount of time looking for the paper version of the invoice.

“The flexibility of Greentree and skills of the Endeavour team came through in the modification of the inventory system,” Giorgini says. The Endeavour implementation team custom built a fare revenue ticketing inventory system from the Inventory module. The team devised a methodology to make Greentree software the “engine” for the system and created purpose-built screens to handle the data entry and reporting to review ticket sales. Discrepancies are a serious issue and a major part of the auditing of the system, so it was vital that the reporting of money collected in Greentree was highly accurate.

During the time Veolia has been using Greentree passenger numbers have doubled, with more growth expected. As the rail network continues to be improved and upgraded in the Auckland region, Giorgini believes Veolia Transport has chosen the right software for the task ahead. Greentree has improved up-to-theminute access to financial figures for Veolia business managers and Giorgini says he is confident that “Greentree will scale as we need it and the benefits will continue as our business grows.”

For more information

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

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

June 2006

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