New Zealand Post Drives Best Practice

New Zealand Post Drives Best Practice

New Zealand Post Drives Best Practice with Vanilla PeopleSoft 8 Financials, Purchasing and eProcurement to consolidate and streamline enterprise-critical business processes

New Zealand Post’s ‘Project Genesis,’ one of the largest PeopleSoft implementations in Asia Pacific last year, has reached a critical milestone with phase one going live in just seven months. With a vanilla approach to their solution implementation and delivery, New Zealand Post is driving towards best practice financial, procurement and inventory management processes.

The first phase of the project, being implemented by a blended New Zealand Post, Datacom, KPMG Consulting and PeopleSoft team, consists of financial management and reporting functions including general ledger reporting, asset management, accounts payable and project costing as well as purchasing and e-procurement.

The New Zealand Post PeopleSoft 8 solution, built on PeopleSoft’s Pure Internet Architecture™ has more than 1300 users in over 250 locations including Kiwibank and Transend. Project Genesis expands the company’s investment in PeopleSoft, adding to New Zealand Post’s use of HR and Payroll, and will ultimately facilitate seamless integration between business processes in the company.

Anne Smith, New Zealand Post’s General Manager, Financial Services, said New Zealand Post is aiming to integrate its existing disparate financial systems to deliver a single company cashflow and information process, and be able to deliver that information real time and in a cost efficient manner.

“Our overriding objective is the implementation of best practice financial, procurement and inventory management processes. ” New Zealand Post selected PeopleSoft in January 2002 after a thorough and highly competitive selection process.

“The PeopleSoft solution stood out from both a functionality and a technical perspective. It is architected for the Internet – not just web-enabled – and met New Zealand Post’s requirements for a ‘plain vanilla’ solution with very little customisation necessary,” said Smith.

“The system will enable us to better manage our supplier relationships. The reporting capabilities will give us access to detailed information about purchasing across the entire organisation.

“In particular, PeopleSoft 8 eProcurement marks a significant advance for New Zealand Post. Up until now purchasing has largely been a manual process with little detailed information collected, so we were unable to analyse patterns and trends. Employees will now have access to detailed financial information which means better, faster and more informed purchasing decisions. It will drive down costs and give us greater efficiency and cost effectiveness,” said Smith.

The next phase of the project involves implementation of order management, accounts receivable, inventory and billing. The implementation of the inventory management module will be a key component of the overall improvement to the New Zealand Post’s business processes.

It was the flexibility of the PeopleSoft application that appealed to New Zealand Post. By increasing inventory and customer service levels at the same time as reducing carrying costs, labour costs and inventory write-offs, New Zealand Post anticipates enhanced decision making and greater efficiency.

Commenting on New Zealand Post’s solution, David Webster, Managing Director Australia and New Zealand said, “New Zealand Post are driving their business systems to ensure they can gain real time access and insight to their data, and have a streamlined, consistent and best of breed application suite through PeopleSoft 8.

“PeopleSoft’s pure internet applications are accessed via a standard web-browser, so there is no client information to maintain, fewer IT resources required and lower overall costs. The intuitive interface familiar to web browsers also reduces the need for training,” said Webster.

Nigel Prince, New Zealand Post Chief Information Officer says the solid team environment established by PeopleSoft and implementation partner BearingPoint has contributed to the success of the project so far.

“Delivering a project of this magnitude and importance on time is down to the people involved. Working with BearingPoint, PeopleSoft and our strategic IT partner Datacom, we have successfully deployed a complex and vital software system.”

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