Sun Engineering Doubles Growth with MYOB Greentree ERP

Sun Engineering (QLD) Pty Ltd has an ambitious growth strategy which bucks global trends. To ensure this wasn’t constrained by an antiquated accounting system, they sought to install a fully integrated high performance business solution.

The business scenario Sun Engineering has almost 800 staff in Australia, Papua New Guinea, China and Dubai involved in fabrication and construction for the mining, power, petrochemical and construction industries. Projects are large-scale and complex, involving heavy equipment, machinery and highly skilled staff carrying out work in remote places.

Duplicated Data and Lack Of Integration

“When we sat down at board meetings and were presented with various reports, we could see straight away that the figures weren’t telling us the truth”, explains Michael Rodwell, Business Development Manager. In an attempt to connect the stand-alone accounting system to various financial and operational systems, a multitude of Excel spreadsheets had to be created to bridge the functionality gap.

This resulted in the duplication of effort and generated a mountain of paperwork as staff spent hours entering and re-entering data.

Streamlining Critical Business Processes With Greentree

“The local Greentree business partner undertook a comprehensive analysis of our business and made constructive suggestions for streamlining critical business processes. This translated into a best-fit Greentree solution which we know, will scale as required,” Michael says.

With little confidence in the figures appearing in company reports, management decision-making had been stymied. The incumbent system had effectively stifled growth. However, Sun’s decision to choose Greentree clearly paid off.

“It’s unusual for a company to be pursuing growth right now, but Greentree is paving the way for this to continue. Our directors are absolutely confident, that Greentree will scale to match a fairly ambitious growth strategy for a good few years into our future.”

Michael Rodwell, Business Development Manager,
Sun Engineering

Greentree business partner’s no-nonsense approach to doing business coupled with the knowledge and expertise of its consultants is sobering.

This ensures expectations about what’s involved are well understood.

Integration and Simple Automations Reduced Carbon Footprint 30%

Approvals and Alerts enforces a disciplined approach to purchasing. Approvals and Alerts notifies authorised person electronically without the need to print paper documents.

This results in a 30% reduction in the company’s carbon footprint. Integration eliminates duplication resulting in the re-deployment of data entry staff to purchasing.

Dependable management reporting restores confidence in the decision making process. This has helped the company grow by 100% in a few years.
Integration and a single data entry point have enabled a level of accuracy never before seen.

Michael says, “Without doubt, Greentree has restored managerial confidence in the reporting process. This enables directors to take a strategic view of the business and make sound fiscal and operational
decisions based on reliable information.” The overall improvement in the quality and standard of the decision making process has been “outstanding”.

Greentree Enables 100% Growth, 0% Admin Increase, 0 Redundancies

In fact, the impact of a coherent decision-making process has enabled the organisation to grow from a $30 million company to a $60 million company in a few short years. Michael positively states that “this has been achieved without increasing administration costs and by transitioning data entry staff into purchasing roles without making anyone redundant”. Greentree’s extraordinary reporting capability, single-source data entry and integration have enabled workflow efficiencies “we only imagined were possible”.

Carbon Footprint Shrinks As Paper Wastage Plummets 30%

The paper war going on in offices across Sun Engineering was largely due to the contractual nature of the business environment. This created a propensity for staff to print documents which simply could not be viewed on a screen or easily distributed electronically. The environmental downside of this was to grow the organisation’s carbon footprint.

Since every staff member can now view the same business data from anywhere within Greentree, paper wastage has plummeted by 30%. A change in printing behaviour will ensure the company’s carbon footprint will continue to shrink. Sun Engineering acknowledges the significance of this issue now and in the future.

Approvals and Alerts Transforms Purchasing Into “Best Practice”

“When a vehicle was required urgently on-site in China, the process for requisitioning a replacement was about as efficient as sending smoke signals,” says Michael. But Greentree’s Approvals and Alerts now enforces a more disciplined approach to purchasing.

For example, “If a replacement vehicle is required onsite in Papua New Guinea but must be purchased in Australia and the authorising person is in Dubai, an alert pops up on that person’s screen. The authority is sent electronically without a single page of paper
being printed, which is magical.”

“Approvals and Alerts have transformed purchasing into a structured, secure, best-practice process the whole organisation has absolute confidence in. This alone, has reduced our carbon footprint by 30%,”
Michael says.

Group Consolidation Without Third Party Systems

Greentree enables the Sun Engineering group of companies to be consolidated without the need for third party systems. This bodes well for its ambitious growth strategy, which will involve acquisition of other companies in the future. The local implementation partner will continue to provide the critical systems knowledge required to constantly suggest better ways of doing things, whilst Greentree has restored confidence in the reporting tools required to support strategic decision-making. The company has an optimistic view of its future, at a time when others are swimming against the tide.

Benefits Summary

• Greentree business partner’s no-nonsense approach to doing business coupled with the knowledge and expertise of its consultants is sobering.
• This ensures expectations about what’s involved are well understood.
• Approvals and Alerts enforces a disciplined approach to purchasing.
• Approvals and Alerts notifies authorised person electronically without the need to print paper documents.
• This results in a 30% reduction in the company’s carbon footprint.
• Integration eliminates duplication resulting in the re-deployment of data entry staff to purchasing.
• Zero redundancies.
• Dependable management reporting restores confidence in the decision making process. This has helped the company grow by 100% in a few years.

This case study has been re-produced with permission under the Greentree partnership. A PDF version of this case study is available here.