FSN: Maritime New Zealand chooses Applix for reporting, budgeting and forecasting

Maritime New Zealand chooses Applix for reporting, budgeting and forecasting

30th July 2007
Maritime New Zealand (Maritime NZ), the agency responsible for maritime safety, security and environmental protection, has chosen the Applix platform to fulfil its reporting, budgeting and forecasting needs. The Applix solution, implemented by local reseller Cortell New Zealand Limited, was subjected to a rigorous evaluation process, but beat the competition due to its business analytics features, functionality and flexibility.

Maritime NZ serves a wide range of maritime operations from large merchant ships to small recreational craft in New Zealand ports. The primary function of the organisation is to ensure the marine environment is safe, secure and clean for all its users by developing, monitoring and enforcing safety and protection rules, while educating the community about best practices in safety and environmental standards. This responsibility includes a wide range of maritime activity, such as ensuring lighthouses and radio services are working properly, inspecting ships, as well as investigating accidents, oil spills, and other such incidents.

“Initially, the focus was solely on budgeting and overhead allocations with information being fed back into the general ledger for subsequent reporting,” said Trevor Coad, General Manager, Corporate Services of Maritime NZ. “However, once the team realised the power of Applix's technology, we amended our requirements and significantly expanded the project so that all reporting would flow through the new solution.”

“We conducted a very aggressive review process which included various, in-depth evaluation areas,” Coad continued. “We visited reference sites of Applix and other players in the market and were particularly impressed by Applix's recalculation speed and flexibility. This gave us confidence to choose Applix.”

Previously, Maritime NZ's budgeting process was conducted via Excel workbooks that were distributed to local and regional managers. Since this process proved to be unwieldy, slow and prone to errors, Maritime NZ decided to upgrade the system. Maritime NZ's project began in early March 2007. It made its decision to go with Applix in June and the implementation started shortly thereafter. Applix is expected to go live in August 2007.

“As we work with Maritime NZ on their implementation of Applix's business analytics solution, we see that the group's expansive vision includes not only far more efficient processes for forecasts, budgets and reports,” said Matthew Hill, Cortell New Zealand, Ltd, the Applix partner. “It also encompasses a focus on leading and future-oriented indicators, increasing collaboration between team members, and obtaining better alignment between performance measures and strategy — a practical but well-wrought plan for business improvement that this solution will readily facilitate.”

About Us