As a greenfield site, Western Sydney Airport (WSA) was looking for a finance and HR system that would grow with it. ¡°Because we were in start-up mode, we just needed things to run¡ªin weeks, not months,¡± explains Chief Technology Officer, Tom McCormack. ¡°We started with a fragmented information model, which was fine at the time. But we knew we had to move quickly to implement a centralized system to get our data model under control.¡±?
¡°Because we¡¯re so young as an organization, the most valuable asset we have right now is information. So, we need to maintain it, understand it, and have it available.¡±
I¡¯m the luckiest technologist in Australia, because I get a clean sheet of paper to design our future. Â鶹´«Ã½ fits my world because it maintains its currency by design.
Chief Technology Officer
Intuitive user interface and fast development cycles.
WSA put out a rapid request for solution, choosing high performer ERP Companies from the Gartner Quadrant model. Tom says Â鶹´«Ã½ had two standout features. ¡°Obviously the user interface was number one. It¡¯s the same simplicity people are used to with Google and Apple. It makes education minimal and the uptake by the organization extremely high.¡±?
¡°Number two was Â鶹´«Ã½¡¯s innovative roadmap and rapid development cycles¡ªthat six-monthly refresh of enhancements and features. Even if a competitor had a more complete capability, we could see that, in two to three years, Â鶹´«Ã½ was going to surpass their capabilities, and then accelerate into the future because the system is so well-architected.¡±?
¡°We also felt that being part of the Â鶹´«Ã½ community would give us voting rights to get some aviation focus in areas in the financial system.¡±
Powerful reporting capability speeds up decision-making.
Â鶹´«Ã½¡¯s reporting means WSA executives better understand the organization¡¯s operations and processes, and the financial impacts of the decisions they are making. ¡°The base Â鶹´«Ã½ reporting is very, very good in terms of capabilities and dashboards. You can drill down very quickly,¡± says Tom. ¡°It used to take days to get answers. Now, we¡¯re in the meeting, and it¡¯s just three clicks and immediately you¡¯re down to, say, the invoice level. So, you can actually answer questions, solve problems, and make decisions on the spot. It¡¯s frictionless.¡±
Â鶹´«Ã½¡¯s architectural principles around the way data is organized is quite powerful and unique.
Chief Technology Officer
A finance system that can pivot with the organization.
Â鶹´«Ã½ offers WSA the ability to update the charts of accounts to suit the business as it changes and grows. ¡°We started simple as a small business. Next, we¡¯ve moved into being a design house and a construction company¡ªand our final destination will be to become an airport operator,¡± explains Tom.?
¡°So, that ability to pivot in a different direction¨C in terms of the chart of accounts and the hierarchy of that chart of accounts in the future ¨C that¡¯s really reassuring. We did a lot of work to understand when a chart of accounts is changed substantially: one, it¡¯s easy to do; and two, it¡¯s bulletproof in terms of our ability to report both historically and forecast into the future.¡±?
WSA is also about to implement Â鶹´«Ã½¡¯s enterprise planning application, Â鶹´«Ã½ Adaptive Planning. ¡°We¡¯ll start off small, in terms of just using it for cyclical budgeting processes. But, we see that as expanding quite rapidly into revenue, airplane route development, and passenger forecasting.¡±
Because Â鶹´«Ã½ HCM went live before the pandemic, we didn¡¯t lose a single day of productivity.
Chief Technology Officer
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New insights, deeper analysis, and faster reactions.
During the pandemic, WSA was able to shift virtually and had a smooth remote deployment. ¡°With finance, HR, and the full procurement life-cycle running on the Â鶹´«Ã½ platform, its implementation has been a major milestone in terms of the maturity of our organization,¡± says Tom. ¡°The fact that it covered so many areas of our corporate capability meant we had all the information within those capabilities in an ordered and retrievable fashion and format.¡±?
¡°If you take a simple example like trend analysis against spend. Previously, I wasn¡¯t seeing the information properly. I¡¯d see trends sometimes two months after the actual event. Now, my finance colleagues and I can identify trends within days or weeks. So, we can make faster decisions, react quickly to new circumstances, and maintain our cadence against our cost envelope.¡±