Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) is responsible for marketing New Zealand to the world. Headquartered in Auckland with physical presence in nine countries globally, it is the oldest tourism marketing department in the world.
The global travel market is no exception to digitisation and is ripe for further disruption over the coming years. As a niche player in the global market, TNZ is well-placed to ‘ride the wave’ of digital transformation by being an innovation leader in global destination marketing.
Business challenge
TNZ wanted to take advantage of technology advancements and provide a modern system to better report on where and how money was spent to market New Zealand. A modern and robust system with a consistent user experience was needed to improve efficiency and agility in ensuring the global workforce achieves the best outcomes for New Zealand.
The existing on-premise, heavily customised finance system required an improved user experience and increased reporting capability.
Challenging to maintain, the existing system also necessitated significant manual workarounds.
A simpler online travel and expense management process was seen as essential due to TNZ’s highly mobile workforce.
In addition, TNZ wanted to provide individual budget holders with a complete picture, not just a view of only their area of responsibility, to drive decisions that benefited the broader business. The ability for these budget holders to quickly update forecasts and easily move funds from one area of spending to another, were also required.
“We selected DXC based on their professionalism and capability. The team was eager to engage and offered us comfort in ensuring they understood our requirements.”
Diana Nott Project Financial Controller Tourism NZ
Finally, TNZ’s digital-first strategy dictated that the finance system should move to the cloud to improve mobility and scalability, with access to regular updates enabling them to be at the forefront of the latest developments of the technology.
Diana Nott, Project Financial Controller for TNZ said, “We wanted to automate manual workarounds, improve data reliability and transparency, and enable fast and easy movement of funds for the finance team. We also wanted an automated system to reduce the time that business people spent completing finance administrative tasks, freeing them up to work on other things, maximising value to the organisation.”
Solution
After an initial open RFI, TNZ selected four ERP systems to evaluate further with implementation partners. DXC Technology recommended Oracle Cloud ERP Financials, Procurement, Expenses, and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) to deliver an integrated global SaaS platform.
TNZ had worked with DXC previously to support other solutions and wanted an implementation partner with a physical presence in New Zealand to facilitate face-to-face contact as required. Nott commented, “We selected DXC based on their professionalism and capability. The team was eager to engage and offered us comfort in ensuring they understood our requirements. They reassured us that the Oracle solutions proposed would provide a modern SaaS platform to meet our specific business needs now and into the future.”
“We understand how to deliver technology innovation through a whole-of-business approach to create a highly scalable and flexible and future-proofed environment.”
Richard James Director DXC Practice for Oracle Asia Pacific
The EPM component complemented ERP by providing management insights on top of operational data.
Selecting Oracle for both provided a familiar look and feel, which was beneficial. Nott continued, “We liked the clean interface that made sense, even to novice users. They are different solutions; however, users think of them as one with access from one dashboard.”
The mobility functionality in Oracle was crucial to enable TNZ’s highly mobile workforce to continue to work while out and about. The scenario modelling in EPM was also key. When funding is received, it is imperative that best use spending is planned. The scenario modelling will allow this with ease, with real-time spending updates, and fast decision making if something impacts the business.
Implementation
DXC undertook a high-level solution validation to demonstrate specific capabilities before producing design deliverables. The solution deployment covered financials, workforce, capital projects, balance sheet, cash flow, and budget adjustment models as well as procurement and expenses.
Moving from the existing on-premise solution to Oracle Cloud significantly impacted TNZ users with several new systems and business processes required. Nott commented, “DXC greatly assisted with proactive change management planning, guidance, stakeholder engagement, and targeted communications to mitigate risk in this area.”
Oracle Guided Learning (OGL) was incorporated to build customised training modules and prompts.
Personalised, guided, and contextual user onboarding visualisations were created, with the in-application guidance simplifying and accelerating user adoption of the new solution. This was instrumental in driving initial user uptake and ensuring ongoing learning - particularly for non-finance people and those located remotely.
In readiness for go-live, DXC delivered in-person subject matter expert (SME) training to TNZ, and then together, TNZ and DXC provided end-user training. Following go-live, TNZ moved to a Cloud Care Managed Services agreement with DXC. Nott commented, “Being able to offer all users training in the same way regardless of location was important, and the ongoing benefit of OGL is useful for people when they get stuck.”
DXC’s robust industry IP developed through decades of learned best practice, implementation experience, and technical and functional expertise proves game-changing in these types of implementations. The ability to leverage proven repeatable processes reduces project risk, improves business outcomes, helps optimise customer experience, and accelerates time to value.
Richard James, Director, DXC Practice for Oracle Asia Pacific, said, “We understand how to deliver technology innovation through a whole-of-business approach to create a highly scalable and flexible and future-proofed environment. We leveraged our public sector expertise during TNZ’s implementation.
Utilising the knowledge we’ve built from previous engagements, with pre-built approaches, helps us optimise the path to Oracle SaaS, ensuring transformation in a low risk and rapid manner for clients.”
“For non-finance business users, it’s a much easier system. They can spend more time doing what they’re good at and less time burdened by unfamiliar financial administration tasks. The finance team have vastly improved insight and control.”
Diana Nott Project Financial Controller Tourism NZ
Results and benefits
TNZ now has a modern integrated Oracle cloud-based financial management solution used by around 180 users across nine countries. Global financial planning has improved, as has the functionality across all financerelated tasks e.g. multi-currency expense management for a global workforce and procurement. It will enhance business agility and improve decision-making with simple and insightful reporting and analytics.
Scenario planning will help the finance team assess many potential outcomes and make iterative short- and mediumterm forecasts. The ability to run detailed ‘what-if’ scenarios for possible economic situations, delays and disruptions is essential in today’s everchanging world.
Some of the most significant benefits involve Accounts Payable (AP) automation, with payment files now automatically sent to the bank.
This eliminated the need for manual intervention and uploads, making the payments process now 75% faster than previously, allowing the teams to spend more of their time on value add tasks.
Non-finance staff previously processed their own invoices and receipts, spending substantial time manually scanning and entering data, with additional finance team involvement necessary to correct errors and conduct follow up. Expenses are now automated and managed on the go with receipts captured and uploaded and supplier invoices are scanned into the system using AP automation, saving significant time while improving accuracy.
Managers have also praised the simple approval process, which is accessible from their phones. Where previously, they clicked multiple times to ascertain what they were approving, it’s now visible from one simple screen.
The procurement process is more efficient. Most of what TNZ procures is services and the previous purchase order system was unnecessarily complex with quantities included and other irrelevant requirements. Servicebased requisitions are now enabled, which is much cleaner. Approvers see every cost related to an activity at once, with a complete view of the different vendors involved.
Nott concluded, “For non-finance business users, it’s a much easier system. They can spend more time doing what they’re good at and less time burdened by unfamiliar financial administration tasks. The finance team have vastly improved insight and control.
Our transition from DXC’s project implementation team to their ongoing managed services team was smooth, with everyone showing very high commitment in supporting us. DXC and TNZ worked as one team throughout the project. I really enjoyed working with the consultants. They were competent and took the time to understand our requirements and committed to ensuring our needs were met.”
Oracle Cloud ERP is embedded with multiple security and risk management features and is hosted in Oracle’s highly secure data centres. TNZ’s data is isolated from the other customers. Cloud ERP delivers role based access control, which ensures TNZ have a secure foundation to grant access to their users, through pre-built security roles and segregation of duties logic.
“DXC and TNZ worked as one team throughout the project. I really enjoyed working with the consultants. They were competent and took the time to understand our requirements and committed to ensuring our needs were met.”
Diana Nott Project Financial Controller Tourism NZ
The future
TNZ leverages DXC’s ongoing Cloud Care Managed Services and will take up new functionality delivered by Oracle’s continuous updates, ensuring the investment remains current.
Since Oracle Cloud ERP and EPM are automatically updated regularly by Oracle, TNZ is constantly provided with the industry’s most advanced technology, offering the ability to build, innovate, automate, adapt and leverage new business opportunities on demand.
EPM will be optimised for managers with enhanced modelling and planning across finance to improve decisions.