Intergen's newsletter, Smarts, now available for online reading.
Intergen provides information technology solutions across Australia, New Zealand and the world based exclusively on Microsoft’s tools and technologies.
1. INTERGENITE NEWS >> 2
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT >>
6WORLDWIDE PARTNER CONFERENCE >>
7WORLDWIDE PARTNER CONFERENCE >>
8MICROSOFT DYNAMICS
9GST AND SYSTEM READINESS >>
10THOUGHTS ON THE INDUSTRY >>
11CASE STUDIES >>
12
>> HOT NEWS:
WEB STRATEGY >> 3
SHAREPOINT 2010 >> 4
>> T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M AG A Z I N E I S S U E 2 3
>>
CASE STUDIES >>
5
< Copyright 2010 Intergen Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of Intergen Limited >
What a fantastic award to win. It is the
second time that Intergen has received a
Partner of the Year award from Microsoft and
it is something that we’re extremely proud of.
The win is, in no small part, the result of a huge amount of energy and
enthusiasm shown by everyone at Intergen for implementing great solutions
for our clients based on Microsoft technologies. It’s really no exaggeration
to say that we live and breathe Microsoft – from our participation in early
adopter programmes, through to the work we do for Microsoft, and right
through to the long-term support and maintenance of solutions we deliver
to our clients. We invest heavily in training and qualifications for our staff
and support a wide range of Microsoft initiatives, delivering hundreds
of projects each year. It is great to receive recognition from our most
significant business partner.
We were also particularly pleased to be one of only three partners in
the Asia Pacific region to make the Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle. We
have worked very hard over the past few years to grow a fantastic Dynamics
Microsoft 2010 Country
Partner of the Year –
New Zealand.
business. It is very satisfying to know that not only do we have a team that
stands out in New Zealand but that we stand out as a success in our region.
This comes at a time when we are increasing the amount of work we are
doing across the region, with projects currently in progress in Perth,
Sydney and Brisbane, and with one recently completed in Singapore.
The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference is always a highlight of the
year. It is a great opportunity to reflect on the direction of the information
technology market and the role the products and services from Microsoft
play. We have the opportunity to meet with Microsoft executives and gain
additional insight in to Microsoft’s direction and to validate our strategies
against theirs.
The cloud features very heavily in everyone’s future. Although many end-
users appear to be somewhat tentative, it is hard to dispute that, at the very
least, some of the current offerings make real economic sense. The amount of
investment and attention these offerings are receiving internationally indicate
that we are moving very quickly towards a completely new paradigm.
We are currently moving Intergen to the cloud. We believe that what is
good for our clients must also be good for us. This move will save us real
money and will be a great case study for large BPOS implementations in
New Zealand.
We have a lot of great stories in this edition of SMARTS. I hope you
enjoy reading some of them and, as always, please feel free to contact any of
the authors if you would like to discuss anything with them.
tony.stewart@intergen.co.nz
Intergen wins Citizenship Solution of the Year
and Portals and Collaboration Solution of
the Year at Microsoft New Zealand's Partner
Awards, held in Auckland on 18 August.
2. >>2 >> I N T E R G E N I T E N E W S < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >
6.
1.
2.
3. 5. 7.
8.
9.
We’ve been up mountains, celebrating on rooftops, launching
an office in Perth, receiving accolades in Washington,
Copenhagen and Auckland, setting up yellow headquarters in
St Louis, dining out and working out (and working hard, which
goes without saying), all in the name of intelligent business.
No rest for the wicked, so it seems, and here’s a mere flavour of
some of our most recent adventures in Intergen land.
1. Microsoft’s Brent Colbert and Paul Muckleston ( far left and far right) present Tony Stewart
and Wayne Forgesson Intergen’s awards.
2. Intergenities celebrating at the Microsoft New Zealand Partner Awards.
3. One of the shiny new trophies for the trophy cabinet.
4. Feeding the troops. The Christchurch team digging in at Winnie Bagoes.
5. The Intergen ski weekend. Chris Auld and James Newton-King conquer the mountain.
6. A multicultural midwinter Christmas. The Auckland team gets festive.
7. The Intergen Perth office launch. Not just a pretty face, Craig Keenan gets to work as host with
the most in the new Perth office.
8. On top of the world (with bubbles). Three cheers to us winning Microsoft Country Partner of
the Year for New Zealand! The Wellington team celebrates on the roof.
9. Intergen St Louis. In need of some yellow in his working day, Ben McKernan spruces up the
E•
SPONDER headquarters in St Louis.
INTERGENITES HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE
4.
3. >>3>> W E B S T R A T E G Y < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >
“A Web Strategy is a vision (often documented)
that clearly articulates how you will use the web to
help achieve or exceed your organisation’s business
objectives. It's a measurable plan of attack
specific to you; not a one-size-fits-all blueprint.”
Unlike many other endeavours within the IT universe, Web Strategy can
feel a bit more nebulous – that’s because no two strategies will ever be the
same. This is for the simple reason that your organisation is unique – so your
strategy should be as well.
What’s included in a Web Strategy?
A strategy can be as big or as small as you like. But there are some key areas of
focus that should be part of your strategy. It should include things like: project
background, vision, objectives, goals, positioning, landscape, opportunities,
success measures (ROI), analytics, audience, technology, promotion (SEO/SEM),
accessibility, social media, governance, brand, content and so on.
This list is not exhaustive and not all these components are mandatory. For
example, if you’re a social media start-up then your strategy will be different
to an e-commerce retailer or a public agency. What’s really important is that
the strategy receives buy-in from everyone in your organisation and that it
articulates some clear, realistic and measurable targets.
Why do I need one?
You don’t. You can probably survive without one. You can also build a house
without plans and you can probably find your way around a new city without
a map; it’ll probably just take a bit longer, cost more and you might not end
up where you wanted to.
What do I do with it?
The final part of your strategy should
be the roadmap. Based on everything in
your strategy, the roadmap will provide
the actual plan for what you’re going to
execute (time, effort, resources, milestones,
deliverables, cost and so on).
The roadmap might stipulate, for example,
that you can start coding tomorrow, your
online presence should be limited (and
you should instead be focsued on mobile
delivery) or that you need six months’
research before you do anything. It just
depends on you.
Your strategy should be reviewed regularly
against the vision you’ve created and the
goals you’ve set yourself. The roadmap will
include these dates – so it should become an
ongoing process of reviewing, refining
and improving.
If you’re wondering what the web can do for
your business or you’d just like to chat about
what’s happening online in your sector, please
contact giles.brown@intergen.co.nz.
Web Strategy. What is it? Why do you
need it? And what you do with it?
>> INTERGENITE:
g in
de
to
tones,
mple,
your
nd
obile
t
ularly
the
ap will
come an
g
n do for
at about
or, please
Giles Brown
What do you do?
I am a Web Strategist within the
Innovation, Strategy and Solutions Office
(based in Wellington, but working with
clients everywhere).
How do you make a difference?
I help clients to create, focus and execute
their Web Strategy. I also work on
specific projects that require anything
from the User Experience tool set – user
analysis, interaction design, information
architecture and so on.
What do you love about your job?
People. I’m from a technology-agnostic
background so I love working face-to-face
with clients and users to help create
things that look great, are easy to use
and work like they’re supposed to. I also
love the fact that the web changes daily –
so I’m constantly learning new things.
A bit about yourself…
I’ve worked in and around interactive
and online media since 1998, with
long periods at some of New Zealand’s
premier interactive, web and creative
communications agencies. Outside of
work, I enjoy spending as much time as
possible with my wife and two kids – we
live in Lyall Bay, Wellington, so there are
at least three days a year when we can
actually use the beach.
4. >>4 >> S H A R E P O I N T 2 010 < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >
We’ve been busy with SharePoint 2010 since well
before its official launch date in May this year,
and our SharePoint team has been abuzz with the
shiny new features of the release ever since they
got their hands on it. But rather than run through
the expected facts and figures, we thought we’d
go straight to the horse’s mouth, so to speak, and
ask our SharePoint gurus what they like the best.
Loren Scheuerman
“SharePoint 2010 has come a long way in the area of custom development.
Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 are both great tools that are
making the development process simpler, quicker and more flexible. Visual web
parts, visual designer for features, deployment and packaging functionality and
the SharePoint 2010 project templates (to name a few things) that come with
Visual Studio 2010 are helping to increase developer productivity and bring new
SharePoint developers up to speed faster than before.”
Jordan Mayer
“I would have to say that one of the major steps forward in SharePoint 2010 has been
with custom workflow configuration in SharePoint Designer 2010. In particular, the
update to the UI for creating custom workflows in SharePoint Designer 2010. The new
UI makes creation quicker, visually clearer and easier to follow. All steps in the workflow
are laid out on one page, reducing the need to click through multiple windows. With
everything on the same page, grouping lines and boxes have also been added to help
identify each step and their actions. This is particularly handy with nested steps.”
Highlights of SharePoint 2010 –
as decided by our SharePoint experts
Philip Plimmer
“My favourite thing about 2010 is the InfoPath integration, especially with
Business Connectivity Services. Now you can use the richness of InfoPath forms
in SharePoint with almost no additional effort.”
Toby Spendiff
“Excel Services has to be one of the most versatile aspects of SharePoint 2010.
Businesses can quickly create dashboards and publish existing spreadsheets
over the web. There’s also support for displaying any part of a spreadsheet like
a chart or range of cells individually within a web browser. We’ve used this with
customers to create dynamic dashboards which pull charts and data from a
number of different spreadsheets onto one page. Very cool!”
Margaret Zou
“SharePoint 2010 Access Services make it easy to publish your Access
databases to the web, providing a centralised location for users to interact with
your data.”
Angela Knight
“I heart SharePoint 2010 Search! I can set up an external content type, perform
a search over the external data, use the standard search with the refiner web
part to drill into my results using managed metadata fields and then when I
select a result, I can open it in a custom results page of my choice passing in
any metadata parameter I like – wicked!”
Chakkaradeep Chandran
"Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is packed with
excellent new and improved capabilities
and benefits that will help your company
quickly respond to changing business needs.
Productivity starts right from the free edition
– SharePoint Foundation 2010. With the
new Office Web Applications integrated into
SharePoint 2010, users can now directly edit
Word/Excel/PowerPoint/OneNote right from
the browser! One of my favourite features of
SharePoint 2010 is the Business Connectivity
Services (BCS) which allows you to work with
data from other line of business systems as if it
lived in SharePoint. And also using SharePoint
Workspace 2010, you can now work offline
and synchronise your changes back to your
SharePoint 2010 site whenever you reconnect."
Rob Stewart
“SharePoint 2010 has a greatly improved user
interface, making enterprise and web content
management easy.”
Loren Jordan Philip Toby Margaret Angela Chaks Rob
5. < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E > >>5>> E M E R G E N C Y M A N A G E M E N T
It’s in the ‘all hands to the pumps’ situations
when you really find out what you and your
organisation are made of. How deep is your
capability and how flexible and comprehensive
are your processes and systems?
For every organisation what constitutes an emergency or event is different.
It could be a major conference or a nationwide sporting event, a tsunami,
terrorist incident, pandemic, fire or flood. When they happen, though,
they tend to galvanise your team and draw the focus of management,
shareholders, Ministers and the media.
Our experiences working with organisations around
emergency response have taught us that three of the most
critical aspects of any such response are finding the right
information, visualising it in the right context and
then having the ability to communicate and
collaborate with others.
In other words, it’s not just planning and
preparation; it’s also about having the capability
and flexibility to respond swiftly and accurately
with a wide range of stakeholders.
Most systems on the market aren’t that flexible, and,
as we all know, no plan survives its first contact with an
event. A system needs to be able to adjust on the fly.
We have seen too many situations where the IT solution
goes from being a valuable tool to a hindrance because
it was unable to adapt to the changing requirements
during an incident.
What’s your worst-case scenario?
Being able to visualise the battle space (for emergency responders) is a
powerful capability that has really only come into its own in the last couple
of years. This is due, in part, to the general consumerisation of GIS mapping
(Google and Bing Maps), cheap readily-available GPS systems in vehicles and
cell phones, internet communication apps like Skype and Messenger, social
networking tools that allow the public to share information more readily, and
a plethora of network technologies (broadband, wi-fi, 3G, satellite…) with far
wider coverage, and easier to use with a range of different devices like smart
phones and netbook PCs.
Leveraging the extensive Microsoft platform, we are able to offer solutions that
are both comprehensive and flexible enough to give you the tools to plan and
respond to almost any situation – even the things you may have never thought of!
One of our core offerings is E•SPONDER,
a command and control system based
on Microsoft SharePoint. E•SPONDER
is used by around 2,500 first response
agencies (including the US Department
of Homeland Security, Police, fire and
local government organisations) in
the United States, and in other
countries like Australia, Canada
and Iceland. E•SPONDER is
also used in a number of private
international organisations such
as Microsoft, Kraft Foods, Save the
Children, and World Vision.
Here in New Zealand E•SPONDER is being
used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and Trade to respond to situations that
potentially affect Kiwis abroad, and to assist
with humanitarian response with our
Pacific neighbours.
We are also currently working with
the Ministry of Civil Defence and
Emergency Management (MCDEM) to
provide a national, regional and local
civil defence emergency planning and
response capability.
The potential benefits for your organisation’s
critical response efforts are huge and so
we have formed a dedicated team, focused
on Emergency Management and Public
Safety, and have been pulling together best
of breed solutions and partnerships so that
we can provide strong advice and market-
leading capability into your business.
Bryan Gallagher (previously Microsoft’s
Defence and Public Safety Technology
Specialist) and Ryan Day (previously a
Senior Project Manager at the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs and Trade) are
both experienced in the development
and implementation of Emergency
Management Information Systems (EMIS)
and provide a dedicated focus on this
critical area within Intergen.
If you’d like to talk more about emergency
or event management, please email
bryan.gallagher@intergen.co.nz.
Intergen’s Emergency Management
Specialists, Ryan Day and Bryan Gallagher.
6. >>6 < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >
This was my fifth Microsoft Worldwide Partner
Conference (WPC) and it was always going to be
interesting for a variety of reasons, not least of
which was that this was the first time we would have
multiple attendees – Bruce Smith, Simon Bright and
me – and that we were an award winner.
Also, following a huge release cycle at WPC2009, it was always going to be
challenging to have as much excitement this time around.
This turned out to be the case and there was less new release content.
Having said that, WPC10 was the busiest and most valuable WPC that I have
attended. There were a number of reasons for this, including the networking,
meetings and activities related to our award win. We were kept extremely busy
from the day we landed in DC until the day we left.
Key messages from WPC2010
The Cloud
We are “all in.” No surprises there, and if anyone thought that cloud wasn’t
going to be huge at WPC then they have obviously been in the backblocks for
the last year or two. Almost every presentation, demonstration or discussion
covered the cloud in some way shape or form. Microsoft is certainly fully
committed. Equally importantly, they recognise that the transition to the cloud
will take time and that it requires both an on and off-premise capability.
Windows Azure Appliance
This was released at WPC. Basically organisations will be able to order their
own containerised Windows Azure appliance farm. We checked out one of the
containers and, as a former hardware engineer, I was very impressed with how
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference
2010 Washington DC 11-15 July
>> WO R L DW I D E PA R T N E R CO N F E R E N C E
Wayne Forgesson is Intergen’s
Director of Marketing.
they have put it together. The only downside is the quantity of servers required
(initially) as a minimum: around 1000.
Microsoft Partner Network changes
While this was announced late last year, this year there was more detail available.
Microsoft is introducing a more structured partner framework that will allow
customers to get greater appreciation of a partner’s capability and experience.
InTune
This is a cloud-based PC management tool that was demoed at one of the
keynotes. Currently in beta, InTune looks great and I think it will certainly be
something of interest to a lot of organisations, including Intergen.
CRM2011
While Intergen has been working with CRM5
pre-release for some time, this was the first time
I had heard its official release name: CRM2011.
Interestingly, in keeping with Microsoft’s cloud
focus, CRM2011 will be released online first.
Consumer
Traditionally ignored at this partner-focused
event, Microsoft discussed and showed several
consumer-focused offerings this year, including
Windows Phone 7, Xbox Kinect and Windows
Microsoft’s Jon Roskill and Allison Watson present the Country Partner of the Year award to Wayne Forgesson.
7. >> INTERGENITE:
>>7< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >>> WO R L DW I D E PA R T N E R CO N F E R E N C E
Bruce Pollock
What do you do?
I joined Intergen in mid-July as one of the
new account managers in the Christchurch
office to provide extra bandwidth in the sales
process. My role is to maintain the relationship
between clients and us, acquire new business
and look after our existing customers.
How do you make a difference?
My background in FMCG supply chain,
manufacturing, distribution and retail has
given me a clear understanding of the
pain points in those sectors. Linking those
contacts with our expertise will enable us
to roll up our sleeves and get under the
hood to ease that pain.
What do you love about your job?
Getting involved in taking people and
businesses on a collaborative journey. Building
trust and credibility with our brand and
then leveraging this to provide guidance on
business tools and processes. Evangelising a
vision, then helping it become a reality.
A bit about yourself…
I’m a technology geek – as a consumer,
not a coder. I use an iPhone today but
I’m looking forward to the new Windows
Phone 7 device, and I have clearance
from above to buy an Xbox Kinect – for
educational purposes only, of course. I’m
married with two boys. My wife is from
Manila/Saudi Arabia and we met in
Shanghai.
7 Home wireless experience. All I can say is I want all
three and I’m sure my kids (not me, of course) would
have a lot of fun with Kinect. Seriously cool.
Vertical solution alignment
As part of Microsoft’s extensive R&D, considerable effort
is being put into solutions tailored at or for specific
vertical markets. Microsoft’s focus is on core product
development and add-ons and accelerators to ensure
unique business requirements are more easily met.
The other area of WPC this year of significance was the
number of meetings that we had, both with Microsoft
executives and our partners who were also attending WPC. Microsoft New Zealand did another great
job of lining up Microsoft Executive meetings for the Kiwi contingent and looking after us during our
stay. Many thanks to Brent, Misty, Bernadette, Stewart and the wider MSNZ team.
No review of a conference of this nature can ignore the many social aspects held over the five days, and there
were certainly plenty of them! The Kiwi contingent was well represented at the various events, the most apt
being the Football World Cup final where the Intergen team was decked out in undefeated All Whites shirts!
The last and most significant aspect of WPC10 was receiving our award for 2010 Country Partner of
the Year – New Zealand. Winning this award is fantastic recognition of our efforts with Microsoft and
our customers over the last 10 years. It required being onstage in front of about 10,000 people at
Tuesday’s keynote – as you can see there was plenty of yellow!
Steve Ballmer reflects. Victory is ours – Intergen’s Bruce Smith & Wayne Forgesson (in yellow) celebrate the occassion with Microsoft’s Jon Roskill, Kevin
Ackhurst and Allison Watson.
wayne.forgesson@intergen.co.nz
8. >>8 >> M I C R O S O F T D Y N A M I C S < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >
Daniel Munns – Intergen’s Retail Specialist
What do you do?
I’m Intergen’s Industry Lead - Retail Specialist. Working alongside
business development managers and technical solution
consultants, I look to establish the right priorities, tools and
industry best practices to grow our retail clients’ businesses. My
previous roles have been based in the UK where I've worked for
various international brands and retailers. For the last several
years I've worked in a leadership and strategic role for
Debenhams Retail, London.
How do you make a difference?
I can speak the retail language. I work with retail clients,
identifying and aligning their business priorities with
technical solutions.
To give you an idea, the following trends are typically at the
top of the list in the retail world:
1. Customer Centricity – everything a retailer considers is built
around the end consumer and the 'customer journey.’
2. Building visibility and flexibility in the supply chain – it
might sound easy, but tracking the correct milestones can
shave days off your re-supply time and secure sales.
3. Multi-channel and convergence channel shopping is
becoming commonplace – what does it mean to your brand?
What do you love about your job?
It's a challenging sector and every day is different. We are all
consumers and we are always hungry for new products and
services. Retailers are looking to differentiate themselves to stay
ahead of the competition, or at least in line with the competition.
In today's market retailers face strong competition and recovery
in the post-recession years remain uncertain, making the right
investments a bigger challenge. Retailers and their associated
supply chain partners can have lengthy supply chains which are
often complex and fast-moving.
A bit about yourself?
I came to Christchurch last September from London, where
I have worked for the last 13 years. My career has touched many
parts of the Retail Supply Chain, from design and lifecycle management
to in-store solutions. In my spare time I enjoy running in Hagley Park and
mountain biking over the Port Hills.
Things have been going from strength to strength in
Intergen’s Microsoft Dynamics Practice. Recently we
were admitted to the Microsoft Dynamics President’s
Club for 2011 and were one of three APAC partners
to make the Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle for
2011. There is really no higher recognition than this
in the Dynamics world and so we’re understandably
chuffed with these honours.
Doug Kennedy, Vice President, Dynamics Partners, says of our achievements:
“By providing the highest level of sales and innovation, customers can have absolute
assurance they are dealing with the ‘best of the best’ when working with Intergen.”
It doesn’t get much better than that as far as we’re concerned!
Dynamics Day ’10
Back in May we ran our second Dynamics Day two-day event in Wellington,
and we couldn’t have been happier with the way it unfolded. Great turn-
out, great sessions, great feedback. With around 100 attendees, 24 sessions
and three concurrent streams of activity, we had more than 30 Intergenites
involved in bringing the event to life. In the words of our esteemed leader,
Tony Stewart, “It’s great to see so many of our really smart people in action.”
A huge focus of this year’s Dynamics Day was on extending the conversation
past Dynamics, looking at it as less of a discrete offering than as a part of a
diverse integrated package for users, touching all areas of the business. We
also stressed the growing importance of the cloud to businesses and how
Dynamics fits within this picture.
A glimpse into the future
If you’re familiar with what we do, you’ll know we’re often waving our arms
>> INTERGENITE:
The latest in the world
of Microsoft Dynamics Simon Bright is Intergen’s Chief Operating
Officer and Dynamics Practice Principal.
about new technologies beyond the horizon,
and that we’re lucky enough to often get very
early exposure to them. We’re officially a part
of three Technology Adoption programmes in
the Dynamics space – for CRM5 (now called
CRM 2011), NAV 7 and AX 6 – previewing and
providing input into the upcoming releases.
While the nature of these programmes means
that we can’t shout from the rooftops about the
latest features, we are able to talk one-on-one
with customers who are interested in what lies
ahead and how it can bring your organisation
into the future. If you’d like a sneak preview or
a chat about what any of these releases hold in
store, I’d love to hear from you.
simon.bright@intergen.co.nz
Th
of
I C S
Just some of the Intergenites involved in this year’s
Dynamics Day.
daniel.munns@intergen.co.nz
9. >>9< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >>> G S T A N D S Y S T E M R E A D I N E S S
GST and systems readiness – the questions on everyone’s mind
On the face of it, the GST rate increase is easy to
understand: a percentage increase from 12.5% to
15% on 1 October. Yet as many organisations are
starting to realise, when it comes to their office
software systems, things are actually more complex
and a set of common questions is emerging.
One of the most commonly asked questions is seemingly very obvious – which
systems in our organisation handle GST calculations? You would immediately
think of the accounting system or forward-facing sales systems, of course.
But in reality many organisations may have other systems dealing with GST
calculations that are less obvious.
The fact is that, with the deadline in place, organisations – no matter what
size or sector – can no longer ignore the need to understand how the change
impacts their business, particularly the complexities of managing that change
from a systems perspective.
Here are some key concerns and how to address them:
Which systems handle GST calculations? This needs careful consideration.
As well as your general office accounting system, there are likely to be other
systems in the office which deal with GST such as Point of Sale (POS) systems
used for scanning bar codes, product information management systems, websites,
customer quotation systems and ad hoc spreadsheets. Organisations must
carry out checks to ensure these are set up to cater for the new rate.
Can you change the GST rate on your systems or is it hard-coded?
This has obvious implications with regard to how easy it may be to bring every
system up to date when the new rate comes into effect. If your system vendor
has specified in the software that the rate is set at 12.5%, how does this
figure get changed? Is the change made in only one place, or must multiple
changes be made? Some systems refer to a single setup source. However,
older legacy applications can have hard-coded GST rate calculations which
require changing and rigorous testing before release on 1 October.
Can you change the GST rate retrospectively?
This has two implications. Firstly, can businesses enter the new rate with an
effective date and then on 1 October, your systems just assume that rate or
will an organisation need to perform a cut-over on the 1 October? Naturally
this makes the cutover process more critical. Secondly, in the transitional
period after 1 October, organisations will have to deal with situations which
may involve both rates, as the old 12.5% rate will still be required for some
transactions. When entering these transactions in your new system you will
need to manually override the code displayed in the "GST" column with the
appropriate new code.
Will open purchase and sales order lines be updated by the GST rate?
Changes to the GST rate should impact GST calculations for un-invoiced sales
and purchase orders. In some systems, GST rates are brought onto the purchase
and sales order lines, thereby creating inaccurate calculations at point of
invoicing. Do you therefore need to force an update in your system or do you
need to perform an update to the data? Again, this has implications with regard
to how easy or complex it may be to update and maintain your systems.
Does your systems manage credits for purchase and sales? Will your
system(s) be able to credit back at the 12.5% GST rate for credits to orders
raised prior to the GST rate change? This is a more complex scenario but one
that many organisations will face. An item purchased before 1 October will
have included 12.5% GST in its price. If this item needs to be returned after
1 October, and the amount is credited, then it's important to manage this
credit at the 12.5% rate and not the new 15% rate. Businesses will need to
ensure that dual rates are maintained during a specific period to manage
the credit process and make changes to front-end sales systems so that those
applications can recognise this specific refund logic.
Will your systems require updates to existing, recurring customer
orders, laybys and deposits?
Managing transactions such as subscriptions, deposits, laybys, rebates and
volume discounts will require careful attention. Existing subscriptions will
require updating with new GST rates if there is a contract of supply where
invoices are raised monthly.
However, different treatment
will be applied to subscriptions
that are invoiced as a lump
sum at the beginning of
the period and treated
as a monthly debt.
Similar consideration
needs to be paid
to other amounts
that are recorded as
prepayments, debtors,
and accruals in systems.
What treatment
needs to be applied to
these sums and what
updates are required
to your existing data?
In some cases, systems
can manage these changes
automatically; however other
systems and manually-
managed spreadsheets will
require scripts and/or manual
manipulation.
Ultimately, it is essential that organisations
ask themselves these questions and put
a plan in place. With the October 1 date
looming, this is an issue that requires
urgent consideration.
james.page@intergen.co.nz
James Page is Microsoft Dynamics AX Service Line
Lead for Intergen.
10. >>10 >> T H O U G H T S O N T H E I N D U S T R Y < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >
Technologists everywhere
are espousing the value of
the cloud. Access your data
from anywhere. Achieve
unlimited scalability. Don’t
worry about running your
own servers – let others do
that for you. While these
assertions are admirable,
there is another area which
needs to be looked at: do
the numbers make sense
from a business perspective?
Rather than spend time defining what the cloud
means, the purpose of this article is to look at
the use of cloud services in a general sense and
the economic benefits that can be realised.
Calculating value
The economic value of cloud-based solutions can
be looked at from several different perspectives,
including budgeting, resource utilisation,
availability and performance and security. Each
of these factors will affect different organisations
differently. While the cloud will benefit some
organisations more than others, they should
at least start looking at how cloud-delivered
applications can benefit their organisations.
Cloud Economics: Making the business case
Most cloud-based services charge their customers on a monthly basis,
adopting a subscription model for longer-term relationships, with software
being used on a “pay as you need” basis. Rather than pay for new hardware
and software licenses upfront, organisations can free up typically scarce
capital expenditure for other investments that grow the business. Software
subscriptions now become an operational expense, and often cost less
than the original capex amount. For many organisations, the opex model is
advantageous, not least of which because of its predictability.
While virtually everyone now relies on IT, most organisations don’t wish
to become IT experts. Due to an increasing reliance on
IT, many organisations have had to invest in IT resources
– particularly staff. With the availability of cloud-based
services that provide email and other core functions, the
focus of IT resources can be re-evaluated. Rather than focus
on commodity products, the organisation can look to this
team to see how IT can differentiate the business and
improve overall efficiency and performance. What’s more,
upgrades to the software – patches and major releases –
can occur seamlessly, without requiring staff and without
the traditional disruption and cost to the business that
implementing such changes in-house can cause. The direct
and indirect savings here can be considerable.
With Internet access virtually ubiquitous, and with devices
that are effectively always-on, organisations need to be
looking at how they can provide access to key systems, such as email, on an
around-the-clock basis. Organisations want to encourage their workers to work
whenever and wherever they are, while workers appreciate the flexibility of
being able to work when they want. The cloud, with its high availability and
access, enables this to happen, while the performance of these systems is
designed to support thousands of simultaneous users, more than meeting the
needs of the average Australiasian organisation.
When it comes to security, a common question that any organisation evaluating
cloud solutions must ask is: “How secure is our current IT infrastructure?” For many
organisations, their own systems are considerably less secure than the environments
where cloud-based applications are hosted. It’s safe to assume that the investments
made in securing cloud-based data centres far exceed the capabilities any single
organisation could provide, almost regardless of its size.
Get ahead in the cloud
By investing in the cloud, organisations are effectively outsourcing (at least) some
of their IT infrastructure to experts in their field, with capabilities and budgets that
exceed the resources available to any single organisation. Some
applications, such as email, are becoming commoditised – and
organisations will typically get no commercial advantage using
email that is on-premise than if it were running in the cloud; and
users probably won’t notice the difference. For services such as
email, unified communications and collaboration, accessing a
cloud service will likely make sense. For other applications that
are mission critical or that differentiate an organisation from its
competitors, the cloud could be used as a deployment model, but –
right now at least – it probably makes more sense for organisations
to run these systems themselves.
Our advice to organisations is simple: Take a look at the
applications you use and evaluate the business case of having some
of these applications hosted in the cloud. Some cloud offerings
can add new capabilities to an organisation at a minimal cost,
while cost savings for more commoditised applications, such as email, could quickly be
calculated – coming into effect immediately, or at the next appropriate upgrade cycle.
As a delivery model, the cloud isn’t going away, and organisations should look to see
how quickly they can take advantage of it.
tim.howell@intergen.co.nz
Tim Howell is Intergen’s Marketing Manager
E >
11. < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >>> C A S E S T U D Y >>11
>> INTERGENITE:
From the paddock to the farm kitchen table, and everywhere in
between – Agriculture ITO cultivates a new training system using
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Agriculture Industry Training Organisation is
one of New Zealand’s largest industry training
organisations, helping more than 8,000 people
every year to gain the knowledge and skills they
need for a productive and rewarding career in
the agriculture sector.
They needed a training information management system to support their
field-based staff and students who may need to work offline at the farm
kitchen table or in similarly remote locations, with the information then
synchronising back to the master version.
AgITO wanted to provide a future-proof foundation for an online channel
that would support and unify all areas of the business – from management of
relationships and customer interactions, management of all programmes and
courses through to all course assessment and moderation activities.
With the new system in place Argiculture ITO is able to offer a higher level
of service to its customers. The right information is at hand at the right time,
and CRM allows for quick and easy enhancements to adapt to changing
business needs.
Agriculture ITO is dedicated to providing the best training possible, and their
new CRM system helps make this a reality.
Brent Dickens
What do you do?
I’m an Interactive Designer in the User
Experience Design team. We work to create
portals, websites and applications that look
superb and are a joy to use.
How do you make a difference?
By pushing design to the forefront of any
and all the work we do. It’s not just eye
candy – everything we design deserves
care and attention.
What do you love about your job?
I have a real passion for design and the
fine art of front-end development, pushing
the latest web technologies into production
so that we are creating the best cutting
edge work for our clients. I love working
on varied, interesting projects with great
people who really know their stuff.
A bit about yourself…
I was born and bred in Lower Hutt, now
living in Petone. I have spent most of my
life in Wellington with a few snowboarding
seasons living in Wanaka and Dunedin plus
a bit of time in Ohakune. I’ve also spent
some time in Australia and Japan. I’ve gone
from running a small boutique web design
company, to full-time student and am now
back into the workforce. I have 14 month-
old daughter named Lola who is a joy (most
days). I love riding my Vespa, mountain bike
riding, DJing and collecting sneakers.
“We now have an integrated system enabling users to capture all details
for our customers. Access to information is now available to everyone. We
now have a complete information source that can be used by all areas of
the business. It’s easy to access and simple to use, as it is using the familiar
Microsoft interfaces that Outlook provides.”
Lyndon Allott, Information Systems Manager
12. FIND OUT MORE ABOUT INTERGEN:
Auckland: +64 9 966 3070 info@intergen.co.nz
Wellington: +64 4 472 2021 www.intergen.co.nz
Christchurch: +64 3 964 0017
Dunedin: +64 3 477 5648
Sydney: +61 2 9969 0088 www.intergen.com.au
Perth: +61 8 9228 9990
< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y T H R E E >
>> C A S E S T U D I E S
Lincoln University had an urgent
requirement to replace their
aged and unsupported content
management system (CMS).
It was vital to meet a pressing
three-month deadline for the
project to be delivered, with
students needing information
on which to base their university
and course selections.
As New Zealand’s specialist land-based
university, Lincoln has a student population
of 4000 and the website is a window to all
aspects of the university’s operation, including
academic faculties, enrolments, course
information, scholarships and orientation.
Students are a web-savvy and well-connected
audience, and the existing CMS platform
fell well short on its ability to deliver and
facilitate the creation of content.
Lincoln went to market and selected Intergen
and content management solution, EPiServer
CMS. As a well-structured and flexible CMS
platform, EPiServer has delivered immediate
benefits and has allowed Lincoln to engage
with the entire lifecycle of a student, from
prospecting to enrolment, to post-graduate
and alumni activities.
EPiServer CMS helps land Lincoln
University where they want to be
One million members belong to the Automobile Association, making customer service the
cornerstone of the AA’svision to provide value and great service for motorists. As an organisation
of 1000 people, with offices and service centres spread the length of New Zealand, the AA
needed a central internal hub to support their culture, communications and service delivery.
Looking for the tool to help them create this, the AA decided to leverage their recent
investment in a SharePoint platform and enlisted Intergen to carry out its express
‘Rapid Results’ implementation.
A key driver with the intranet project was finding a more efficient way to manage
the AA’s customer feedback process. Largely manual to date, it existed on several
different databases and there was no consolidation or organisational view of
customer enquiries and their resolution. Now the AA has the ability to route all
customer feedback and enquiries to the right area and person and action. The result
is greater visibility and faster tracking and resolution.
And customer feedback is just one example of smarter workflows that have
resulted from The Hub. The AA’s Human Resources Advisor, James Tunnell, says:
“Collaboration is important – for many of our super users we have built workflows to
help manage information. Creating team sites has been a major benefit and they’re
finding they’ve got real power to get things done with the SharePoint tools. Multiple
users can access the same information; we have excellent search and reporting
features and we’re finding really innovative ways of doing things.”
Uptake of The Hub has been positive and organisational silos are now a thing of the past.
The Hub – the perfect
intranet vehicle for the AA
Lincoln Online Services Manager Dorje McKinnon comments on how far the
site has come:
“The difference is about making the website about the individuals who are
using it. Students are now viewing information that is current, relevant and
easily accessible.”
For many, a university’s website is the first hook for students making their
decisions for the future, and Lincoln is now confident they’re putting their best
foot forward in the web space.