SaaS Plus streamlines cemetery finances at government business

The transition to TechnologyOne has centralised technology functions, streamlined processes and improved efficiency across the Metropolitan Memorial Parks, resulting in significant cost savings.

We are saving more than the investment we made with TechnologyOne, says Simon Officer, chief financial officer of Metropolitan Memorial Parks

When Simon Officer became the inaugural chief financial officer of the new NSW government business known as Metropolitan Memorial Parks (MMP) in July last year, he inherited multiple, outdated technology systems.

MMP had been formed from the amalgamation of Rookwood General, Northern Metropolitan and Southern Metropolitan cemeteries, as part of the government’s strategy to create efficiency in the operations of Crown Land cemeteries and encourage the greater public use and enjoyment of the green spaces found across Sydney’s cemeteries.

Officer was charged with leading the financial consolidation and transformation of this sprawling property portfolio.

But his immediate challenge was that MMP’s financial operations had previously been siloed across three separate finance systems: procurement systems, budgeting tools and financial reporting platforms.

“They were all operating on different platforms, none of which were current technology platforms. I also inherited three different teams using three different systems in three different ways,” Officer says.

“ I needed to go through the process of making a move to a single best practice finance system.”

In his previous roles as CFO at Mission Australia and CFO at the Aged Care Quality Safety Commission, Officer had experience of TechnologyOne.

He was also attracted to the Australian company’s innovative Saas Plus approach, which does away with traditional project costs, simplifying the entire process of implementation, operation and support.

He says the transition to TechnologyOne at MMP, which came after a competitive tender process conducted in the final quarter of calendar 2023, started in January this year.

The system went live on June 4, an incredibly fast implementation.

“I was very insistent that we adopted basically no configuration changes unless they were critical,” he says.

“We wanted to lift it straight out of the box and use it as configured.”

The transition to TechnologyOne has centralised technology functions, streamlined processes and improved efficiency across the entire MMP organisation.

Specifically, by consolidating licences, there were significant cost savings for the organisation too.

“We’ve gone from having three different finance system licences, two different procurement system licences, and two different budgeting system licences, to having one agreement in place, which is a SaaS service,” Officer says.

“Overall, we are saving more than the investment we made with TechnologyOne.”

The new cloud-based solution has also offered increased accessibility, allowing field staff to manage purchase orders, receive goods and access financial information via mobile devices.

“Most of their purchase orders were previously made after the fact,” Officer says.

“In many situations, invoices would simply arrive and literally be stamped, coded and dated by someone the old-fashioned way,” he says.

“We’ve now achieved a great adoption rate of everyone doing their own requisitions and purchase orders, creating a self-service system.

“We’ve implemented scanning technologies with all our supplier invoices come to a central email where they are digitally processed into TechnologyOne and matched to their purchase orders.

“If the goods have been received, the three-way match is automated, and the invoice is processed for payment. There is no manual invoice approval process required.”

Officer says he believes TechnologyOne’s competitive advantage lies in offering clients a solution configured around a standard best practice.

TechnologyOne’s proudly Australian solutions are now used by more than 230 federal and state government departments and agencies across Australia and New Zealand, including the Tasmanian and West Australian governments.

“Many of those things have come out of their years of development across local government and federal government, as they picked up the efficient ways business process should operate,” Officer says.

“It is like taking part in a complex finance system in a simple pre-configured package. You don’t have to spend your life configuring it.

“You don’t need a squadron of people who are permanently on staff to manage your configurations, because it just comes to you as a best practice, best process, best product. It makes a huge difference.”

He says staff feedback has been positive, appreciating the ease of use and efficiency gains of the new system.

“I literally have employees walk up and tell me how much they love it, whether it be the financial team or grounds staff who need to raise purchase orders,” he says.

“They can do it quickly and efficiently on their mobile phone. They don’t have to fill out manual old purchase order books after the work has all been done.”

A multi-phase approach to the implementation has been adopted by MMP.

The next step will involve fully integrating the three different technology systems that manage its cemetery and cremation operations.

“We need to revisit the functionality of the applications to ensure duplication is eliminated and TechnologyOne is the source of truth for finance functionality,” Officer says.

“So going forward the cemetery management systems will focus on the management of cemeteries, not the management of finance functions.”

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