Electricity distributor Scanpower in New Zealand’s North Island has transitioned to the MAGIQ Cloud Platform as part of its wider company strategy to adopt a fully Cloud business systems environment. By moving to the Cloud, the utility company has improved its systems security and accessibility; as well as future-proofing its business systems for new technologies and innovation.
Scanpower is a regional electricity distributor supplying power to 6,720 customers in the Tararua region, including Dannevirke, Woodville, Norsewood and the outlying rural areas. The Company operates an electricity network covering a geographic area of 2,100km², with 875km of overhead and underground power lines.
The MAGIQ Cloud Platform is a fully native Cloud, Software as a Service (SaaS) public administration platform designed to meet financial and legislative requirements within a simple, easy to use Cloud environment.
Scanpower initially implemented the MAGIQ Performance budgeting and reporting suite in 2016. In 2018 they chose to expand their MAGIQ systems footprint and implemented the MAGIQ Finance and MAGIQ Payroll suites. By upgrading their on-premise MAGIQ systems to the MAGIQ Cloud Platform all of their business systems are now fully operational in the Cloud.
Moving to the Cloud
Scanpower had adopted a company-wide strategy to move to the Cloud and Company Accountant Ben van der Spuy says the Company was very motivated to transition across to the MAGIQ Cloud Platform.
“We were really keen to move. We now have our entire business systems environment running in the Cloud, which means no more server infrastructure on-site to worry about and we have much more confidence around the security of our data,” said Ben.
“In the MAGIQ Cloud our system back-ups and disaster recovery are completely taken care of and that’s a major advantage.”
Ben believes another significant benefit of working in the Cloud is improved accessibility. Scanpower has staff spread across three locations and moving to the Cloud has dramatically simplified system access.
“Staff working in remote offices or even from home can now simply log in on their computer via their web browser; without any complex VPN’s or connection issues. Everyone can now easily access our MAGIQ business systems and work from anywhere, which is much more efficient.”
In addition to the benefits the Cloud environment is providing, Ben is also enjoying some of the new functionality delivered in the MAGIQ Cloud Platform.
As a utility company Scanpower invests significant time in tracking its project costs and the ability to view and access accurate ‘life to date’ figures is a major advantage.
“Previously we had to produce additional reporting out of Project Accounting to see the ‘life to date’ figures, but now the data is just there, which is fantastic and saves us a lot of time and effort,” he said.
Improved reporting capabilities will also allow the Finance team to provide each Divisional Manager with a Dashboard highlighting Divisional Performance and KPI’s to build better transparency and accountability across the organisation.
The Transition Experience
Reflecting on the project to transition to the Cloud, Ben believes it has been a very positive experience with an excellent level of go-live support provided by the MAGIQ Team.
“The whole transition project has just been great. On the day we went live the MAGIQ team were on-site with us to quickly deal with any issues or questions from staff. They also spent time with staff at our remote sites, which was fantastic for helping with user adoption,” said Ben.
“The support we have received from Rodger Nelson and Jordan Taylor in particular has been awesome.”
Scanpower completed its monthly reporting processes shortly after go-live, which Ben says also went very smoothly.
“Our monthly reports were due to be completed the week after we went live and we needed to make sure our reports all transitioned across without any issues,” said Ben.
Again, the MAGIQ Team including Product Development Manager, Nick Parnham were on hand to help us and went out of their way to make sure any issues were resolved immediately.”
Future-proofing
Moving to the Cloud has also allowed Scanpower to future-proof its business systems and prepare for new technologies and innovations such as mobility.
“Providing staff with mobile access is a really interesting option that we will be keen to look at down the track. A Purchase Orders App for example is something that could introduce some real business efficiencies.
The MAGIQ Cloud Platform already has full mobile capability available, which means when we’re ready we can take full advantage of it,” said Ben.