Movex choice for $1m upgrade

By ADAM GIFFORD

Water jet manufacturer CWF Hamilton, creator of the Hamilton jetboat, is replacing its 25-year-old IBM System 34 computer with a $1 million 100-user Movex business management system from Swedish firm Intentia.

"They have got the biggest stock of System 34 parts in the Southern Hemisphere," said Intentia manager Dougie Beck. "We have a deadline to get Movex in before they run out of spares."

Chief financial officer Peter Moore said the old Ipics software which still ran the company's production scheduling, accounting and payroll functions had not kept up with the company's 20 per cent annual growth.

"When we bought it in 1978 we did very little exporting," Moore said. "We mainly built infrastructure - large projects like hydro power stations and parts of the Tiwai Pt aluminium smelter.

"Now we are 100 per cent jet, there is no general engineering and 98 per cent of our business is offshore, in the work-boat and patrol-boat market."

He said the Christchurch company was the largest marine exporter last year, selling jets to 50 countries for up to $250,000 each.

To cope, the company developed workarounds on Access databases and Excel spreadsheets, meaning it was hard to get an overall picture.

Because it has complex engineering requirements and enters into long-term maintenance contracts for its jets, Hamilton needs to retain a huge amount of detail about each individual motor built.

Twelve vendors were considered, and Baan also made the shortlist.

"If we are going to keep a system for 20 years, we wanted to be sure of it," Moore said. "We started at the lowest level of system and went up through the tiers until we came up with one which best fitted our requirements."