Serco installs OneWorld

By ADAM GIFFORD

Increased complexity in the contracting market has encouraged the New Zealand warehousing and workshop management arm of Serco to install a JD Edwards OneWorld enterprise application suite.

IT project manager Tim McMahon said the financial and warehousing modules were now live at Serco Project Engineering's Trentham base, less than three months after the deal was signed.

The manufacturing modules should be in place by the end of the month and procurement and tracking systems will be completed by February. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young are doing the implementation.

Mr McMahon said the system, which cost between $750,000 and $1 million, replaced a Maximise financial system and Geac's Mainpac manufacturing software.

"We implemented it in phases. The first stage was to turn off the old system and replicate what we did before. Then we expanded it to cover more features of JD Edwards so eventually we will have full financials, warehousing and distribution."

Serco manages warehousing and operational repairs for the Army and police. The Trentham base, which has 100 staff, manages 65,000 inventory locations and tracks thousands of items.

In October 1999 Serco won the police contract to acquire, manage and dispatch 1700 line items to 600 national locations.

It assembles ration packs and medical kits for the Army and manages base level maintenance and repairs for vehicles, weapons and equipment - anything which will take more than 48 hours.

Mr McMahon said Serco has also won the contract to manage maintenance, hospitality and accommodation services at the Waiouru Army base.

"The way defence is moving with contracts, it wants us to take on tracking, control, maintenance and monitoring of equipment," he said.

"The first stage of being able to do that was re-engineering our management systems.

"We needed better technology to manage new plant and move forward with our various contracts."

It was the first JD Edwards implementation within Serco's international group of companies, and was a test run for possible use in other Australasian sites.

OneWorld was selected ahead of SAP and Intentia.

Mr McMahon said being able to run the system with only a small IT team was an important factor.