A group of nine New Zealand tertiary institutions which banded together to find new a financial management package have chosen SunSystems by Systems Union.
Hawke’s Bay Polytechnic was the first to go live with the system on July 1 and other organisations following are Lincoln University, Dunedin College of Education, and polytechnics at Southland, Timaru, Tai Poutini, Hutt Valley, Taranaki and Tairawhiti.
Consultants Ernst & Young were hired in November 1994 to evaluate each of the approximately 70 accounting packages available in the New Zealand market.
Hawke’s Bay polytechnic’s Kerry Marshall says the main requirements of the group were for a flexible package with strong analysis and reporting features to meeting seemingly endless demands for a broad variety of information.
“We often need to give a cost per activity breakdown,” he says.
“Some of the requirements are pretty esoteric--for example, we recently needed a breakdown of costs associated with the activities we were undertaking in the disability area.”
The multiple deal emerged from a decision by financial managers from the group of polytechnic colleges and universities to upgrade their financial systems in unison. The group is working on standardising its computing model wherever possible, for example in a standard model to assist with training and development.
Marshall says working as a group has also given cost savings in the tendering and purchasing process. “For some of us this way of doing things is 15 to 20 times cheaper,” he says.
SunSystems is a Windows-based client-server system consisting of two fully integrated products--SunAccount consists of a ledger system, a fixed asset register and an allocations module.
SunBusiness is a sales and purchase order processing and inventory system.