UXC Oxygen to strengthen SAP practice in NZ

UXC Oxygen is looking to beef up its SAP practice in New Zealand, says newly appointed Wellington practice manager Mike Smith.

Previously based in the US, he has returned to New Zealand to take up the role in which he is responsible for the overall management of customer projects in both the Wellington region and throughout the South Island.

Smith had worked for six years as an SAP consulting director in the US, responsible for the full portfolio of services and sales functions in the South East region. He has worked on several large US state tax and revenue management implementation projects. Before that, he had senior practice director roles with both Siebel and PeopleSoft in the US.

“My focus will be on growing the team here,” he says.

While in the US, he was responsible for coordinating SAP's international service operations.

Smith says he wanted to return to New Zealand for family reasons – he had previously worked for PeopleSoft in Wellington – and that the UXC group was a proven leader in implementing SAP solutions.

He says much of his recent work in the US in relevant in New Zealand.

“SAP is driving a tremendous amount of innovation in the cloud with HANA, analytics and mobility in government.

“For example, my team assisted the city of Boston during the foundation phase of a project to implement a strategy management solution and then business management, which was used to track day to day operational goals. The city now offers interactive scorecards for 18 city departments, a portal for the city's raw data, and several internal dashboards that help educate decision making in all 45 city departments.

“SAP is well beyond what we know as yesterday's traditional ERP. Inland Revenue in the US is a very mature customer, SAP having run their financial management information system for more than 15 years. The key criteria now will be how well they manage the transformation and change managedment, moving from a 20-plus-year-old legacy solution.”

UXC Oxygen has more than 350 SAP consultants in Australia and New Zealand.