Harness winds of change

With a growing focus on renewables, Balance of Plant company Zenviron is getting ready to hit the ground running as the sector expands, supported by the innovative COINS Enterprise Resource Planning software system.

Zenviron is a highly experienced, full-service Balance of Plant (BOP) contractor specialising in the design and construction of large-scale renewable energy projects across Australia and New Zealand.

With new government targets set in Australia, the company is busily building itself to cater for a market that it anticipates will expand rapidly in the next two to five years.

To help it do that, Zenviron Chief Financial Officer Richard Clark sought out a way to help improve productivity and efficiency across all its operations and the answer, he says, was the Construction Industry Solutions (COINS) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform.

The system, he says, lets Zenviron combine its invoicing, project management and financial control systems into one easy-to-use software system.

“Prior to implementing COINS, we were using another system and it didn’t have several of the integrated modules we were looking for, such as accounts payable, vendor management, or the workflows,” says Clark.

“We used external support overseas and the reporting side was predominantly in Excel.”

“The old system was quite archaic, inefficient, very time consuming and not all in the one place like COINS is now.”

Supporting business growth

Combining plant and asset management, invoicing, procurement, payroll, forecasting, daily costs and cash flow, and subcontractor management in one software system allows Zenviron to meet its current demand for project management needs, confidently tackle large projects and handle increased demand well into the future.

Clark says Zenviron has every confidence COINS will be able to support the company’s rapid growth. “COINS allows us to have certainty that we’ll be able to build the business – not just with the platform, but also the support network behind it, right up to COINS Managing Director Jim Farrer.”

“If we want to try something different or ramp up operations, we know we’re going to be supported by the COINS support team.”

Clark adds that he is also confident in the infrastructure of the system. “We know that it’s able to easily handle what we have today and it’s a no-brainier that it will be able to cope when we increase activity,” says Clark.

“We’re looking to ensure our business is at the right size to be able to cope with the influx of renewable projects that are coming online,

Innovative planning and forecasting

One of the key features of the COINS

ERP+ system is its innovative Business Planning and Forecasting systems, which gives Zenviron the ability to immediately access accurate data in real-time for project performance reviews and financials –creating opportunity pipelines and overhead

This feature allows COINS customers to streamline their end-of-month reporting and forecasting to improve margins and profits, as well as manage risks and opportunities across

Clark says this feature has been a transformative one for Zenviron.

“The end-of-month reporting, the Business Planning and Forecasting and the standardisation of the way the COINS platform reviews and aggregates data is absolutely critical to Zenviron,” he says. “In our old system, Excel was the main reporting tool, and it was very hard to enquire what managers or project managers wanted.”

“No one else in the business had access to the system – other than the accounting department.

“Whereas today with COINS, everyone has their own access based on permissions and we can either run a report or make a real-time enquiry on the screen to understand various aspects of our current projects.”

The integrated project control and financial management architecture of the COINS ERP+ system provides Zenviron with ‘one source of truth’ to guarantee accurate, timely and verifiable information is available for all stakeholders in the business.

Clark says the system is remarkably userfriendly and easy to navigate, allowing for report automation to save time. “I personally like the reports that are autogenerated,” he says. “They are my chosen summaries that I can see on a daily basis without having to jump directly into the system.”

He adds that the COINS platform is easy to navigate, enabling him to look up information in less time than it takes to ask someone else to do it. “The level of detail that you can go to – right down to the invoice – is a real plus for us at Zenviron,” says Clark. “We can scale up using the same platform knowing it has the ability to improve what we’re doing now.”

Working together to implement COINS Principal Solutions Architect Wayne

Kemp worked on the implementation of the COINS ERP+ platform for Zenviron and says his team understood the company’s key needs right from the start. “We work closely with Zenviron in an open, honest, collaborative manner to ensure that our solutions add both value to its business and deliver a competitive advantage,” says Kemp. “There was an alignment of values and culture from the start.”

“We use a collaborative software development model which allows our customer-specific priorities and requests to be fast-tracked in the COINS global development pipeline.”

Kemp says COINS Australia has proven