An organization based entirely on the project-management model, New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) knew it needed integrated financials, procurement, and project management systems. Read how NIWA: Established criteria for its software solution, from time-phased budgeting to risk minimization. Implemented its solution on a "massively complex" IT system. Achieved buy-in from users across the organization.

As Published In February 2004

New Zealand research institute implements a finance system for scientists.

If you've ever angled for trophy-size trout in the crystalline waters around Fiordland, or helicoptered up to the top of Tasman Glacier for the downhill schuss of your life, then you know that, for all its seeming remoteness from the rest of the planet, there is perhaps no better place to feel connected to the earth than New Zealand. The confluence of land, sky, rivers, and ocean tantalize here as nowhere else. And it is precisely that nexus for which more than 600 scientists and support staff working at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) are responsible. In the native Maori language, the agency is called Taihoro Nukurangi—literally, "where the waters meet the sky."

But for all the simple beauty in the surrounding natural scenery, the science behind managing, developing, and preserving these resources for future generations is quite complex. To do what it does as effectively as possible, NIWA relies almost as much on its IT infrastructure as it does on the system devised by Mother Nature.

"Look at an ecosystem," says Dene Biddlecombe, NIWA's chief financial officer. "It rains, the water comes onto the land, the land goes through rivers and out to the sea, and the sea affects the weather.

That's the whole cycle. And that's what we needed—a project-management system that allowed our people to work together as a business unit in the same way they work together on the various aspects of the ecosystem. We found that in Oracle and Oracle Projects."

Incorporated as one of nine Crown Research Institutes in 1992, NIWA operates on a NZ$84 million (about US$45 million) budget, offering consultancy and research services in areas ranging from aquaculture to biodiversity and biosecurity for everything from fisheries and forestry organizations to dairies and port authorities in New Zealand, the United States, and Australia.

"Our entire organization is based around a project-management model," Biddlecombe explains. "Because we work across so many scientific disciplines, we have to be. We don't have a profit center for each little region. We just have one profit-center bucket for the operational area, and each project runs itself." According to Biddlecombe, that takes the "bunker mentality" out of running a large organization. "We don't have Hamilton versus Christchurch and Wellington against Auckland. Because we have so many contacts that go across the country, we want to make people responsible for their own particular area. That's why Oracle Projects is so important. We don't run it with a general ledger-based mentality, where people declare their own little profit centers in an attempt to make as much money for themselves as they can."

That same organizational structure also allows NIWA to gain unique synergies from the large, integrated teams it operates and lets them rapidly shift resources across the organization to meet their clients' needs. "We had that culture, and we wanted to match our financial system to that culture," says Biddlecombe.

Snapshot National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research www.niwa.co.nz NIWA performs research that provides a scientific basis for the sustainable management and development of New Zealand's atmospheric, marine, and freshwater systems and associated resources. Year incorporated: 1992 Annual budget: NZ$84 million Software: Oracle Database; Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i, including Projects, Financials, and Procurement modules; Oracle JDeveloper, and Oracle Discoverer Hardware: Cray supercomputer, Sun Microsystems Sun Fire V240 and V100 servers Services: Asparona for applications support; Data4 and OSS (Open Systems Specialists Ltd.) for database support

"Things like time-phasing budgets were very important to us," he continues. "We need to be able to manage our projects as tightly as we can, to be able to allocate budgets against time. And the way NIWA manages itself, our principal scientists have a lot of autonomy, and they act as our financial people. So, we needed to take the scariness out of financials and make it as user-friendly as possible. Because it's not finance that runs this organization; it's science."

Working with its Oracle-certified IT partner, Auckland-based Asparona, NIWA set out to upgrade its infrastructure and implement Oracle Projects along with the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i Financials and Procurement modules such as General Ledger and Purchasing. "My job is to manage the risk inherent in this type of implementation," Biddlecombe explains. "And this was a large-risk item. It was important that we had a cost-effective implementation, on time and on budget. We invested in Oracle because we know the company is a long-term player. It's got the backup and the support structures to support us. As for Asparona, well, our former manager of information systems works for them now, so we knew that in addition to all the experience Asparona has working with Oracle, Asparona would have a lot of inside knowledge of how our business operates."

As you might expect from an organization as scientifically oriented as NIWA is, the IT infrastructure is quite complex; it includes, for example, a Cray supercomputer the company runs out of its Wellington office. "NIWA has a massively complex system," says Rodney Morton, the project coordinator working on the institute's implementation for Asparona. "So there were a few things we had to work out, but generally speaking, coming into it, we could hit the ground running. We didn't need a lot of time to get up to speed, because we already had our fingers on the pulse of what was going on. It sounds clich_d, but we really were partners in this. The people at NIWA jumped in, boots and all, and got involved, and really embraced it."

That embrace, though, didn't happen all by itself. "We did a lot of internal PR," Biddlecombe explains. "We started talking about it two years ahead of time. We got the support of executive and regional management so that when it came time for training and resources, all that was already there, built into the IT budgets. We got involved early on with the local Oracle user groups, so we were able to solve a lot of the issues in advance. We also identified champions for each Oracle module and brought them into the loop and trained them as early as possible. We wanted them to have not only a corporate view but an operational view as well.

"Everyone hates surprises," he adds. "That goes from the top right on through. The more surprises you can eliminate ahead of time, the more smoothly it will go." And although there may have been a few minor technical glitches along the way, when it came to the performance and commitment NIWA received from Oracle and its partner, Asparona, there were no surprises at all. "Everything was on time and on budget," Biddlecombe says with a smile.

Lynn Tryba has written for CNNfyi and reports for the Nashua, New Hampshire, Telegraph.