Progressive TSL worked with the African exploration & production company New Age (New African Global Energy) to implement a consistent, standardised, automated financial and procurement management suite. The Progressive solution incorporates Infor SunSystems across all six sites and HxGN EAM (formerly Infor EAM) and Infor OS software products across three of these sites.
About New Age (New African Global Energy)
New Age is a privately held oil & gas exploration and production company with a portfolio of assets in five African countries: Nigeria, Congo-Brazzaville, South Africa, Ethiopia and Cameroon.
Driver for change
New Age were familiar with Infor’s financial management software suite before they started working with Progressive TSL. The previous implementation of SunSystems had been performed by another partner many years prior and needed to be updated to accommodate changes to the business and to harness the full power of the Infor solution. There were a lot of inconsistencies in the system’s data and processes across the sites. Functions that should be managed within the Infor system were being exported for processing in external spreadsheets. This could have led to inefficiencies and potential risks associated with holding multiple versions of the truth.
New Age recognised that the system needed enhancing but were very keen to keep the combination of Infor SunSystems and HxGN EAM (formerly Infor EAM). They have a proven track record as the ideal financial management and procurement solution for mid-cap upstream oil & gas companies.
Why Progressive?
New Age selected Progressive TSL to reimplement their Infor systems. Progressive TSL are Infor and Hexagon Gold Partners and have demonstrated a strong track record for successfully implementing finance and asset management systems at other asset-intensive companies, including several other African upstream oil & gas companies.
Progressive's approach
Progressive used their oil & gas implementation framework to take the New Age team through the following project stages:
- Review business processes, requirements and rules
- System configuration and re-build of Infor SunSystems, HxGN EAM and Infor OS
- Cleanse and restructure data using future-proofed, consistent budget/analysis codes and work breakdown structures
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
- Training across New Age’s six sites for SunSystems and three of these sites for EAM.
- Post-implementation support
Typically, the Progressive consultants would travel to each African country to work on-site with the users. Once the project was underway, the Covid-19 pandemic struck Africa and Europe; in response, Progressive, alongside the New Age project manager, delivered the UAT and training stages of the project remotely using cloud collaboration technology.
“I am really proud of what we have achieved during this project. It’s a testament to the simplicity of the system configuration and build, that it was possible for us to transition the user training so successfully onto Microsoft Teams. This proved a great medium for running the sessions. Progressive are patient and understanding of the challenges my African colleagues face from time to time with internet connectivity. They are clearly very experienced in understanding their needs and what they want to achieve with the Infor system.
The User Guides, Cheat Sheets, and video recordings of our training sessions on Teams all proved awesome resources to refresh the team’s understanding following a training session. The New Age Team really appreciate the fact that Progressive are always available for questions and the channels remain open if they have any queries.”
Darren Huggett, Group Finance Systems Accountant at New Age (New African Global Energy)
Key Components of the New Age Solution
| Infor SunSystems (Financials) | Best of breed solution provides automated, consolidated accounts across the whole business. Adheres to a wide range of financial regulations and tax rules—multiple languages and currencies. |
| Infor Q&A (Reporting) | Advanced financial and operational reporting. Enabling easy access and full transparency of financial management information and KPIs. |
| HxGN EAM (Procurement) | Fully integrating with SunSystems, HxGN EAM enables streamlined, automated procurement and supply chain management processing. |
| Infor OS | Provides access for all to the Infor system via a web portal and mobile devices. Enables approvals workflow in line with company Delegation of Authority (DOA). |
| Making Tax Digital (MTD) | Professional Advantage’s MTD automates the link between Infor SunSystems and HMRC. By maintaining the link between submitted VAT returns and source transactions – a full audit trail is available. |
| BankLinks for Business (B4B) | Professional Advantage’s B4B provides a two-way link between SunSystems and the banks for electronic funds transfers (EFT) or internet banking. This instantly improves the security and auditability of bank payments. |
Business benefits achieved
New Age confirms that their new solution provides everything needed for standardised, automated financial management and procurement. Users across five African sites and the UK now have the necessary understanding and access to what they need to perform their roles.
As Darren Huggett explains, “Everyone in the company can see the improvement. This solution is the central hub for the whole company, with all the individual functional spokes coming off it. Across multiple offices, countries and business functions – everyone is now singing off the same hymn sheet.”
Key Business Benefits of the New Age Solution:
- Automated standardised processes
- Simplified processes and training – easy to roll out and understood by all
- Significantly increased speed and efficiency of month-end processing
- Infor OS one-stop shop –a single central standardised easy to use access hub for everyone across all functions
- Consistent data across all countries and business units, including the same chart of accounts and analysis codes
- More continuity in DOA (Delegation of Authority) processes across countries
- Automated checking of suppliers against compliance criteria
- Budgetary control – through a central database, full visibility of spend, outstanding payments and commitments by suppliers, country, budget line item and other variables. Up-to-date insight into actual vs budgeted
- Slice and dice data through Infor Q&A reporting to demonstrate strong financial management and transparency to the board, investors and other interested parties
- Full access to purchase requisitions and purchase orders via a mobile or web app means the business doesn’t stop when approvers work remotely
- Ability to switch to mobile data when the teams in Cameroon and Congo are having internet connectivity issues
- Flexibility to support home working during the pandemic
“Over recent months, Progressive TSL have worked closely with the New Age team in the UK, Cameroon and Congo to turn around a previous SunSystems and HxGN EAM (formerly Infor EAM) implementation. Our accounting and procurement processing has been simplified and automated – improving efficiency whilst gaining budgetary control and full visibility of transactions. Progressive have also extended the solution to incorporate Infor OS to manage approvals via the web and mobile devices. Due to travel restrictions during the pandemic, Progressive successfully moved the training workshops onto Microsoft Teams. This enabled us to roll out over our sites in the UK and Africa. We are very proud of the new Progressive solution, which should support New Age for many years into the future.”
Dato Sandroshvili, Chief Financial Officer, New Age (New African Global Energy)
Plans for the future
The solution will continue to grow and adapt as the New Age business develops over the coming years. Following the commencement of a drilling campaign, with Progressive’s support, New Age intends to extend the existing solution to take advantage of Infor’s warehousing and stock management (inventory) capabilities.
About Progressive
Progressive TSL is a business consultancy and solutions provider dedicated to providing best-of-breed finance, supply chain and asset management systems for asset-intensive industries (including energy, mining and engineering services) across the globe. They have been Gold Channel Accredited Infor Partners since 2014.
Contact us to find out more about this and other client implementations and how your company can also benefit from Progressive’s industry experience and expertise.
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