Lánluas revamped systems for a large irrigation firm, creating a robust platform using TechnologyOne Financials to automate processes and enhance efficiency.
Simplified Water Allocation Reporting for a Large NSW Irrigation Company
A straightforward resource like water can carry surprising complexity – particularly when it comes to how irrigation water is allocated and managed. But the right tools and systems can help information flow freely. Our work with a large irrigation company involved overhauling systems to simplify the organisation’s approach to water management.
A private company charged with managing the access and consumption of irrigation water in southern New South Wales (NSW), our client was, up until recently, tracking its customers’ water allocations and balances in a spreadsheet. However, minimal people understood how the spreadsheet was used. Water allocation and usage information needed to be made more available to more people within the organisation.
Lánluas was engaged to create a robust platform for tracking and reporting water entitlement balances, current allocations, water trades, usage and property holders’ remaining water balance. The TechnologyOne Financials system was selected as the application with a ledger to track transactions and balances – replacing the spreadsheet as the system of record.
The solution we developed used a range of technologies and techniques to retrieve, collate, store and calculate the transactions and trades with data from numerous systems. This enabled processes to be automated, boosting efficiency and protecting the organisation from risk.
Highlights of the project
Systemised water allocation tracking and reporting
Put knowledge and control in the hands of more people in the company
Created a faster, more reliable system with improved functionality
Automated manual data retrieval and entry, creating more time for staff
The challenge we faced
When water trading was first introduced in the 1980s, recording customer water entitlements and allocations in an Excel spreadsheet made a lot of sense. It was a great way to organise information and keep track of how much water had been traded from one customer to another and what their balances were each year.
Over the decades, this spreadsheet had grown and become the central source of truth for our irrigation company client. Attempts were made to replicate the spreadsheet in TechnologyOne’s Property and Rating software once that became available. However, there were functionality limitations when it came to calculating water usage and trades. Similarly, data within TechnologyOne Financials lacked customer water title information, preventing our client from being able to move beyond Excel as they didn’t have an enriched system to ensure the water balances system could be logically managed.
Lánluas was tasked with finding a way to extract the right data from the right places and pull it into TechnologyOne Financials to replace the legacy spreadsheet as the system of record.
The solution we offered
TechnologyOne Financials was selected to replace the spreadsheet as the system of record. The application already had a ledger designed to track transactions and balances, it just needed to be configured to suit the unique needs of our client. Some of the information was in the TechnologyOne Property and Rating system (the current entitlement balance and trade transactions), and the rest was housed externally. This included third-party infrastructure (monthly usage) and some from government records (NSW-Water allocation declarations). What our consultants needed to achieve was a way to automatically transfer these details into TechnologyOne Financials.
This was no easy feat. It required us to use a range of technologies and techniques to retrieve, collate, store and calculate transactions and trades using data from across several systems.
With the trades and balances in the TechnologyOne financial ledger, we were then able to develop enquiries and reports that could be used by a range of users to access the data much more readily than from the legacy spreadsheet.
Our solution involved:
- Working with the client to understand what information needed to be captured and reported, and where it would come from.
- Feeding data from within TechnologyOne and a third-party water infrastructure management system into appropriate modules.
- Modifying financial ledgers to capture the required data in the form of water transactions that could be reported from TechnologyOne.
- Setting up dashboards to report on and present information as required.
TechnologyOne modules can be surprisingly disconnected as they come, but our consultants found a way to bridge the gap between them, bring information together in a meaningful way, and unlock the power of their ERP system. We were then able to develop enquiries and reports that could be used by a range of internal users to access the data much more readily than from the legacy spreadsheet.
The final outcome
With water information now flowing easily into and between TechnologyOne Property and Rating, and TechnologyOne Financials, our irrigation client’s reporting work is a lot easier. What was once the job of one person retrieving data and filling in a spreadsheet all day every day is now largely an automated process. It’s clean, fast, and secure.
Key benefits of the work include:
- Water entitlement information is more visible and accessible to the wider team.
- Because information is centralised and shared, risk is reduced and there’s less potential for human error.
- Data is now more reliably up-to-date as each day’s transactions are uploaded in a number of minutes, as opposed to taking several hours to update each day.
Are you ready to unlock the full potential of your TechnologyOne system? Our experienced consultants can systemise and simplify your use of enterprise systems driving greater efficiency and productivity. Contact Lánluas to discuss how we can help.
