We’re delighted to share that our customer, SKG Services, was recently featured in CFO Magazine Australia, with insights from their Group CFO, Katherine Nguyen, on leading finance through change and preparing for 2026. We’re proud to have SKG Services as part of the Forpoint Solutions community and congratulate them on this recognition!
Read the article at: Katherine Nguyen, Group CFO | SKG Services – CFO Magazine Australia
Interviewee: Inez Clement
Company: McConnell Dowell
Interviewee: David Shahinian
Company: Forpoint Solutions
McConnell Dowell has built thousands of iconic, landmark assets, facilities, and infrastructure around the world. When Group Finance Systems Manager, Inez Clement needed an ERP that served the entire business function end to end, she turned to Forpoint Solutions in 2010 for her Infor SunSystems solution. 14 years on and at the helm of an ever-evolving and growing construction company, we reflect on the journey and the relationship that has been built and how she warmly describes Forpoint as “My Support Friends”.
“I am not sure of the exact date, but I have been a client of Forpoint since the business was created. That entire time I have managed our Finance Systems with regards to the IT side and the user support side. I have used Forpoint as the support for Infor SunSystems and Vision over all of this time.”
“Way back, (previous to Forpoint) we worked directly with Infor for support and before that with SunSystems themselves. The issues we had in going direct with a large company was that we didn’t have that personal touch, responsiveness to issues, and the knowledge and understanding of our setup.” – Inez
David Shahinian, Director of Forpoint Solutions remembers McConnell Dowell as one of the first clients who started using their consulting services. Over the years McConnel Dowell went through multiple upgrades and as the business expanded, a rollout to global locations around the world.
“As technology became more complex, so did Infor SunSystems, and that was why we were brought in, to assist McConnell Dowell with the regional deployment of upgrades. Back then the internet was not fast, and not reliable, which meant customers had to deploy software in the country, and usually in the office.”- David
Over the next 8 years and across 2 projects, David and the Forpoint team were appointed the mission to upgrade from Infor SunSystems 5.2 to 5.4, then Infor SunSystems 5.4 to 6.2 across every office, in 9 countries.
“We went everywhere! NZ, Pacific Islands (Rarotonga, Samoa, Fiji), Bangkok, Singapore, Dubai, Manila, Jakarta… it was great experiencing the Asian Culture, but mixed in with the Australian McConnell Dowell culture. A lot of offices had ex-pats as managers who rolled out a consistent accounting approach across the APAC region. Each upgrade project roll-out took 6-9 months, and we would usually spend 2 weeks in each country. The larger offices took more time.” – David
In early 2020 as technology advanced further, and internet access improved throughout the region, McConnell Dowell went in the direction of consolidating their sites. Again, Infor SunSystems was able to handle this requirement. We brought in all the region databases onto a single server in Australia and went through a major upgrade of our Infor SunSystems environment, going from three servers around the world to consolidating into one server. This involved a lot of preparation and testing to integrate the three unique servers. Not only did it involve multiple servers, but there were also around 40 databases located across those three servers that all had to be checked and integrated.
The outcome of the consolidation brought down licensing costs and allowed McConnell Dowell to reduce the number of upgrades required to a single site.
After the consolidation project was complete, Inez came to David with a need for a solution to assist with the financial close process. BlackLine was the perfect solution and integration was seamless into their existing Infor Sunsystems product. Knowing the Forpoint team was adept at integration from system to system, the next challenge was to automate the upload of account balances from Infor SunSystems to BlackLine.
“We developed the Forpoint integration tool. This tool allowed us to run a stored procedure that would query the database and pull out the data required for the integration. The tool would then output the data in a tab or comma-delimited format.
Lastly, we would configure the tool to upload the file to BlackLine’s SFTP site.
We could execute this process via a command line, giving the client the ability to automate the upload of GL balances from Infor SunSystems to BlackLine on a more regular frequency.” – David
Within the McConnel Dowell ecosystem of tools was their project management software Workbench. Using Infor SunSystems as their financial management system, and Workbench as their project management system, meant that master data held in Infor SunSystems had to be synchronized to Workbench, but it also meant that AP Invoicing, AR Invoicing, AR receipt data had to make its way from Workbench to Infor SunSystems. When AP Invoice payments were made, Workbench users needed visibility on this, requiring payment data to be pushed back to Workbench.
Without the integration, the additional time and effort required to produce the data and send it to the end users, and the amount of re-keying of data would have been enormous.
So it was a call to Forpoint that initiated the build of this integration, and the outcome served to eliminate the amount of manual time. As well as this, automating the process to a daily overnight process meant that the task didn’t require data entry at all. All it required was for finance to know if the import failed and when this happened, they would investigate. Ultimately we were able to sync data each day between the systems with no manual intervention.
This process was done at all McConnel Dowell sites in the region, saving the company time and money.
“Forpoint Solutions have always been there for me to rely upon and their friendliness, responsiveness, and caring attitude have always supported our needs to find the best solution when we needed it.
When I talk about Forpoint – I refer to them as ‘My Support Friends.”
Inez Clement, Group Finance Systems Manager, McConnell Dowell
Forpoint is proudly locally owned and operated, supporting clients like Inez in Australia and New Zealand. We provide best-in-breed software solutions for the office of the CFO and are with our clients every step of the way to support and integrate solutions that transform businesses.
“We approached Forpoint for a financial solution that will enable us to move from individual databases to a unified solution that will enable us to be consolidated all of our companies as well as have multi-currency solutions.”
“What I have been most impressed with is the support we have received from Forpoint. It has enabled us to not only grow our solution to meet our business plans, but has allowed our company to achieve its outcomes.” – Linda Smith, General Manager of Finance Baillie Lodges.
Find out how Forpoint Solutions supported the growth of Baillie Lodges through our advanced Financial Management solutions.
“A key win for me has been able to sit in a board meeting, bring up Sage Intacct, present a profit and loss report, drill down within that report, and answer questions on sales results.” Peter Gough – Financial Controller, Fitzroys
Watch the video to learn more!
Discover how Total Tools together with Forpoint Solutions and Workday, reduced their month-end from 15 to 5 days, improved their processes, and made a positive change in the business.
Weston Energy was facing several challenges with its legacy software, says its Financial Controller, Chris Mouradjallian.
Facing these challenges, Weston Energy began browsing the market for a more capable accounting solution.
With the help of Sage partner Forpoint Solutions, they chose Sage Intacct – a highly intuitive, cloud financial management solution that delivers deep accounting capabilities for scale-up and enterprise businesses, across all industries.
Sage Intacct helps businesses gain real-time financial insights, automate complex processes, and its open API allows you to easily share data and connect multiple solutions.
Mr Mouradjallian praised Forpoint Solutions for the dedicated support it has provided throughout Weston Energy’s journey with Sage Intacct.
“The support we’ve received from Forpoint Solutions has been excellent. They’ve guided us throughout the entire process, from helping us identify the right solution for our needs, to implementing Sage Intacct and ensuring Weston Energy gets the most out of the solution.”
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