McConnell Dowell and Forpoint Driving Success With Infor & BlackLine

Long standing client’s McConnel Dowell have worked with Forpoint for the past 14 years, through the early days of the internet through to today.

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Company:

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.

Industry:

Construction

Company Size:

3,000+ Employees

Region:

Australia, New Zealand & Asia

Existing ERP:

BlackLine / Infor Sunsystems

Software Implemented:

BLACKLINE

INFOR SUNSYSTEMS

The Challenge:

David Shahinian, Director of Forpoint Solutions, fondly recalls McConnell Dowell as one of their earliest clients who embraced their consulting services. As McConnell Dowell expanded globally, they underwent several upgrades to their systems.

Over the span of 8 years and across 2 projects, David and his team at Forpoint were entrusted with the task of upgrading McConnell Dowell’s systems from Infor SunSystems 5.2 to 5.4, and later from 5.4 to 6.2, across their offices in 9 different countries.

Upon the successful completion of the consolidation project, Inez approached David seeking assistance with streamlining the financial close process. After careful consideration, BlackLine emerged as the ideal solution, seamlessly integrating with McConnell Dowell’s existing Infor SunSystems setup. Leveraging Forpoint’s expertise in system integration, the next hurdle was automating the transfer of account balances from Infor SunSystems to BlackLine.

The project goals were aimed at:

Updating and servicing multiple solutions in offices across 9 countries.
Developing custom solutions for integration needs
Solving complex problems that required customised development & implementation

The Solution:

We centralized all regional databases onto a single server in Australia and underwent a significant upgrade of our Infor SunSystems setup, transitioning from three dispersed servers to consolidating into one. It was quite a task, involving extensive preparation and testing to seamlessly merge the unique setups of those three servers. With around 40 databases spread across them, each had to be meticulously checked and integrated.

Given our reliance on Infor SunSystems for financial management and Workbench for project management, syncing master data from SunSystems to Workbench was crucial. Additionally, data such as AP invoicing, AR invoicing, and AR receipts needed to flow from Workbench to SunSystems. For instance, when AP invoice payments were processed, Workbench users needed immediate visibility, necessitating payment data to be sent back to Workbench.

Without this integration, the manual effort required to compile and disseminate data to end-users would have been staggering. The volume of data re-entry alone would have been overwhelming.

By automating the process to run overnight daily, we eliminated the need for manual data entry entirely. Finance only needed to be alerted if the import failed, enabling quick investigation. Ultimately, we achieved seamless daily data synchronization between systems with zero manual intervention.

This integration was rolled out across all McConnel Dowell sites in the region, delivering substantial time and cost savings for the company.