End of financial year stress?

The end of the financial year is a tough time, but the Zavanti Support Team is here to make it easier for you!

For our Zavanti ERP clients in the Property and Construction industry, we have complied a list of end of year frequently asked questions (EOY FAQs) to ensure that you have the answers you need when you need them.

How do I open the next year? How do I set up Fringe Benefits Tax? Printing Group Certificates? Zavanti EOY FAQs have it covered!

In addition, the 2008/9 Tax Tables are available to download for our clients who have a current support maintenance agreement - contact support on 1300 302 358 for further details.

Zavanti Connection - June

Hi there,

As we draw to the close of another financial year we look at how the year has gone and what we can look forward to next year.

For everyone, the Australian and global economic woes, evidenced in the oil price spiral and interest rate rises, have put pressure on all businesses and at best have dampened our outlooks for next year. However, we would like to present some positive statements for the coming year.

Going forward, we have plans for further software enhancements. We hope to bring out a new version of Zavanti ERP with a complete new look and feel in the final quarter of this calendar year.

We continue to look for other ways to add value for our clients and in this newsletter we announce two such actions, our new Property Sales Manager solution and our agreement to sell Corda’s performance dashboard products - read more about these products below.

Click here to access our Zavanti Connection newsletter online.

All the best for the new Financial Year.

Ian Plater
Chairman

Zavanti RSS Feeds

Hi there,

We have created a RSS news feed on our site, which currently has some recent news headlines from our website. RSS is a huge trend in getting short sharp news messages across to people who do not want to visit a website on a regular basis.

With an RSS feed, you can now receive and view news updates in MS Outlook, Internet Explorer or the latest Vista desktop gadgets. You will notice the RSS logo on the top right of our homepage, clicking on this link allows you to subscribe to our news feed. Alternatively click here to subscribe and add the Zavanti RSS feed to your Internet Explorer.

To add to your Outlook RSS News Feeds, right-click RSS Feeds in left hand tree of Outlook and click ‘Add a new RSS Feed’.

Zavanti eNews - March/April

Hi there,

2008 has started as a busy year for the team at Zavanti. Whilst we are all watching the global economic environment, especially as it continues to impact our key business sector – Property, we are also aggressively looking to the future.

We’ve commenced marketing in the UK and released our ERP solutions in New Zealand. We are also in negotiations to expand into the Middle East and India, with the USA as the next area of opportunity. We’ve just released our latest upgrade and continue to work on new developments. All of this moves us closer to our goal of being the preeminent supplier of technology solutions to the property sector globally.

None of this could happen without our existing and new clients – welcome to new clients Maidment Development (ERP); Department of Corrective Services, WA (Portfolio Manager); Aboriginal Justice Agreement, WA (Portfolio Manager).

Our ongoing relationship with the property industry has continued with our recent participation at the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) Annual Congress in Melbourne.

Ian Plater
Chairman

Read our full newsletter here

UDIA National Congress 2008

We are pleased to announce our participation at the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) National Congress at the Crown Towers Resort, March 3 - 6. Entitled “One World, One Community”, the Congress will be focusing on the major issues facing the UDIA as an international community as well as the major issues facing the development industry as a whole.

Key speakers include Sahba Abedian (Sunland Group, Managing Director), Prof Rob Adams (Director Design and Urban Environment for the City of Melbourne) and Dr Edward Blakely (Director of the Planning Research Centre at the University of Sydney).

We will be showcasing our comprehensive range of property development and construction management software solutions, as well as officially launching our latest Zavanti Property Developer suite with Feasibility integration.

If you are attending the event, drop by Stand 23 to learn more about our solutions and how they are being used to deliver dollar benefits to today’s property developers and construction organisations.

For more information on the event itself visit http://www.udiacongress.com.au/

Study on the adoption of Collaboration Technology by Australian Construction now closed

With 285 respondents surveyed across property, construction and engineering, our recent market research project, designed to investigate the use of collaboration technologies and project extranets by the Australian construction industry, has now closed and the full report will be published soon.

The study, conducted on behalf of John Lowry from Expert Eye, aims to provide a representative, quantifiable measure of the various benefits identified by people with firsthand experience of using collaboration tools on live projects, thus providing the first set of objective statistics and figures from an Australian perspective and a means to benchmarking against similar studies from other countries such as the UK Research Project, “Proving Collaboration Pays” undertaken by the NCCTP in 2006.

The results will form the basis of the paper which will be delivered by Lowry at the CRC for Construction Innovation 3rd international conference in Queensland in March.

While the offical study has closed we would still like to get your feedback on your experience of using project extranets or collaboration platforms. Please feel free to leave a comment or email us directly.

Selecting the right ERP software

Selecting and implementing a new software system can be quite overwhelming, what with the number of vendors vying for your dollars and the varying complexity of solutions on the market. The Technology Evaluation Center (TEC) has recently published an interesting Guide to selecting Process ERP Software. This guide examines why over 50 percent of implementations fail to meet functional and total cost expectations, and how these issues can be addressed.

In summary, TEC have found that project teams run into trouble for three main reasons:

• They have no effective way of identifying the critical vendor and product questions necessary to successfully initiate the evaluation process.
• Once identified, they generally do not prioritise the different criteria. As a result, final priorities are often the result of internal politics and not true needs and requirements.
• It is common for Vendors to exaggerate their capabilities, product and service if it enables them to move to the next phase of the deal. Project teams often do not have the ability to gather objective, validated, updated data on different vendor alternatives.

TEC advise organisations to create a structured, repeatable process for evaluating technology solutions and the vendors that provide them. Best practices drawn from TEC’s clients that have completed internal technology selections suggest that project teams examine five key categories of criteria, which investigate product-specific capabilities and the vendor's overall capabilities.

1. Product Functionality
As the primary stage in ERP software selections, this phase assesses the features and functions delivered by the product as it currently exists - i.e. what capabilities are available out of the box. Other criteria, such as service and support, corporate viability, and strategy, also contribute to software selection.

2. Product Technology
This phase defines the technical architecture of the product and the technological environment in which the product can run successfully. Sub-criteria might include application architecture, software usability, administration, platform and database support, application tools, workflow and document management, and reporting capabilities.

3. Corporate Service and Support
This set of criteria defines the capability of the vendor to provide implementation services and ongoing support. TEC have found that many industry surveys have identified this category as the single largest differentiating factor among potential selection options, as well as the greatest indicator of user implementation success and long-term vendor viability. Components of service and support might include consulting, systems integration, project management skills, geographic coverage and time coverage of the vendor help desk.

4. Corporate Viability
Crucial yet often overlooked, this category examines the financial and management strength of the vendor.

5. Corporate Strategy
The most strategic and long-term set of evaluation criteria, this phase evaluates the corporate road map and strategy of the software vendor with regards to specific timelines of how the product will be developed, sold, and supported within the process ERP software market.

We’re interested in hearing about your particular experiences in implementing new software systems. Please feel free to leave a comment or contact us on + 61 2 8080 4800.