Meridian Case Study Download the .PDF(98KB)

The Client

Meridian Energy is New Zealand’s largest electricity generator and was established from the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand in April 1999.

The Challenge

In 1999, the newly formed state-owned enterprise took a conscious step to develop relationships with a range of key partners and look at areas across the business that it could restructure or establish to retain the focus on its core activity of generating and retailing electricity. One of these areas was the financial management function, which was effectively being built from scratch. The challenge for Meridian was to identify a way to best manage these functions, while retaining control the important financial processes and required service levels.

Rather than take the traditional approach of establishing an internal capability, Meridian sought a partnership to enable the complete outsourcing of all financial management. A competitive tendering process was undertaken and BearingPoint was appointed as the partner.

Neil Cochrane, chief financial officer at Meridian said, “One of our greatest challenges was finding an organization that we could work intimately with, that had values aligned with our own, that could understand what our business requires and have the appropriate measures and processes.?/i>

The Solution

BearingPoint was able to offer Meridian quick and easy access to new developments and standards through its international network. BearingPoint implemented a groundbreaking approach to outsourcing financial management functions and processes that had not previously been done in New Zealand and was seen by many at the time as out of the ordinary for the industry.

As part of Meridian’s overall Financial Management Information System, PeopleSoft was implemented as the central financial application, along with a number of interfaces to enable connection to a variety of major business applications. BearingPoint now handles all of Meridian’s day-to-day financial management, including purchasing, accounts payable, payroll processing, project accounting, fixed assets and financial reporting.

The Benefits

Since BearingPoint has been working with Meridian on financial outsourcing, Meridian has heralded two major benefits of the partnership:

• Maintain focus on core business activities while retaining control of its financial processes
• Providing quick and easy access to financial expertise and the latest developments around the world through BearingPoint’s international network

“One of the advantages of building this outsourcing approach from scratch was that it was easier to get acceptance internally and to change any existing mindsets,?/i> Cochrane says. “BearingPoint helped make this a smooth process so we could easily come to grips with what our new system requirements were and how they would best work.?/i>

After awarding the initial contract in 1999, Meridian has since renewed the contract for another three years. The agreement renewal demonstrates the success and pay-off that Meridian has experienced through this new approach.

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