Global Maritime's Journey to True Business Intelligence

About Global Maritime

Founded
1979

Business
Marine, offshore and engineering consulting

Service solutions
NetSuite ERP, Naviloq BI & Planning

Webpage
https://www.globalmaritime.com/

Global Maritime is a marine, offshore and engineering consultancy that specializes in marine warranty, dynamic positioning and engineering services. Global Maritime is known for innovation, practical experience, operational excellence, and safety.

Founded in 1979, Global Maritime’s services span the entire offshore project lifecycle from engineering and design, construction and third-party verification through to marine warranty surveying, dynamic positioning, installation, risk management and decommissioning. 

A complex, international business

As a growing professional and engineering services business, with many different geographical locations and subsidiaries, Global Maritime engaged Staria to implement Oracle NetSuite in 2019. The overall goal was to consolidate 35-40 disparate systems – including finance, HR, payroll, expenses, and timesheets solutions – into one unified data source.  

This step change in business management was followed in 2020 by Global Maritime’s decision to implement NetSuite’s Planning and Budgeting (NSPB) solution, which they used alongside their NetSuite ERP for two years. 

Christian Brigg, Global Maritime’s Group Finance Manager, explains why his team began looking for a replacement for NSPB in 2022.

Although not a huge business, we are a complex, scaling business that operates in a multi-currency environment. We found that it was difficult to adapt NSPB to our requirements, and that any adaptations we needed to make required input from their technical consultants, tended to involve a lengthy, drawn-out process, and often didn’t give us the result we needed.

Engaging with expertise 

Efficiency and flexibility in reporting and planning were key objectives not being met. Therefore, at this point, Global Maritime’s Staria Account Manager advised them to engage with Staria’s team of dedicated BI and Planning experts, to assist them in taking a holistic view.

Staria’s BI and Planning Solutions team takes a ‘roadmap’ approach, with the ultimate goal of achieving KPI driven business management by embedding the right behaviors and the right technology. This fitted perfectly with Global Maritime’s needs and ambitions.

"We hire consultants who have a finance background and understand the business intelligence domain. This is a deliberate differentiator for Staria's BI and Planning Services," says Mikko Kurki, Head of Product Management for BI & Planning, Staria

Taking NetSuite data to the next level 

The Staria team worked closely and efficiently with Global Maritime to understand both the short- and longer-term requirements, and recommend a staged approach that would deliver the necessary important quick wins, as well as a clear roadmap for the journey towards organization-wide KPI-driven business management. 

Naviloq, with its seamless NetSuite integration, was recommended as the appropriate technology to implement as a key part of the journey.

Our requirements were flexibility (in both reporting and forecasting), rolling forecast and scenario planning. We wanted efficient and wide range data sourcing from NetSuite into a platform better suited for business intelligence and, importantly, user friendliness.

All of the other solutions we investigated as an alternative to NSPB involved some sort of trade-off against these requirements. Most solutions could source the financial data, but when it came to HR data, timesheet data and all the other types of data sets within NetSuite, they were not able to be easily accessed and used.

Developed by finance experts, with a delivery and consultancy team that have finance backgrounds, Naviloq stands out against alternative solutions. 

Naviloq was clearly different – we quickly understood its potential to meet our business intelligence and planning requirements without trade-offs.

Efficient implementation and a game-changing set-up

After due diligence with research and testing, the decision was made to implement Naviloq at Global Maritime. Within 4-6 weeks of that decision, thanks to the Staria BI and Planning team’s expertise and approach, Global Maritime was set-up with Naviloq and staff were receiving training.  

The set-up, customisation, roll-out and training were quickly and efficiently done by Naviloq. This was particularly impressive as we requested our solution to allow for intercompany budgeting as well as a multi-currency environment, which was a complex ask and something we had not been able to achieve with any other platform – this was a big step forward for us as a business. The quick deployment is testament to how easy Naviloq is to use and adapt, and to the quality of the consultancy delivery during this crucial period.

The efficiency and quality of Global Maritime’s Naviloq implementation was made possible by Staria’s policy of matching the right people with the right projects. 

"Staria’s Global Maritime BI and Planning team includes a former finance consultant and a former business controller. They quickly understood what Global Maritime were looking for, down to the most complex of their requirements. They ‘speak finance’ fluently and were able to connect the dots that had not been possible to connect with their previous platform," says Mikko Kurki, Head of Product Management for BI & Planning, Staria

After roll-out and training, the Global Maritime finance team has enjoyed the ability to easily build and customize their reports without the need for technical expertise. A core benefit of Naviloq is the depth of functionality it provides out of the box, but also the ease with which tweaks and adjustments can be made on an ongoing basis with no coding knowledge.

The journey to true business intelligence

The Global Maritime team had a very clear vision for their business intelligence and planning journey, with their goals being: 

• Adapt a centralized approach first, to establish good behaviours. With the reporting structure centralized, Global Maritime are building a best-practice approach and avoiding inconsistencies. 

• Gain a true picture and efficient processes by having intercompany and multi-currency transactions incorporated into planning and budgeting. 

• Roll-out use and access to Naviloq in a systematic way – at the time of writing, all the finance staff, country managers, and local operational managers are using the system. 

• Expand use into other key areas of the business, such as project control. This next important step will enable project level budgets to be created and full control over the projects that are of great significance to the business. 

Like many businesses, Global Maritime doesn’t have large finance teams, either centrally or in each supporting location, so processes and tools that make things as efficient and standardized as possible are important. 

By defining best practice with Naviloq, and providing each location with what they actually need, it’s like having a digital finance controller in each location and business function. We have new capabilities in terms of business intelligence and our finance and operational teams have easy access to the data they need, presented in the way that helps them do their job.

Clear benefits

The key benefits realized so far by Global Maritime in their Naviloq journey are: 

• Increased and easier use of data. While NetSuite stores huge amounts of data, accessing it and actually using it all was not possible before implementing Naviloq. Global Maritime has on demand access to data they didn’t have before, with reports always showing the true picture, because they are based on live NetSuite data. 

• Ability to efficiently connect different data sets from NetSuite. Naviloq enables each team to access the data they need, via dashboards customized to their needs.  

• Unlimited access to data from NetSuite, not only financial data. Data such as HR data, timesheets and project information are accessible and useable together in Naviloq. 

• User-friendliness. The ease with which Naviloq can be mastered without technical knowledge means new reports can be built and existing ones copied and tweaked to suit efficiently. For Global Maritime, this ease of use has been a key factor in the speedy uptake and adoption of the solution for their teams.  

• Data presentation. Naviloq reports are attractively and clearly presented, meaning they don’t need to be adjusted or smartened up before including them in report packs. 

• True collaboration and meaningful decision making. Naviloq’s unique in-platform collaboration functionality enables people to collaborate, ask questions, explain changes and make decisions together, using the same data sets in real time. 

• The work that Naviloq takes away from the user. Christian expands on this by saying, 

The system takes away lot of the workload and the skill requirement of the users, by doing the heavy lifting in the backend. With Naviloq you don’t need any software skills, or knowledge of where and how to source the data you need as a user.

A must for businesses using NetSuite

The most significant overall impact for Global Maritime is the ability to use Naviloq as a true business intelligence and planning platform, with all data sets available and presented according to job role and requirements.   

If you use NetSuite as your ERP, working closely with Staria’s BI and Planning team to take your decision making to the next level is recommended. Naviloq is an excellent, fairly priced, solution that enables you to make use of your NetSuite data and realise great value. Basically, if you need useable data, Naviloq is a good fit. Its flexibility, with out of the box solutions that you can adjust to your needs with ease, requires very little work when compared to solutions I have used in the past.