Global Maritime | Naviloq Case Study
In this case study, we feature Global Maritime, an offshore, marine and engineering consultancy that specializes in marine warranty, dynamic positioning and engineering services. Global Maritime discuss their experience with adopting Naviloq as their BI solution and the how it is supporting their growth.
You’ll find out more about:
The challenges Global Maritime faced.
Their Naviloq implementation experience.
The benefits and outcomes of adopting Naviloq.
You’ll also get to understand the ways in which Naviloq could help your business grow.
About Global Maritime
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 implemented Oracle NetSuite in 2019, 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 the implementation of NetSuite’s Planning and Budgeting (NSPB) solution, which Global Maritime 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.”
Efficiency and flexibility in reporting and planning were key objectives not being met, so Global Maritime researched alternative solutions, including tools that integrated NetSuite to Excel for planning and budgeting, other third-party solutions, and Naviloq.
“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.”
Christian Brigg, Group Finance Manager, Global Maritime
Developed by finance experts, with a delivery and consultancy team that have finance backgrounds, Naviloq quickly stood out as the preferred option when it was recommended to Global Maritime by Staria, their NetSuite implementation partner.
“Naviloq was clearly different – we quickly understood its potential to meet our business intelligence and planning requirements without trade-offs.” continues Christian.
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, 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.”
Christian Brigg, Group Finance Manager, Global Maritime
The efficiency and quality of Naviloq implementations is made possible by the skills and structure of the development, implementation and support teams. As Mikko Kurki, Head of Product Management for BI & Planning at Staria – the tech-enabled financial solutions business behind Naviloq – explains,
“We hire consultants who have a finance background. The Global Maritime team, for example, includes a former finance consultant and a former business controller. They understand what our customers are asking for, they ‘speak finance’ and they understand the business intelligence domain. This is a deliberate differentiator for Naviloq.”
After roll-out and training, the 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 Naviloq 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.”
Christian Brigg, Group Finance Manager, Global Maritime
Clear Benefits
The key benefits realised 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.
As Christian summarises,
“If you use NetSuite as your ERP, 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.”
Get in touch
Naviloq is the one stop shop for all your business intelligence and planning needs. To learn more about how you can make the most of your NetSuite data, get in touch today!