WHK does sums on IT merger

Key Business Insights:

As the business enabler for a national accounting group, IT is the focus of integration plans intended to bring the group together under a single brand.

Along the way, developing national purchasing policies for IT hardware, software and services will allow the group to make significant savings.

And implementing common platforms and standards will enable the group to carry out its IT functions more efficiently, perhaps eventually leading to formation of a single IT organisation providing hosting services to members of the group.

"We're not knee-jerking into a system; we're putting thought and detail in behind what we're doing."
WHK Cook Adam Ward Wilson IT manager Matt Stark


WHK Group in New Zealand in Brief
• Combines six accounting firms from Auckland to Invercargill with 750 staff
• Group has $80 million annual revenue
• Invercargill's WHK Cook Adam Ward Wilson was first to join
• Invercargill firm initiated IT strategy review
• Review introduces best-practice IT systems and processes, including a single accounting platform

WHK Cook Adam Ward Wilson IT manager Matt Stark has "been in the thick of things" at the Invercargill accounting firm since it set out on an IBM-led integration strategy.

Stark is IT co-ordinator for six New Zealand accounting firms that are all part of the Australia-based WHK Group. IBM® Business Consulting Services was employed by the New Zealand firms to see how they could align IT practices, thereby reducing costs, improving efficiency and bringing the firms closer together.

"We're known as six different firms within the one country but we're all exactly the same firm, all reporting to WHK," says Stark.

An important way of getting the brand message across, and one of several aspects of the firms' IT covered in the IBM strategic review, is through their web presence. By August 2009 each of the six firms will have websites with a common look and feel, accessed from a WHK homepage that shows the location of all businesses within the Australian and New Zealand group.

Phil Mulvey, WHK Cook Adam Ward Wilson's chief executive, says the web project signifies that the integration strategy has moved into the "less hooey, more doey" phase. That follows the group's appointment of a CIO in Australia, who endorsed the course the New Zealand firms were following.

"He came in and went back to basics and looked at where the whole firm — Australia and New Zealand — should be going in IT. Nothing he came back with conflicted with the IBM report."

Having received the CIO's blessing, the strategy has been costed and a model agreed to for applying the costs across the various businesses.
"Essentially it turns us into one IT organisation — that's the goal, anyway," Mulvey says.

But that could take a variety of forms. It might not mean, for example, having a single national network. "We'll only do that if it's acceptable and beneficial to everyone to do it." If, instead, a conclusion of the exercise is that separate networks make more sense, at least they will know that with certainty.

What the strategy has already told them is there are significant gains to be made by buying telecommunications services, software and hardware as a national group.

"We've even looked at photocopying and printing as part of it," Mulvey says.

In case anyone thinks those two items are trivial, for a professional services business such as WHK, aligning photocopying and printing purchases across the country will save it a high six-figure sum.
Stark says different aspects of WHK's infrastructure needs are being brought under the group umbrella at different rates.

Telecommunications, for instance, is well advanced, and a six-figure saving is envisaged there as well.

Bringing all parts of the group together under one brand is where Mulvey sees the businesses wanting to go, with IT as the enabler.
"We're very much IT-focused businesses. When Matt and I talk IT, we're really talking computers, software, telecommunications in all its forms, printing, copying … it's quite a wide brief. If IT doesn't go, then the firms don't start work at 8am."

Mulvey and Stark see nothing remarkable in the fact that the strategy is being driven from Invercargill, despite a tendency — particularly overseas — for people to think all New Zealand's business expertise resides in the larger cities.

Mulvey points out that the Invercargill firm he heads is, by one estimate, the fifth largest accounting practice in the country, and a leading light of the WHK Group.

"Where you've got 208 people in seven locations on a wide area network running many different applications in a terminal server environment, you need a bit of nous."

That concentration of IT firepower could ultimately lead to the Invercargill firm hosting applications for other businesses in the group.

"If you did go for national hosting, you'd make that decision based on all sorts of criteria — where's the most secure, cost-effective way to host a solution like that? Is that in the middle of Auckland, or the middle of Invercargill, or somewhere else?" Mulvey says.

Invercargill does have capacity to spare, says Stark.

First, though, it's a case of plucking the low-hanging fruit — savings from national purchasing of telecommunications and printing and photocopying services. The rest will follow in good time, he says.
"We have time on our side, so it's progressive. We're not knee-jerking into a system; we're putting thought and detail in behind what we're doing."

Key Benefits
The implementation of common platforms and standards means the group's IT functions can be carried out more efficiently.

Aligning national IT purchasing has led to six-figure savings in areas such as telecommunications and printing.

The integration strategy includes the group's Web presence, with websites for each of the six firms having the same look and feel.