Harcourts Flips Approach to Financial Operations

Founded in New Zealand in 1888, Harcourts’ global real estate business has seen unprecedented growth to now include over 900 offices worldwide in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, Fiji, Indonesia, China, Hong Kong and South Africa. The corporate franchising company is currently headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, where it has a network of over 400 offices and generates AUD$11 billion in annual property sales.

COMPANY

Harcourts International

LOCATION

Brisbane, Australia

INDUSTRY

Real Estate

EMPLOYEES

170

NUMBER OF USERS

170

NUMBER OF SUBSIDIARIES

NUMBER OF COUNTRIES

4 using NetSuite in some capacity, 9 in total

SYSTEM REPLACED

Attaché BI

NETSUITE PRODUCTS IMPLEMENTED

NetSuite OneWorld
NetSuite Infinet Cloud
NetSuite Fixed Assets
Solution 7
Expensify

IMPLEMENTATION PARTNERS

Reed Consultants
NetSuite Professional Services

LOCATION

AUS and NZ

“The global view and accessibility provided by NetSuite has been extremely vital for our business. The multi-currency, security and automation capabilities of NetSuite made it a natural fit for our business—allowing us to optimise time-consuming processes like payroll, accounts payable and invoice approvals and at the same time go paperless. I simply don’t know how we managed before NetSuite.” Kelly Podlich, Group Financial Controller, Harcourts International

Unified Under One Roof

Inspecting the finance function: Harcourts’ corporate head office had a small but mighty finance team working to support more than 170 staff and 30 corporate entities. They managed operations across ANZ, working closely with US and Canadian teams, to synchronise the extensive operations from a diverse range of offices.

Bringing visibility and transparency to finance: Harcourts’ existing financial software, Attaché BI, was struggling to deliver the truly cloud-based visibility for its complex financial undertaking. With no centralised database, finance had to manually key in data into the system and generate reports by hand. Working across 12 databases posed challenges for reporting and auditing, adding extra hours of work for the small team.

Handing over the keys: With NetSuite OneWorld as a secure, unified cloud solution for managing financial data, reporting and payroll, Harcourts collects and processes financial data from its ANZ locations within a single centralised database. It quickly eliminated paper, automated time-intensive tasks and cut down time spent on crucial end-of-month finance reports from 10 days to six, allowing Harcourts to reallocate valuable staff hours.

On the go efficiencies: With a centralised financial platform, Harcourts has freed up employees’ time to reallocate on priority tasks by reducing compilation of its subco monthly management reports to six days instead of 10. With its accounts and payroll consolidated in a globally accessible environment, the company can continue executing its growth strategy with speed, efficiency and security.

チャット

Harcourts International