at a glance
How McKay replaced 3 separate databases with NetSuite ERP, establishing the operational and financial foundation needed to support aggressive growth, multiple acquisitions and increasing complexity across its multinational operations.
- Nimbus ERP databases x 3
- Manual consolidation workflows
- Spreadsheets and paper processes
- Standalone payroll systems
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Monthly forecasting now standard practice
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Consolidated P&L visible in hours not weeks
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Acquisition integration from months to weeks
the client
About McKay
McKay Group is a long-established electrical engineering and infrastructure services company operating across electrical contracting, engineering services, maintenance and manufacturing. With more than 90 years in the market and operations spanning New Zealand, the United States and the South Pacific, McKay had grown to hundreds of employees across multiple locations. The company’s diversified business model – from design and construction through to renewables, marine and industrial services – made it an increasingly complex organisation to manage as it expanded through acquisition.
Rather than six, seven, ten days later trying to get the data to be right and lose confidence, we now have conversations with operational teams about profitability, margin and working capital.Vidura GalpoththageExecutive General Manager Finance & Commercial, McKay
the challenge
When acquisition outpaces integration
McKay’s rapid expansion had exposed the limits of a 1990s-era ERP built for a single-entity business. Three separate Nimbus databases meant no consolidated view of the group. Consolidation required manual reconciliation between systems, approvals got stuck in spreadsheets and cash flow visibility was perpetually days behind reality. Every new acquisition layered another system onto an already fractured stack and the finance team spent their weeks pulling data rather than questioning it.
The business simply couldn’t move as fast as it wanted to. Acquiring companies meant integrating new entities across different systems – a process that stretched from months into quarters. It was tedious to see profitability by project, cash position by entity, or margin by service line, with heavy reliance on spreadsheets. Month-end close stretched beyond eight days, forecasting was guesswork and as Vidura reflected: there’s only so much bandwidth in a finance team. At some point you’ve got to choose – do you spend your time firefighting and pulling data together or do you spend it thinking about the business. In 2022, McKay chose the latter.
It was based on service that was very costly to maintain and the amount of manual work around in Excel was quite heavy. As the company grew, the three key drivers that forced us to move on to a different system were the volume of transactions, the Excel use and the manual work that was there.
Vidura Galpoththage, Executive General Manager Finance & Commercial, McKay
the results
One platform, infinite scalability
McKay selected Annexa and Oracle NetSuite to create a unified platform across its operations. The implementation consolidated financial management, project operations, inventory management and business reporting into one cloud-based environment, replacing three separate databases with a single source of truth that reflected the realities of a multi-entity, multinational business. A significant milestone came with the migration of McKay’s manufacturing division, MGE, onto the broader NetSuite platform, allowing manufacturing operations to operate within the same consolidated environment and strengthening financial controls across the group.
Month-end consolidation reduced from eight working days to six and the finance team could now produce monthly forecasts – something that wasn’t possible before. Real-time visibility into job costing, purchase order management and cash flow replaced the once days-long report production cycles. With improved visibility across projects, purchasing, inventory and financial performance, leaders gained faster access to the information needed to make decisions.
The shift to a unified platform unlocked three core capabilities. First was multi-entity consolidation – acquired companies could now be brought onto a unified financial model in weeks instead of months. Second came governance and control – approval workflows, audit trails and standardised processes replaced ad hoc workarounds and spreadsheet controls. Third was real-time insight – cash flow forecasting, project profitability and margin reporting moved from monthly guesses to daily certainty.
The transformation extended to operations too. Job costing became granular, allowing project managers to see profitability by scope and phase. Purchase order approvals became enforceable, with the business now able to delegate authority while maintaining control. And the finance team’s month-end workload dropped significantly, freeing them for more strategic tasks.
Most importantly, McKay established the operational and financial foundation needed to scale its business while maintaining control, visibility and consistency across the organisation. As Vidura reflected, when you’re building the systems, you’ve got to build it for the next stage of growth, not what you have today. Otherwise you’ll build something that’s out of date by the time you finish.
When you’re building the systems, you’ve got to build it for the next stage of the growth of the organisation, not what you have today. So you’ve got to be really forward-looking, otherwise you’re going to build something that’s going to be out of date by the time we finish.
Vidura Galpoththage, Executive General Manager Finance & Commercial, McKay
The biggest improvement for us was having all our entities consolidated in one place within the system. So we had a single source of truth that was a huge benefit to the team at the time.Vidura GalpoththageExecutive General Manager Finance & Commercial, McKay