2013 annual review leading from the front

Annual Report 2013 | 2014

1

CONTENTS

2 Chairman’s Report

4 Group Highlights

6 Group CEO’s Report

8 Our Capabilities

10 Software & Integration

22 Big Data - Datacom White Paper

24 Information Technology Management

36 Datacom Global Reach

38 Security - Datacom White Paper

40 Business Services & Payroll

48 Corporate Social Responsibility

53 Our Awards

54 Financial Reporting

62 Directory

63 Organisation

64 Our Clients

Leading from the front

At Datacom we pride ourselves on our values-based leadership. It is increasingly a foundation for internal culture, it motivates our teams and in turn they provide leading insights. It’s all about developing our people in meaningful ways.

This is the Laotian village of Ban Non Khouay. Every year, senior managers who have participated in Datacom’s tailored executive leadership program run by Macquarie Graduate School of Management spend a long week working with and in a remote Asian community in our Leadership for Life program. This program is designed around the values required for leadership, complementing the management school approaches.

Datacom Annual Review | 2013 - 2014 www.datacom.co.nz | www.datacom.com.au 32

DATACOM GROUP LIMITED

Datacom deliversDatacom Group has completed an excellent trading year and your Directors are very pleased to report increases in both revenue and profit on the previous year.

Revenues increased from $788 million last year to $870 million this year, up 10%, while profit before tax increased from $40.4 million to $50.9 million, up 26%.

Geographically the revenue was split – New Zealand $417 million, up 11% on last year, while Australia/Asia at $454 million, was up 10%. The revenue growth was driven by increases in the core service lines of software development, IT management and datacentres reflecting Datacom’s continuing success in winning new customers in these areas.

The profit growth was achieved with a very strong lift in the Australian business while New Zealand produced double digit growth on its bottom line.

The Group continues to show solid compound annual growth rates over 10 years with a 14% rate for revenue (last year 14%) and 9% for profit (last year 10%).

In Datacom New Zealand, the year was characterised by the relentless focus on lifting delivery into customers and projects along with continuing to win new business across the board. Improving delivery into customers remains an ongoing focus especially as Datacom New Zealand wins increasingly larger software projects and outsource customers than previously, which require increased levels of technical expertise and precise delivery.

Construction of the new datacentre in Hamilton was completed in early 2013 with the centre being officially opened in May, and customer demand already triggering the construction of the third and fourth data halls.

In general, demand for Datacom’s services in New Zealand remains strong across the market segments it operates in and the 2013/14 year will see the continued expansion of Datacom’s services around the “Cloud”, datacentre hosting, software development, IT infrastructure management and support and Business Process Outsourcing, augmented by an increasing focus on IP development, ownership and delivery to the market.

A pleasing feature of the 2013 year was Datacom’s ongoing service to the New Zealand Government, with its Hosting and Cloud Services running extremely well and a very good uptake across now 20 distinct departments.

In Australia, the Systems businesses delivered a solid result in a difficult market with both revenue and profit up on the previous year. The business conditions varied significantly across Australia with the “non resource” State economies struggling for momentum which impacted on Datacom in these areas.

Growth in the resource side of the Australian business has resulted in a new office opening in the Pilbara region in WA and significant expansion of the Queensland office, in terms of bottom line growth and complexity of projects including software.

Despite these economic challenges the market imprint of Datacom in the Australian IT services sector is an expanding one and this is reflected graphically in ACT where the Datacom staff have increased from 35 in 2010 to 165 in 2013 to meet the demand of servicing new Federal Government business.

Overall, Datacom’s Systems business in Australia is well focused and resourced to exploit its advantages in the market of being a strong national supplier of IT services across Australia.

During the year Datacom purchased a Melbourne-based SAP payroll services business which added new revenues of $13 million pa and the opportunity to expand these services across Australia.

Datacom Connect in Australia recorded a significant bounce back from the previous few years of decline, as work moved to Asia, with new contact centre business wins in federal and local Government and these along with Connect’s structural streamlining provides this business with a healthy future.

A significant event at year end was the signing of an agreement to sell Datacom’s Asian based BPO business to Convergys for NZ$25 million. This deal was transacted on 30th April 2013 and reflected Datacom’s realisation that its Asian BPO business had reached a tipping point and required a truly scaled global specialist to take the business to the next level.

The fact that Datacom could divest this world-class multilingual business to a global player, reflects the outstanding efforts of many Datacom staff in building this business since its inception in 1996, and is a credit to them all. Pleasingly, all Datacom staff transferred with the business to the new owner.

Datacom retains its presence in Kuala Lumpur and Manila and will continue to grow its business around providing professional IT services and business to business IT solutions to the local and international market.

Prudent cash management remained a priority during the year with the Group having a net cash balance of $43.4 million at year end. This balance was temporarily inflated by $9 million which related to the net proceeds from the sale of Datacom properties at Federal Street and Vincent Street in Auckland prior to 31st March 2013. These properties providing office space were deemed non-strategic and were sold with leases being signed for Datacom’s continued occupation with the new owner. In April the majority of the $9 million was applied to reduce debt.

With the construction of the Hamilton (Kapua) data centre, fitout of the fourth datahall at the Auckland (Orbit) data centre and the normal capital expenditure programme, $51 million of cash was applied to capital expenditure for the year. This, along with the SAP payroll business acquisition and minority share purchases in Australia, saw a total of $66 million reinvested in business growth against a net increase in bank loans of $14 million over the year.

Shareholders’ funds increased to $142 million and with an equity ratio of 40% the Group remains in a strong financial position to fund future growth.

Total staff numbers increased during the year by 14% to 4,334, with 2,202 in New Zealand, 1,082 in Australia and 1,050 in Asia. The divestment of the Asia BPO business has meant that post 30th April, Datacom’s staff numbers sit at approximately 3,600, with 850 shifting to Convergys.

In February 2013 the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation Fund completed their purchase of 35% of the ordinary shares in Datacom Group Limited from New Zealand Post Limited. This transaction ended NZ Post’s 23 years as a stable and supportive shareholder in Datacom and they remain one of Datacom’s largest customers having signed a five-year extension to its IT services contract with Datacom.

The NZ Super Fund investment in Datacom is targeted as long term and, with the majority shareholder Evander Management Limited, provides Datacom with an ongoing stable shareholding which sets the base for future growth.

The 2012/13 year concluded with our Chairman for 25 years, John Holdsworth, stepping down on 1st April. The board and staff record their appreciation to John for his service as Datacom Chairman over this time, which saw the Company move from annual revenues of $50 million to $870 million, and profit from zero to plus $50 million. John remains a director of the Datacom Group. In summary, the highlights of the year’s performance were:

- Total operating revenue was $870 million, up 10%

- Profit before tax was $50.9m, up 26%

- Profit after tax was $36 million, up 43%

- Staff numbers up 14%.

Appreciation

The Company has completed an outstanding year and this reflects squarely on our staff from top to bottom. We work in a fast paced and demanding industry with continual challenges to deliver better and stay relevant, and once again Datacom’s staff have come up trumps in applying themselves to the job. As we assess our 48th year of trading the Company has only achieved its best ever year because of the commitment and dedication from our 4,300 staff and on behalf of the directors and myself I would like to record our sincere thanks to all staff for their efforts. For those staff that left us in April through the Asian business divestment, we thank you for your significant contribution and wish you well for the future.

For and on behalf of the Board.

Craig Boyce - Chairman, Datacom Group Limited

CHAIRMAN’S REPORTFor the year ended 31 March 2013

Left: Datacom Head Office, Auckland CBD Below: Kapua - our newest and largest Datacentre, Hamilton


Our BusinessGuardians of New Zealand Superannuation Fund completed its purchase of 35% of the ordinary shares in Datacom Group Limited from New Zealand Post Limited and, since February, has purchased a further 2.3% of ordinary shares to bring its stake to 37.3%.

John Holdsworth stepped down as Chairman on 1st April, after leading the overall growth of the Datacom Group for 25 years. He remains a Director of the Datacom Group.

Datacom sold its Asian based BPO business to Convergys for NZ$25 million on 30th April 2013. Datacom’s growing IT business in Malaysia and the Philippines employs 150 people.

Our GrowthData centre footprint grew with the completion of the new data centre in Hamilton which officially opened in May 2013. Strong customer demand has triggered the earlier than anticipated construction of the third and fourth data halls.

Rapid uptake of Datacom’s hosting and Cloud services across New Zealand Government with 24 distinct departments signed.

Growth in Australia resulted in a new office opening in the Pilbara region in Western Australia and significant expansion of the Brisbane and Sydney offices.

To meet the demand of servicing new Federal Government business, Datacom Canberra staff increased from 35 in 2010 to 165 in 2013.

Acquisition of a Melbourne based SAP payroll services and HRIS business, named Datacom Business Services, added new revenues of $13 million per annum.

Acquisition of IP and selected assets of Western Australia based education systems provider the XciteLogic group, will contribute to the growth of the business within education and other sectors.

We increased staff numbers by 14% to 4334 staff across New Zealand, Australia and Asia. Post the divestment of the 850 staff in Asia BPO business and subsequent growth staff numbers as at the close of October 2013 total 3,690.


GROUP HIGHLIGHTSFor the year ended 31 March 2013

$870 M Total Op Revenue - Up 10%

$36 M NPAT - Up 43%

14% Revenue

9% Profit - 10-year CAGRs

Our RankingsDatacom makes up about 11% of the technology sector In New Zealand.

In New Zealand in the 2013 TIN100, we ranked second in export earnings in the ICT sector after household name Fisher & Paykel Appliances.

Software development more than five years at number one market share.

Application Management from number five to one in five years.

From number five to one in IT Outsourcing in five years.

Number one in Systems Integration.

Held number two position in Hosted Infrastructure while the market grew.


The Datacom difference At Datacom we work hard to be different, to provide a different experience. Different because we bring to our customers the new technologies and their benefits as soon as we can. And different because of the way we interact with our clients and partners – with an emphasis on openness and collaboration.

What we do is design, build and operate technology platforms, processes and services for business, but it’s the game changing results of our work that matter to our clients, and to us.

In our thinking, each client requires its own unique approach and an element of fresh thinking to ensure we deliver enduring value. We’re fortunate to have a broad span of customers across industry sectors with many relationships dating back decades, and we are mindful that each customer has their own market challenge to overcome.

We know that cleverly applied technology and deep local knowledge of these sectors is the only way to effectively and efficiently address these challenges for our customers and to provide a sustainable edge.

In these pages is demonstrated some of the value that we have brought in 2013 to our clients and the communities in which we operate. The exciting part for all the people working at Datacom is that the opportunities to do more, to carry on growing our capabilities and our business, are even greater in number as we look to the future. For us, the disruptive promise of new technologies represents the chance to do things differently and better for our customers – that’s what motivates us.

Datacom Data centresDatacom offer a network of nine data centres located in the major Australian and New Zealand cities which is able to support a combined IT equipment load of over 15 MW. The Kapua data centre, Datacom’s newest and highest specification facility located in Hamilton, New Zealand was officially opened in May 2013 by NZ ICT Minister Amy Adams. Within weeks of the opening ceremony a commitment was made to fit out the second data hall, productionising a second 180 racks and then in June on the back of strong customer demand phase 3 of the project was initiated which adds a second power module and two further data halls. This brings the total capacity of the Kapua site up to approximately 720 racks.

Customers are attracted both by the second-to-none standard of the facility and the location - from the perspective of an overall disaster recovery strategy, geological stability, easy physical access, and great multi-vendor network connectivity, the extended capacity will become available in February 2014.

Current customers of the centre include government agencies, and both large and smaller enterprises. In parallel with the major project at Kapua, further investments in power and cooling systems have been made over the last 12 months in facilities in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth.

All our facilities now house Datacom Cloud Services (DCS) nodes which provide customers of the data centres a very convenient and risk free entry into those technologies. Further investments and advancement are planned for 2014 and beyond.

“We are pleased with our investment in Datacom and the gains it has made in the IT market this year. Datacom is a hugely successful and innovative New Zealand owned company that values trust, strong relationships and being at the forefront of new technologies. Datacom is well suited to the Fund’s long-term, growth-oriented investment approach, and we look forward to its continued success” Adrian Orr - CEO New Zealand Superannuation Fund

Our SuccessWe rose in service provision by more than 10% by “bucking the trend”, which saw revenue shrinkage for many other ICT providers.

We have successfully developed a mobile accelerator focused on delivering CRM data to a mobile sales force. This has been internationally recognised by Forbes and Microsoft, and has been delivered to Sealord.

We are the only service provider in New Zealand to be certified as a VMware vCloud data centre services provider. This allows global customers to leverage the wider vCloud data centre network of service providers and unlock the true benefits of cloud.

We became one of the larger suppliers of advanced contact centre services to government in Australia – combining telephony, internet service, chat and social media to deliver innovative citizen-centric solutions.

We remotely implement, maintain and support complex cloud services infrastructure from our Kuala Lumpur and Manila operations for multiple telcos and ISPs in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

We provide world-leading cyber-security services to mitigate and minimise risks posed by sophisticated adversaries, state-sponsored actors, issue-motivated groups or rogue private contractors.

In SummarySimply stated – our approach puts the technology second and places customer outcomes and genuine insight first.

In today’s technology and increasingly data driven world it really is survival of the fastest. For us to grow strongly and sustainably as we are, we need to be first in our sector to offer new technologies to our customers and to adapt how we do what we do to bring the benefits of those advances to our customers sooner.

We can do this because of our comprehensive spread of IT capability from data centres, through infrastructure, cloud and outsourcing services to custom built software, our own products, business process outsourcing and multiple as-a-service offerings.

The vital extra ingredient is how we do business. We are open in our approach, flexible in our everyday workings as a leader within the technology marketplace. This is backed up with a 48-year track record of delivering complex high-end IT services across Asia Pacific.

Jonathan Ladd - Group CEO, Datacom Group Limited


GROUP CEO’S REPORTFor the year ended 31 March 2013

Left: Adrian Orr (L) and Jonathan Ladd Right: Kapua


IT Services This map shows our locations with more than 50 employees.Business Services

Data centre

Our Capabilities Software developmentIntegration and support – with around 800 permanent staff on our software development team, we offer clients a complete software engineering capability, spanning design, analysis, development and customisation, integration, testing, support and maintenance of software applications; from the largest mission critical enterprise applications to cutting-edge web and mobile apps.

IT Management With deep expertise in the design, implementation and support of technical infrastructure including all hardware, network and data centre infrastructure, hosting, systems administration and outsource services.

Datacom operates high grade enterprise data centres, bringing accessible and secure high availability computing to our clients at a market leading cost.

Business ServicesAcross New Zealand and Australia we provide a holistic suite of integrated customer connection solutions and services, from complete contact centre, sales and technical support solutions, payroll, printing and mail-out services through to innovative customer contact, CRM and QA systems that enhance the performance of your in-house resources.

IT procurement services Including product purchasing and software licensing where our high volume of transactions and our key vendor relationships help ensure great value for money for our customers.

OUR CAPABILITIES


Software & Integration

Organisations are continually seeking competitive differentiation by leveraging clever processes and solutions that will help them transform their business to meet the requirements of the market. Datacom’s award winning software development and system design business takes the right approach by offering innovative high-end solutions and operational improvement systems that are critical to the growth of a client’s business.

The complexity often experienced by organisations is around their ability to seamlessly integrate new and improved technologies that deliver tangible benefits. With our proven history in the software and integration business we are recognised as leaders in delivering highly complex integration projects.

We have the ability to leverage our skill sets around several domains:

- Consulting

- Application management

- Digital channels/digital commerce

- Products

- Big Data

- Cloud

Our success has largely been driven by our unwavering commitment to delivery, good people with great skills, keeping abreast of technology trends, embracing and understanding new disruptive paradigms and how these will impact our clients and our delivery capabilities.

This has enabled us to offer clients a number of defining competencies in the areas of:

- Designing innovative, easy-to-use programs that combine convenience with savings, and enable clients to move from unsupported platforms to reliable infrastructure within short timeframes

- Designing, building, and implementing next-generation automated provisioning engines

- Designing and delivering customised client service portals

- Intensifying domain knowledge of IP for each industry and providing specialist insight.


Challenge:Global enterprise, Sealord, works across 40 countries and is the largest seafood company in New Zealand. To operate in a highly competitive international market, Sealord had to get closer to its customers. To do this, Sealord needed a multi-phased customer relationship management (CRM) solution, supported by groundbreaking mobile capability.

Solution:To achieve its business objectives, Sealord put out a request for information for a CRM solution. It also wanted its field force to have access to Windows 8’s new Metro interface, and to have an application built on this platform.

Datacom’s experience in fast moving consumer goods sector ensured our team’s ability to develop this innovative application. We launched it to the Microsoft developer community at the TechEd 2012 conference and then fleshed out the concept with practical modules for Sealord.

The Sealord IT team got on board as it quickly realised the direct business benefits that the application would bring to its sales force. From there, the project kicked off.

Datacom’s solution brings together customer, product, pricing and promotion management, while streamlining ordering and account management. The secure, mobile solution is delivered on Datacom CRM Online, which is a partner-hosted New Zealand based flexible software-as-a-service system.

Immediately in the first few weeks the system was used to take millions of dollars of orders. As development moved so quickly, Sealord was able to launch a new direct-to-market Australian sales business within only two months.

Result:- Better distribution and invoicing integration saw

back-office order administration drop by 35%.

- Sealord will gain return on its investment in under 12 months.

- The sales team can make four more sales calls per week – this is an important measure for Sealord because the goal was to get closer to more of their customers.

- Better visibility of issues and more timely conversations on out of stock.

- Ability to easily add further functionality, quickly and at low cost.

CASE STUDY: Software and Integration

INDUSTRY: Fast Moving Consumer Goods

“The solution enabled the Australia business to go live stream very quickly. We simply could not have done this without Datacom.” Neville Richardson – CIO Sealord

Sealord’s groundbreaking solution achieves direct benefits


Challenge:Regional Councils have a demanding and important job. They are tasked with managing the natural and physical resources of a region, providing governance over large areas of the countryside and waterways under the Resource Management Act, Biosecurity Act, Maritime Transport Act, and other acts. Six councils identified a need to replace their current regulatory and business support systems, and formed the Regional Council Collaborative Development Group (RCCDG) to tackle this imposing challenge.

Solution:RCCDG is made up of Northland Regional Council, Waikato Regional Council, Taranaki Regional Council, Horizons Regional Council, West Coast Regional Council and Environment Southland. These councils recognised the benefits of centralising functions for consistency in viewing and working with information. They also wanted more accurate and timely business processing.

Following a comprehensive review of the marketplace, they could not find a software package that fully supported their requirements. What the group needed was an innovative, flexible solution developed and implemented.

Accustomed to collaboration, RCCDG believed it could achieve economies of scale, cost savings and process improvements – working with the right partner. The group chose Datacom for its track record of successful delivery, experience in the sector, and existing relationships with many of the participating councils.

RCCDG was responsible for overall project governance, while Datacom delivered the software development project. We also had to allow for individual councils’ differing perspectives at each project phase, while bringing the overall solution together to work for all.

The web application solution, called Integrated Regional Information System (IRIS), was designed to manage core regional council functions, including the regulatory areas of consents, compliance, biosecurity and enforcement.

The system includes workflow that assists councils in following business processes to meet deadlines and provide better service to their customers.

While the solution offers commonalities, each council had its unique customisation requirements. Each customisation can be turned on or off via configuration. A data-driven fields feature can be used by each council to collect additional information.

Result:- IRIS is specifically designed to meet the legislative

requirements for regional councils particularly; RMA consenting, and assisting with measuring and monitoring regional impacts and effects of consented activities, national policy statements, and regional environmental, biosecurity, and biodiversity priorities.

- The solution provides comprehensive, flexible, robust and scalable workflow support for business processes.


INDUSTRY: Government

“We are getting the business benefits we expected and real synergies. The six councils achieved more together than each of them could on their own, and individually it cost each of us less than we would have paid had we done it on our own. The IRIS application supports our business well.”

Derek Postlewaight – Project Director RCCDG

Left to Right: Graham Alsweiler – Environment Southland Mike Garrett – Waikato Regional Council Suzanne Craig – Horizons Regional Council Simon Crabb – Northland Regional Council Mike Nield – Taranaki Regional Council Junine Stewart –Waikato Regional Council

Collaborative project streamlines Regional Councils’ work


Challenge:Statistics New Zealand (Statistics) needed to ensure that it provided an online system to collect official statistics of high integrity and quality for use by government and New Zealanders to inform decisions. To achieve this, the organisation had to develop the Internet Collection System for the 2013 Census. Key requirements were to ensure privacy and security of data, browser compatibility, and to provide a high level of performance and availability for the website while processing a very high load in a short period of time.

Solution:Datacom had successfully developed the system for the census in 2006 and 2011 and application development for 2013 was based on reuse of this system. However, Statistics wanted changes made in line with fresh requirements. It also wanted extensive testing and updates to accommodate a wide range of browsers across a variety of platforms.

The solution enabled a range of platforms to run smoothly, predominantly Windows, Mac, iOS (iPad or iPhone), Android (tablet or phone), and Linux, while smaller numbers of users with Windows Phone, Smart TV, Xbox, and Blackberry were able to use it. Additionally, a real-time dashboard provided live updates for key business data and system performance indicators.

Datacom’s experience of the organisation and our expertise in software development and system integration ensured the overall technical success of the Internet Collection System, providing certainty of outcome to Statistics. Implementation cut across infrastructure and network designs, support of server infrastructure, databases and load balancing equipment while collaborating with Statistics and a third-party provider.

The solution Datacom architected and developed for Census 2013 met all the performance requirements and achieved 100% availability, 24 hours a day for eight weeks.

Result:- 2 million or approximately 35% of total census

forms were collected online, with peak load reaching 130,000 forms per hour on census day.

- Statistics wanted a system that encouraged and supported all citizens to complete the Census online – on any device. Our solution resulted in a 27.28% increase of online engagement compared to the results achieved at the end of the 2006 Census making New Zealand a world leader in terms of collecting census forms online.



“Working with Datacom again on the national census allowed us to leverage the innovation and insight from across their firm – they provided the integration leadership we needed to successfully deliver the online census in 2013.”Carol Slappendel – Acting Deputy Government Statistician, Collections and Dissemination Statistics New Zealand

Statistics New Zealand ramps up online performance


Transformational Crown solution open to private sectorWith the passing of the Electronic Identity Verification Act in 2012, bringing the all-of-government igovt logon and identity verification services to the private sector became a possibility.

A public private partnership was established between the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) and New Zealand Post Group to bring these services to the market. This included rebranding them to the RealMe® service.

Our igovt team’s specialist domain and technical knowledge, built over seven years, ensured we could open the market for consumption of igovt services by private sector organisations. The basis of the RealMe solution was to re-use the set of igovt services owned by the Crown, which provide authentication and identity verification services for the public sector.

The solution, launched on 1 July 2013, extends the igovt services while continuing to meet the strictest requirements of brand, usability, security, privacy protection, and information security. The RealMe service is hosted on our Government Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform.

Result:- Our specialist Identity and Access Management

team re-platformed the entire solution (including almost every component in the technology stack) and migrated over 1,000,000 user credentials from the old platform into the Government IaaS platform over launch weekend without a hitch.

“Datacom responded to the schedule and technical challenge with a high level of commitment which allowed us to not only meet the tight deadlines, but to also achieve a successful launch of RealMe.” Mandy Smith – Head of Agency Services New Zealand Post Group



Barfoot & Thompson creates powerful engine for mobilityIn today’s fast-paced technology world people’s user experience expectations are high. And, in the high-growth property market, getting the right property information quickly and easily wherever you are can be critical. Barfoot & Thompson needed a solution to integrate with its internal systems to make this information available – fast – for its agents on iPADs.

The company knew Datacom could deliver on this. We developed a central platform that collates all mobile application related data into a central database from the many internal systems.

The database is accessible via an application programming interface and an iPAD application. Barfoot & Thompson agents now have a powerful, fast and consistent field sales tool – they can view details of any property in real-time.

The application has been released into the iOS App Store, making a version available also to the ‘house hunting’ public as well as to the agents.

As the project rolled out, the platform’s functionality was broadened to include all digital channels. Our team saw this as an opportunity to take the application to a higher level and extend it to be a central platform for online, social media and internet channels like TradeMe and realestate.co.nz. This was also to create a similar user experience across all digital channels.

Result:- Mobile usage has more than doubled, growing from

11.4% in 2012 to 23.5% by 2013.

“Our primary objective was a great user experience, so very fast API response was critical. Datacom’s solution allows us to achieve this while giving us the ability to scale for growth.” Stephen Barfoot – IT Manager Barfoot & Thompson


INDUSTRY: Real Estate


INDUSTRY: Finance

Challenge:The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) needed a robust, flexible case management solution to manage its business workflow including licensing, investigation and enforcement. FMA had outgrown the disparate and point legacy systems which were slow to adapt to new processes. FMA needed a new system to manage business processes. It also needed forensic integrity for managing investigation and enforcement cases.

Solution:FMA was established in 2011 to regulate New Zealand’s financial markets, overseeing securities, financial reporting and company law as applied to the financial services and securities markets. FMA’s mandate is to promote and facilitate the development of fair, efficient and transparent financial markets.

After two years of operation, FMA recognised the need to better track and manage workflows to prioritise activities. The legacy solution was developed in-house and designed to meet immediate needs, such as licensing financial advisers.

However, as FMA matured, the need for a new system became more critical. FMA wanted a robust technology platform that would deal with the unique requirements of semi-structured and unstructured data – quickly.

The tough timeframe was a challenge. Datacom’s team drove the project using an Agile approach, which met FMA’s requirement for quick deployment with minimal development. We worked with the in-house IT team to build a customised Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) system.

The unique pre-packaged advanced case management add-on Datacom had invested IP in previously gave a jump start over an out-of-the-box CRM solution.

Today, FMA has streamlined processes and enhanced productivity while built in measurements and service levels now actively manage and monitor performance. This gives a better picture of the financial market participants, while maintaining data integrity.

Result:- The initial implementation phase was for four of 14

business processes. The remaining 10 will be rolled out over 2013 and by April 2014 all FMA staff will be using one system with single view.

“We wanted to use proven technology, be a fast follower and do as much as possible with configuration rather than development.” Dave Brady – Head of Finance & Business Operations FMA

Financial Markets Authority streamlines market activities


Powerco improves asset management investment planningNew Zealand’s second largest natural gas and electricity distributor, Powerco, has over 420,000 customers across the North Island. To make better investment decisions, the company wanted more reliable and easier access to important asset information.

Datacom worked very closely with key business knowledge holders to gain a deep understanding of the business needs. A flexible solution was designed and implemented to produce reliable, consistent and auditable information that was easily accessible through self-service tools. The system combines a range of data sources around core assets, including geospatial data, with operational data such as customer complaints and fault and outage records. Understanding correlations of data from different sources allows the company to optimise future investment plans. The system provides simple access to information across the business through self-service tools. Quality has also improved as the shortened cycle time allows new criteria to be added and reports regenerated.

Result:- Critical annual reports that used to take up to six

weeks to produce and were difficult to reproduce can now be generated in around four hours.

“Datacom has worked hard to develop a deep understanding of our business and delivered a flexible system to optimize our future investment planning. As we continue to extend it, it will become an increasingly important tool for making decisions critical to our business success.” Paul Ward - Programme Manager Powerco

Auckland Airport futureproofs with business intelligence solutionAuckland International Airport Limited (Auckland Airport) welcomes over 70% of visitors to New Zealand, handling more than 13 million passengers annually.

Its business is diverse and includes managing heavily regulated aeronautical systems and operations, as well as retail shopping and parking services. With passenger volumes projected to nearly double by 2025, the company sought to increase visibility of critical data to better manage its business operations. Auckland Airport had an existing system which had worked well in the past, but managers wanted more flexibility and faster access to information.

Datacom quickly ramped up a specialist business intelligence project team to provide more user-friendly access to information in the existing system and new data sources. Over 125 charts and 25 dashboards were implemented in just four months. The speed of delivery of the initial project and business value realised led Auckland Airport to extend the engagement to a business-wide analytics platform and ultimately a replacement of the existing system.

Result:- Improved business agility and profitability with

near-real-time access to analytics information.

- Simplified and strengthened regulatory compliance with more accurate and traceable data.

- Significantly reduced reporting time with daily and near real-time reporting capability.

- Business users can now be responsible for managing their own information.

- More transparency of information has led to a culture shift with increased accountability, improved efficiency and ultimately better performance.

“This solution has really changed the playing field.” Cameron Brill - Business Technology Manager Auckland Airport


INDUSTRY: Utilities


INDUSTRY: Transport

Wellington City Council website refresh Wellington City Council is up made up of over 30 business units and provides a diverse range of functions and services. The council’s website had a high level of traffic – an average of 6,830 visits per day and 148,332 visits per month, and site usage was increasing steadily.

To increase useability, develop more online services and transactions, and rationalise a number of different platforms and technologies, Wellington City Council decided to introduce a new Content Management System.

Datacom was appointed to undertake the technical development of the website, and partnered with a design agency that created visual elements and design. Our technical team implemented the solution by taking the outdated, static website to a dynamic solution that supports modern design and end-user requirements such as mobility and accessibility.

Result:- Provided users with a modern dynamic and

maintainable website.

- Enabled multi-device support (browser, tablet, mobile).

- Reduced support costs.

- Enhanced existing legacy integrated systems by providing a modern user interface and end user experience.

- Enable future expansion including targeted mobile applications.

“We are pleased with the first phase of our website refresh which has resulted in improved accessibility, a more user-centric experience and a solid platform for us to grow our online transactions and services. Websites are never ‘finished’ and we’re now working to continually harness the full potential of this web solution that Datacom and DNA have partnered with us to create.” Tracey Kai – Manager External Relations Wellington City Council

Taupo District Council removes LIM headaches Taupo District Council’s manual-based Land Information Memoranda (LIM) service was complicated and lengthy – at times taking more than 10 days to process. This meant expected timeframes were not always met and the ability to offer a quality customer service inhibited. The council needed change and aimed high.

Datacom’s deep knowledge of local government processes and systems, as well as our systems integration expertise ensured we would deliver on the project goals. We worked with four vendors and different areas of the organisation to roll out the project.

Our team created a service using the Customer Connect platform, which provides complex online services through configuration. This was tailored to the council’s unique needs. We then assisted with a cultural shift as staff roles changed from creating the document to managing the quality of the data input.

Today, the council has a fully automated LIM process, along with two new services – Express (four hours, 24/7) and Urgent (three to five-day) LIM service. This is supported by a flexible online payment option, using Datacom’s payment gateway.

Result:- The 24/7 four-hour service is believed to be an

Australasian first.

- Process required 2.5 Full Time Employees; today it only needs 0.5.

- The project won the ALGIM Information Management, Records Project of the Year Award 2013.

“Throughout this project we were impressed with Datacom’s ability to understand our complex internal processes and adjust the deliverables accordingly. In the end, Datacom delivered our needs but also added functionality and capability beyond our expectations while staying on budget and on time.” Georgiana Johnson – Project Manager Business Development Taupo District Council


INDUSTRY: Local Government



CASE STUDY: Information Technology Management


City of South Perth beefs up customer service channelsCity of South Perth Council, which governs greater South Perth, responds to over 100,000 customer queries and hosts over one million visitors to the city every year. The council employs over 200 staff members who are responsible for local planning and policy development, community programmes and services, and day-to-day operations.

To improve its complex business processes, the council needed a smart customer relationship management (CRM) solution – quickly.

In response, Datacom leveraged our knowledge of the council’s operations to quickly engage in a collaborative process to identify issues with the existing CRM solution. Following this, we chose an international solution, specifically designed for the public sector.

Working with the council, the first phase of the project was rolled out within six months – from design to configuration, testing and implementation. The project included staff training and change management, driven by Datacom. The new platform has improved a range of services to the city’s 45,000 residents.

“Datacom’s complete technology platform solution innovatively closed any existing gaps and integrated completely with our internal business systems. They engaged our entire organisation in the process of change and their expert project management clearly proved the benefits of engaging such an experienced systems integrator rather than going direct to the vendor.” Michael Kent – Director Finance & Information Services City of South Perth


Today, a new generation of big data technologies and architectures are maturing, leveraging innovative software frameworks, advances in business analytical toolsets and inexpensive storage via the cloud.

The volume of data that organisations deal with is growing exponentially, so it comes as no surprise when studies show that by 2020 the digital universe – the total of all digital data created and replicated – will reach 40 zettabytes (ZB). To put this into perspective, this is 40 trillion GB of data, or 5,200 GB of data for every person on earth – that’s a 50-fold growth since 2010.

This means the velocity at which this data is available can outstrip the ability to make practical use of it, making it a challenge for organisations to make essential decisions driven by data insights. Added to this, is the need for organisations to be more responsive to customers, make faster decisions and in turn improve performance and predictive accuracy through reliable, quality data. Harnessing the value of data requires truly intelligent data management and governance.

Traditionally organisations have built data warehouses by extracting valuable information from their structured data sources. The data coverage of these traditional data warehouses has been constrained by costs of data storage and processing resources. As only a subset of the available organisation data is processed, the information is effectively filtered, possibly losing some of its business value in the process.

Today, a new generation of big data technologies and architectures are maturing, leveraging innovative software frameworks, advances in business analytical toolsets and inexpensive storage via the cloud.

These technologies still process traditional structured data sources, but also have the ability to extract value from an organisation’s unstructured data such as audio, video, email, and machine-generated data. These come from a multitude of sources, including sensors, documents, text streams, and other external web-based data sources and social media feeds.

Building superior data managementDatacom’s award-winning business intelligence and data warehousing practice delivers solutions that assist our customers to make better decisions. We apply an established methodology, framework and toolsets that allow us to reliably deliver complete solutions delivering genuine business value in a matter of months.

Our solutions enable our customers to easily sift through their data sets, analyse them and identify trends and correlations. These can then be interpreted into decision-ready management information and distributed as scorecards to boards and shareholders.

In addition to traditional reporting approaches of dashboards, scorecards and charts, we can deliver more tailored visualisation solutions to our customers.

Unlocking the value of big dataDistributed and large-scale data processing tools such as the Hadoop framework are making big data initiatives affordable for organisations. Datacom continues to guide our customers through this evolving landscape with specialist yet pragmatic business-oriented advice.

We continue to invest in our technology portfolio and offer clients our industry-leading Big Data as a Service (BDaaS) platform, the first and only BDaaS offering in New Zealand. The real value of BDaaS is the ability to quickly establish big data initiatives without the upfront CAPEX required for an on-premise deployment. Organisations are able to scale up and down easily and pay only for the storage and computer resources they require.

BDaaS offerings reduce the need for organisations to hire and/or train big-data staff, which is challenging due to the specialist skills required and a lack of skilled big-data consultants. BDaaS is a good starting point for organisations looking to tap into the power of big-data analytics, without having to commit to a full-scale deployment up front.

Our BDaaS offering provides the platform to perform big-data analytics. This service also provides ongoing monthly support to ensure the platform is available and performing as required, while having access to our team’s expertise to enable companies to get the most from their solution. Big data can be done in near real-time, allowing organisations to obtain rapid insight to customer reactions to marketing campaigns and other events, allowing immediate tweaking of customer messaging and communications.

Early use of our BDaaS platform has shown performance benefits of 10 – 20x faster for certain workloads compared to traditional SQL platforms. This opens up opportunities to process more and/or richer data sets in a move to more real-time processing. The BDaaS platform also provides a cost-effective storage and analytics platform to capture and retain a much richer view of an organisation’s customers. This can lead to a more targeted interaction with each customer, and move direct marketing approaches from a generic and potentially negative experience for a customer to a personalised, highly relevant and therefore positive experience.

As data is increasingly being recognised as a strategic organisational asset, Datacom strives to partner with all customers to unlock this asset’s value, make better decisions and, ultimately, maximise performance.

DATACOM INSIGHTS

WHITE PAPERIssued: December 2013

Unlocking the Big Data paradigm

PLEASE NOTE: This Datacom White Paper is also

available online as a downloadable PDF at www.datacom.co.nz


IT Management encompasses multiple services – from world class data centres, cloud and network services, through to operations management and transformational project and consulting capabilities. We apply experience and industry leading practice to each client’s unique requirements.

We have a proven track record of delivery, and have deep understandings of our own industry and the dynamics facing our clients.

We build long-term partnerships with clients because our approach puts the technology second and places measurable business outcomes and genuine insight first.

This is backed up with a track record of delivering complex high-end outsourcing projects that deliver rock solid surety and return on that insight with particular success in the areas of:

- Supporting existing and new business requirements through better capital management

- Improving resiliency and operational management through reduced risk

- Creating greater organisational agility to react quickly to market opportunities and threats

- Improving visibility of service costs and service levels through better quality decisions

- Delivering clever solutions that increase capability, speed and efficiency

- Delivering greater economies of scale through cost savings

- Improving efficiency and reliability of operations.

IT Management is at the heart of the Datacom offerings and core to organisations’ enduring performance.

Information Technology Management


Ministry for Primary Industry migrates for massive benefits



Challenge:As part of the Government ICT Strategy and Action Plan to 2017, the Ministry for Primary Industry (MPI) is one of 29 government agencies required to apply the Government Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model. With its incumbent agreement about to expire, MPI reviewed its current and future requirements and found it needed a new IaaS solution. MPI also wanted to realise significant cost-savings from the new system.

To achieve this, MPI outlined a complex migration project attaching a challenging timeframe of seven months. The project had to be completed with minimal disruption to the organisation and the services it provides.

Solution:When MPI adopted a commercial cloud offering in 2009, it was one of the first agencies to embrace the benefits of IaaS. The intent was to migrate from a commercial platform to the Government’s new IaaS offering once it was established.

Following a review of its existing systems and other providers’ offerings, it was found that a clear differentiation point for Datacom was how we demonstrated the cost savings we could produce around transition of services. The savings made during the migration could also be achieved in further consolidations and ongoing operations.

We proved our promise. Our team migrated MPI’s IT infrastructure from the existing data centres into our Wellington and Auckland data centres. Overall, this involved moving 650 servers and 100 Tb of data.

Our flexible approach also enabled us to adapt our requirements to meet MPI’s needs, specifically around the introduction of a new service, called Bare Metal as a Service, to meet a unique MPI need.

The project involved 120 people from five companies and was delivered on time and within budget. This was achieved through collaboration and teamwork between MPI’s partners. We were also able to leverage our existing relationships with other providers to deliver the project.

Today, MPI’s server environment is significantly simplified. Datacom’s solution reduced MPI’s data centre footprint from 31 racks to only seven, while network switches were dropped from 70 to 12.

Result:- Reduced hosting costs by 35% annually.

- MPI is directly contributing to the government’s target saving of $100m over 10 years, through improved services and efficiency gains.

“The project has allowed MPI to achieve a range of benefits including cost reductions and reduced complexity. It would not have been a success without the dedicated effort from your technical teams and the true partnerships that have been formed. The teams have worked long hours to make this project work.” Tracy Voice – Director Business Technology & Information Services MPI




Challenge:The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) manages 7,000 claims per day – a new one every 2.30 minutes. This means its systems have to be highly robust, flexible and secure. ACC needed a Unified Services Management (USM) system to support this high level of activity seamlessly, while advancing the need to move to more online systems.

Solution:ACC provides comprehensive, no-fault personal injury cover for all New Zealand residents and visitors to New Zealand. The organisation wanted to stabilise and enhance its IT environment to meet operational KPIs, to support people in their time of need.

Leveraging our expertise within IT management, we recommended ACC adopt a USM system. This would enable seamless management of all parties involved in the delivery of IT services to ACC, including Datacom, third parties and internal delivery teams.

The benefits included collaborative incident management, quicker turnaround of issues, proactive service improvement, one view of all parties’ delivery, and consolidated reporting.

Also, ACC no longer needed an internal team of people to manage all of the parties – Datacom could do it all. To support the change in approach, ACC introduced key cultural and structural changes such as removing the need for a Change Manager and Operations Manager within its own structure.

Through a partnership approach, Datacom took on full management of the ACC infrastructure environment. Since then ACC has seen service delivery soar. An increased focus on standardisation and stabilisation has allowed ACC IT to enhance its goals of delivering quality services and a platform for business enhancements.

Result:- User satisfaction went from around 68% prior to

transition to over 90% with Datacom.

- On average, the number of open tickets dropped from 550 handed over at transition to less than 350, decreasing the average open ticket time.

- Overall confidence in IT delivery increased as shown in ACC’s survey of IT within the business, early in 2013.

ACC move to unified system ramps up services

“We have achieved a genuine strategic partnership with Datacom. This means our relationship is open and trusting and we are working together as one team to deliver excellence for ACC.” Paul Jepson – CIO Accident Compensation Corporation


Challenge:Midlands Health Network (MHN) is a not-for-profit primary health care innovator and development company owned by Pinnacle Incorporated, a network of general practitioners and health professionals operating in the North Island of New Zealand. The company’s focus is on the design and delivery of sustainable, high-value solutions for general practice teams that ultimately improve the health outcomes of New Zealanders.

Pinnacle Incorporated recognised the general practice network needed a more robust and stable IT environment. New IT tools and systems were putting increasing demand on general practice infrastructure, and practice staff were spending too much of their valuable time keeping their IT and patient management systems up-to-date, secure and in a healthy operational state.

The doctors wanted reliable and secure business systems that allowed them to spend more time with patients and to readily adopt new technology solutions that will enable them to deliver improved patient outcomes.

Solution:As a result, Pinnacle introduced xcrania™ to provide a fully managed service that for the first time in New Zealand sets a minimum standard at which general practice IT should be operating. xcrania™ aims to provide a specialist package in response to the minimum standards shifting general practice owners away from the current piecemeal buying and operating of practice systems.

On behalf of Pinnacle, Midlands Health Network worked with Datacom to develop xcrania™. The service delivers a total practice solution for the patient management and supporting systems from a cloud service, hosted in Datacom’s Orbit data centre.

Datacom shared in the risk around the initial start-up of the service in a true long-term partnering relationship, establishing a risk/reward model that has both MHN and Datacom focused on getting the right business outcomes. This partnering view, combined with our team’s national field services capability and established cloud platform provided a proven and trusted platform for MHN’s initiative.

The initiative had a high cost associated with the initial start up of the service, and a significant period of time before a sufficient number of GPs were using the service to make it commercially viable. Datacom and MHN worked collaboratively to put in place a commercial structure that both parties felt was fair, while recognising the commitment both were bringing to the venture.

The service has been operational for nearly 18 months, and will have a total of 500 users by December 2013 and 1,000+ users by March 2014.

xcrania™ is now extending to other Midlands Health Network’s offices in Hamilton, Taupo, New Plymouth and Gisborne.

Result:- Today, GPs have access to their patient

management system and other office applications through a centrally managed IT service that provides a single point of contact for all their technology needs and issues.


INDUSTRY: Health

Midlands Health Network improves care through managed IT service

“Pinnacle (along with Midlands Health Network and Datacom) has invested a lot of resource into helping to establish xcrania™ for general practices and other primary health organisations. It’s a significant step forward in addressing the technology deficit that exists in the sector and enabling new models of care aimed at delivering sustainable and affordable healthcare. We believe this service will also provide the infrastructure and desktop capability that Midlands Health Network needs, and it makes sense for us to demonstrate our confidence in the solution by migrating to the service ourselves.” John Crane – CIO Midlands Health Network


Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games lead up in good handsA major part of any successful Games is the upfront planning, organisation and implementation of a highly complex information technology infrastructure platform.

In 2012, the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Corporation (GOLDOC) went to tender for supply of an IT service for its initial corporate technology platform. This platform had to be flexible, scalable and needed to support GOLDOC’s administrative technology needs leading up to the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games™.

Because of the unique structure of GOLDOC’s IT environment, the requirement for a ‘one-stop-shop approach’, that was highly flexible, as-a-service-model, and secure and scalable, was essential.

GOLDOC is a statutory authority of the Queensland State Government established to plan, organise and deliver the Games. GOLDOC operates a high performance, resilient Information Communication and Technology platform that enables the business to carry out activities in preparation for GC2018. This environment is provided as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering under a managed services agreement by Datacom.

Datacom was chosen by GOLDOC’s for this initial technology platform based on our strong response to the tender requirements and our ability to provide a comprehensive managed IT services solution. We offered a cost-effective infrastructure-based managed services solution that met GOLDOC’s existing corporate needs, while providing a platform with the flexibility to grow with the organisation towards Games time.

Result:- Datacom delivered a flexible service model that

could meet the changing landscape of GOLDOC’s ICT environment.

“Datacom continues to be a very important element to the success of our preparations for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games. Datacom’s managed services have been flexible and responsive with highly professional support services.”Helen Moore – General Manager Finance and Business Services GOLDOC


INDUSTRY: Events

Te Tumu Paeroa move to Cloud offers independenceTe Tumu Paeroa, a 90+ year-old organisation formally known as the Maori Trustee, was separating from parent organisation Te Puni Kokiri to become a standalone entity. New IT infrastructure was required to support the organisation, to perform business functions and processes, and to support existing systems and staff.

The solution had to be flexible and cost effective. It also had to be delivered within a tight timeframe of four months. As a new entity, Te Tumu Paeroa wanted a ‘greenfields’ IT environment that could scale to a complete production and development environment of entirely new core systems and services that were also being replaced at the same time – a major undertaking for a small organisation. Te Tumu Paeroa also required remote back-up facilities, not wishing to invest in significant new on-premise infrastructure.

Te Tumu Paeroa chose Datacom’s Cloud Services for Government platform to meet this need. The platform provides Te Tumu Paeroa with a flexible, virtualised solution. Datacom supported Te Tumu Paeroa with both network and solution design. The solution also gives TTP certainty that its data will be both retrievable locally, while being safely stored remotely in the event of a disaster.

Result:- Network connectivity; firewall design and

implementation; agency set up in the IaaS environment; set up of service governance, service desk, reporting and billing; user training on the IaaS Portal and operational procedures.

- Set up of 10 virtual servers and associated storage under Utility Compute, for use as a Māori Trustee UAT environment; backup and restore service for these. Setting up the test environment (UAT) first is a common ‘toe in the water’ approach before moving production servers into the environment. The production servers followed this successful deployment and there are now 30 servers and their ancillary services in play.

“Datacom have provided service that was technically excellent, and they were able to provide this on time and always from staff that appreciated the difficult circumstances at play. They worked with sincerity and honesty.” Mark Harris – IT Manager Te Tumu Paeroa


INDUSTRY: Forestry

Business intelligence platform streamlines GRDC’s operationsThe Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) is one of the world’s leading grains research organisations, responsible for planning, overseeing and investing in research and development for the Australian grains industry.

The organisation wanted to enhance its existing underperforming reporting and business intelligence system to improve operational efficiencies.

GRDC approached Datacom to achieve these goals. Our team’s understanding of GRDC’s organisational needs meant we recommended the QlikView suite of products.

The QlikTech commercial business intelligence (BI) platform delivers a user-driven, fast and easy to use suite that focuses on an in-memory data store that refreshes data in real-time to support operational BI environments.

Working closely with GRDC, Datacom demonstrated the solution’s systemic improvements to the organisation’s current operating environment. It vastly reduced reporting effort, improved productivity and access to information and enabled GRDC to increase its understanding of the business so that it then could run the business itself.

Result:- After the first week of engagement with GRDC

the desired results had been achieved well within the anticipated two-month timeframe – for 30% less than the initial budget outline.

“The Grain Research and Development Corporation have a fundamental requirement to regularly report on activities to grain growers and broader industry. GRDC’s direct stakeholders are broad and include Australian grain growers, the Board, researchers, Government, scientists, academic institutions and internal personnel. This depth of reporting was becoming both time-consuming and a stretch on our current resources and we realised it was time we needed to look at ways to improve our overall processes, and with this in mind we approached Datacom.” Jan Edwards – Spokesperon Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation



RSL Care secures patient data through smart disaster recovery solution As a not-for-profit provider of retirement accommodation and aged care services throughout Queensland and New South Wales, RSL Care needed a robust disaster recovery solution to protect the information of the 25,000 Australians it serves each year.

RSL Care also had three infrastructure stacks servicing different requirements in its data centre. Through a new disaster recovery solution, the organisation wanted to reduce its data centre storage footprint to save money and maximise the environment’s efficiency over five years. Following a robust review process for an IT partner, RSL Care chose Datacom.

RSL Care knew our team’s specialised insight into the organisation would ensure direct access to business leaders and technical leads throughout the project. Datacom consolidated RSL Care’s three storage stacks into one and created a second data centre to serve as the disaster recovery site.

While integration was seamless, our Datacom team had challenges setting up the additional data centre. It involved seven design documents and did not allow for any down time. Within six months, RSL Care had realised the disaster recovery benefits, including a streamlined backup environment through the adoption of a consolidated management console. Additional benefits such as a reduction in storage due to deduplication and increased data centre utilisation were also achieved.

Result:- RSL Care has reduced its recovery point objective

to 15 minutes from > 24 hours in the production environments, and its recovery time objective from 12 weeks to less than an hour.

- Adoption of industry leading technology has enabled RSL Care to bring innovation directly into their technical teams, ensuring a higher quality of service for their end users.

“In our business case, we stated we wanted to reduce the time it took to do backups – we did that. We have also reduced our dependencies on tape for backup. We were using it nightly, and it’s now just weekly or monthly. We also wanted to increase resilience, and have done so through the second data centre site.” Ian Youngson – Technology Manager RSL Care


INDUSTRY: Health


Enabling collaboration and improving productivityThe School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA) is an independent statutory body that is responsible for assessing and certifying student achievement and setting education standards across Western Australia.

As an existing client SCSA asked Datacom to upgrade their dated Microsoft Exchange environment, which wasn’t providing the level of collaboration and functionality the organisation needed. An upgrade to the latest version of Exchange Server had become an operational imperative, with improved integration with HP Trim document and records management at the top of the requirements. It was also vitally important that it was safely migrated to the new platform without any downtime.

Datacom was given project planning and management control and began by deploying a new virtualised Exchange platform and application client for end users, before adopting a phased approach to safely migrating critical data. In the end, the entire organisation-wide project took less than two months, from pre-planning design and installation through to data migration and successful completion.

With the new server and software operational, including seamless integration with HP TRIM, collaboration has improved across the SCSA organisation, with an enhanced user experience that has ultimately elevated productivity.

Result:- The organisation-wide project took less than two

months, from pre-planning design and installation through to data migration and successful completion.

“The entire project was completed on time, as planned, with minimal variations. Datacom’s project management ensured everything was thoroughly thought through, from start to finish”Murray Jackson - Manager- Information Services School Curriculum and Standards Authority

A print-management solution for minimising waste.As the world’s leading gold producer, with its international headquarters in Canada, Barrick operates mines and advanced exploration and development projects on four continents. The company’s Australia-Pacific head office is located in Perth’s CBD.

With a move to a new office in Perth’s CBD in the pipeline, Barrick approached Datacom during their office-planning process for advice on upgrading their print infrastructure. Their current set-up had evolved to suit the layout of their traditional office, with 36 small and medium-sized printers dotted around a somewhat old-fashioned and labyrinthine office environment.

Working closely with the IT team at Barrick, Datacom conducted an audit of the workforce’s printing records and requirements. We looked at workflow, as well as the new open-office plans, and then created a solution for the new space, carefully considering everything from power usage to office ergonomics. By switching to a more holistic, centralised print management solution, Barrick has minimised the costs associated with maintenance and consumables.

Moreover, the integrated ‘follow-me’ print solution, with secure swipe-card access, not only allows employees to print to any printer, it enables print costs to be charged back to an employee’s department. This promotes transparency, accountability and responsible usage, which has, in turn, reduced waste and minimised energy consumption.

Result:- The new Perth office instantly benefited from a 30%

reduction in print-related costs – an achievement that has seen Datacom’s solution embraced as the benchmark for print management at Barrick.

“Moving office was the ideal opportunity to switch to a much smarter, leaner printer set-up – one that enhanced the print experience for everyone.” David Nicolaou - Senior IT Systems Specialist Barrick Gold Corporation

Healthway solution provides significant cost savingsHealthway is an independent statutory body that aims to reduce the occurrence of preventable diseases in Western Australia (WA).

Its primary operations include sponsoring organisations and events that promote healthy living and to also provide grants to groups that advance the health message. This work requires Healthway to manage multiple processes and liaise with countless organisations and stakeholders.

A solution was needed that offered superior reporting and knowledge management (even when working remotely), while handling the fundamental business processes of grants and contract management.

To meet Healthway’s project requirements we worked with the organisation to evaluate all operations. Through this, it was identified that Healthway required a knowledge management model that refreshed current processes to produce a completely electronic system. Our team of specialists consulted with Healthway staff to review and design the new build, while providing continued support of the customer base environment. The solution has resulted in increased productivity, cost savings and operational improvements.

Result:- Resource savings alone has freed up approximately

AU $40,000/year that can be directed towards new projects.

“We needed an IT partner that could provide the right technology and business solutions, that had an in-depth understanding of government processes and procedures.” Lina Barbato - Director Corporate Services Healthway


INDUSTRY: Education


INDUSTRY: Health


INDUSTRY: Resource


Manila

Kuala Lumpur

Parallels® is a global leader in hosting and cloud services enablement and cross-platform solutions, with more than 900 employees in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

As the customer base for Parallels Automation grew rapidly in 2010, it quickly needed to add additional highly skilled support personnel who could readily grasp complex technical needs and add value to its growing operations. The company selected the Datacom team in early 2011 and we hit the ground running, bringing in experts from Asia, Australia and the US.

Datacom’s consultative approach, coupled with a depth of background in the outsourcing business has enabled us to quickly develop a multi-faceted managed services solution.

The solution for Parallels encompasses the specific requirements to have highly skilled technical experts for fast turnaround of complex support incidents. It also caters for the longer-term need to expand capacity across Parallels’ of products by providing the basis for servicing their growth. Parallels increasingly provides implementation and ongoing managed services and support for its global client base, drawing on the deep Datacom expertise in our Asian centres.

Result:- Datacom understood the need for seamless

knowledge transfer in the outsourcing process and the importance of retaining skilled staff brought about by hiring the right people and treating them with respect.

Parallels expands business with innovative managed services offering

DATACOM GLOBAL REACH

“Datacom was completely different from the other providers we dealt with. They were proactive rather than reactive and we were very impressed with the time they took to understand our needs and the way the Parallels business works. From the CEO, who spent time at our offices, through to the engineers, it was clear that they were committed to a long-term business relationship and provided a great level of engagement from day one.” Kelli Green – Vice President Worldwide Support Parallels

Datacom has operated in Asia for 15 years, with our Malaysian business opening its doors in 1998 and Datacom establishing in the Philippines in 2008.Our Asia operations service both international and domestic clients. We have over 150 staff delivering a range of IT consulting, implementation and support services to customers including small to medium businesses, global telecommunications providers and enterprise organisations.

Our Asia operations run 24/7/365 to service customers around the globe, in 11 languages, providing critical IT systems services every day and in real time.

Asia – Datacom’s Global Reach For Datacom, the availability of cost-effective skilled IT talent allows us to implement, support and maintain complex systems in multiple countries in different languages on a real-time basis from our Asian locations. Increasingly, we can provide these IT services remotely to implement, support and maintain cloud systems for our clients and their customer base.

Datacom’s expanding reach


The adoption of innovative, clever technology has become a significant competitive differentiator for the modern enterprise which greatly increases the potential impact of cyber–intrusion.

Whether it is creating new products, providing new channels to market or more efficient value chains, technology is likely to play an integral role in any business transformation.

However, it is that very same technology that provides great benefits to business which allows traditional crime, espionage, and activism to creep in. This is done in novel and effective ways and can be achieved from anywhere across the globe, by any individual, organised group or nation state – geographical boundaries do not exist.

In recent years, some very high-profile security breaches have significantly damaged the brand and commercial viability of victim organisations. While there are a range of technology solutions to defend against cyber threats, the risks continue to increase and evolve to defeat our best defences. More alarming is the fact that many sophisticated attackers can gain undetected, persistent access to any business connected to the Internet.

Targeting threatsDatacom’s Technical Security Services (Datacom TSS) was set up to fight this insidious trend, as we aim to help business protect its most valuable asset – information. Datacom TSS clients range from publicly listed companies through to government agencies.

It is a specialist information security company founded in November 2010 by former Australian Government technical intelligence and security specialists. The company mitigates and minimises risks posed by sophisticated adversaries. These include state-sponsored actors, issue-motivated groups or rogue private contractors.

It is Datacom TSS’ view that a fundamentally different approach is needed to appropriately manage and protect an organisation’s digital assets.

This approach starts with taking a more holistic view of the security landscape, identifying what the digital assets are and assessing what the impact to the organisation would be if these assets were compromised. Good security architecture, appropriate policies, building a culture of security, and ongoing cyber security education and awareness initiatives, all underpin an effective security posture.

Our team possesses in-depth knowledge of tools, techniques and procedures employed by contemporary adversaries. We provide integrated cyber security strategies and practical technical advice. Our services include: security consulting and assessments; vulnerability testing – real world attack simulation through to penetration testing; incident response and protection; managed security services; and security research.

Our experience responding to hundreds of cyber intrusions gives us unique insights to the most effective security controls at resisting real-world attackers. This enables us to provide focused and road-tested security controls that mitigate threats, deliver peace of mind and demonstrate real value to our clients. We see time and time again organisations simply “ticking the audit box” by engaging low-cost security validation by suppliers using commodity tools and techniques. And then weeks later they are exposed or embarrassed by simple attacks. A great example here is an auditor confirming the presence of basic tools such as firewall and virus protection.

Crime preventionHowever, the modern threat actor knows that the most effective way of penetrating a network is on the back of legitimate traffic which these controls fail to address. Addressing security audits using a commodity approach may turn out to be an expensive folly when you consider the average cost of a breach continues to increase. Recent Australian figures suggest that IT security violations now cost well in excess of AU$1m in terms of reputational damage, response and remediation.

Datacom TSS has completed dozens of significant engagements with some of Australia’s biggest corporations. Given the sensitive nature of the work, client names cannot be shared. DTSS can however share some recent examples of the type of work completed.

CASE STUDY 1: A top-10 ASX listed company engaged DTSS to complete a Red Team exercise (a blind attack from the Internet). Over the course of four weeks our consultants gathered publicly available information on the company, identified a vulnerability that allowed initial access and gained undetected access to the company. The successful simulated attack gave the team full administrative rights on the client’s systems. We went on to provide the client with advice on how to close several of its most serious vulnerabilities.

CASE STUDY 2: A Datacom TSS client made contact in a panicked state. The company had been compromised but it had no idea how, or by whom, the extent to which it was exposed and how to eradicate the vulnerability. Our team mobilised its consultants rapidly providing the client with a robust set of immediate and short-term actions that they needed to implement to secure the business. The client then went on to engage Datacom TSS to provide some longer term guidance to minimise the risk of this type of event happening again.

Specialist teamThe Datacom TSS team consists of founding members of the Federally-endorsed Council for Registered Ethical Security Testers (CREST) initiative. InfoSec accreditations held within the team include CREST Certified Tester, Offensive Security Certified Professional, Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and SABSA Certified Security Architect. Today, the TSS team has successfully secured repeat work from 100% of its clients, a testament to the service and value they deliver.

While there are a range of technology solutions to defend against cyber threats, the risks continue to increase and evolve to defeat our best defences.

Richard Byfield is the Managing Director of Datacom TSS. With over 15 years of cyber and information security experience, he helped establish the cyber security capabilities for the New Zealand and Australian Governments. Richard is affiliated with several peak industry bodies, presents regularly to specialist groups, and is a founding board member of the Federally endorsed Council for Registered Ethical Security Testers.

DATACOM INSIGHTS

WHITE PAPERIssued: December 2013

Specialist team counters cyber attacks


Datacom understands that services need to be dynamic, pre-emptive and scalable and that smart and practical technology can drive cost efficiency while meeting the evolving expectations of today’s customer.

Datacom’s first class Business Process, Payroll and Human Capital Management services leverage our expertise and economies of scale to help improve your business process environment and drive operational excellence.

Our quality service frameworks and smart technology solutions are applied to address your specific business goals. We deliver a full service design solution that ensures the customer experience is relevant, effective and ultimately valuable to your organisation.

We have the ability to apply fresh thinking to complex service issues and to support these innovations to deliver enduring levels of performance, with success in the areas of:

- Delivering cost and service efficiencies for back-office HCM / payroll

- Defining benefit schemes with our detailed understanding of scheme rules and precedents

- Implementing, maintaining and supporting payroll services for a wide range of industries

- Contact centre investments in products, tools and ITIL processes enabling clients to both fast track commencement and significantly reduce costs.

Today, organisations require innovative services that enable market differentiation, and ultimately transform the way in which the business creates sustained value for all stakeholders.

Business Services & Payroll


AusIndustry is a specialist division within the Australian Government Department of Industry that delivers programs and referrals over a range of business areas across all levels of government, reaching even the most remote areas of Australia.

Australian businesses have been connecting with AusIndustry through an expanding number of channels, including the introduction of a convenient Live Chat service in 2011.

Working closely with AusIndustry, Datacom has initiated a number of behind-the-scenes contact centre solutions that have not only placed the customer at the heart of the engagement process, but also provided ready access to combined trending and analysis, across all channels. Through the application of a tailored ‘listening platform’ across the social media landscape, AusIndustry now has a much richer view of their customer needs and the ability to gain immediate access to customer sentiment when major programs or changes are introduced.

They are also able to quickly deploy tools where customers can help themselves online, in their own time. As a result, Datacom has helped improve the customer experience, ultimately better supporting business within the Australian community. The platform is increasingly seen as a critical source of intelligence, providing AusIndustry with rich insights on the needs of business.

CASE STUDY: Business Process Outsourcing & Payroll


Making it easy for business to get the support they need

“Datacom has been able to deliver broad insights into the needs of business and that gives us a much clearer picture of what they are looking for and what we need to deliver. This information has been captured on a client relationship management database and we are able to use that to enhance our knowledge and understanding, and that’s proving to be very useful for us.” Wendy Launder - General Manager, AusIndustry


Challenge:Industrial Engineering component distribution firm, SAECOWilson, and sister company, SEAL Imports, needed to refresh their payroll systems and processes to enable staff to more easily input, access and view information. The companies also wanted to strip out duplication and cut ‘human error’ through a more streamlined, automated approach to payroll process.

Solution:SAECOWilson and SEAL had seen increased requirement for more information from their payroll systems. Both companies also recognised the existing systems would not meet future needs.

SAECOWilson had heard about our enterprise Cloud payroll product DataPay and got in touch with Datacom. SAECOWilson and SEAL were particularly impressed by the reporting functionality as it was simple and easy to use yet allowed them greater access to their payroll information.

From the companies’ point of view the eight-week implementation was easy. Datacom followed our payroll implementation best practice. Information was collected in a timely manner and the process explained upfront.

The project rolled out within only eight weeks, despite it being the Datacom team’s busiest time of year. Our consultants were working on multiple payroll implementations nationally. Adding to the challenge, SAECOWilson and SEAL ran payrolls on the same day but at two different sites, Auckland and Hamilton, and for two different time periods.

However, we deployed four payroll consultants to achieve a successful go-live of the project. Datacom also provided on-site support and training during the roll out, while allowing back office functions to continue without interruption at our Auckland office.

Today, the solution has led to efficiency gains and the reporting available within DataPay has led to a reduction of double entry.

Result:- Overall time spent on fortnightly payroll for

SAECOWilson has halved through eliminating duplicated effort and electronic data capture.

- DataPay’s custom report writer allows SAECOWilson to write its own reports on demand to retrieve valuable data held within the company’s payroll system.


INDUSTRY: Distribution

SAECOWilson and SEAL Imports ramp up Cloud payroll systems

“We cannot speak highly enough of the staff assigned to our implementation. As DataPay is far more complex and detailed than our previous systems we required careful assistance to ensure there were no issues when we went ‘live’. At every step, the Datacom team were friendly, knowledgeable and willing to assist and the ongoing excellent support from the ‘help desk’ team is really something we sincerely appreciate and rely on.” David Robinson - Chief Financial Officer SAECOWilson



INDUSTRY: Automotive

LeasePlan saves time and money with payroll solutionVehicle and fleet management company, LeasePlan, is part of a global organisation. The company’s payroll application was outdated and relied on manual spread sheeting – it needed a more automated solution to save time, reduce errors and ultimately save money.

Additionally, there was the need to meet financial regulatory requirements. LeasePlan sought an IT partner to meet these needs. The company did not want implementation errors or headaches – the roll out had to be seamless.

Datacom’s expertise in payroll, along with our ability to adapt to unique customisation requirements, ensured we met these needs.

We provided LeasePlan with DataPay and DataESS, which made it easier for the company and staff to access information and to self-service leave applications online. This eliminated the need for paper forms.

The four-week implementation process was flawless. Our team also trained LeasePlan staff on the new systems, as they moved from the tired, older system. While staff found that DataPay was very different to its legacy processes, they were still able to reduce the time spent processing payroll by 50% on the first payrun.

Result:- The customisation of DataPay has saved hours of

time spent – payroll used to take one full day; this has now dropped to one to two hours since first implementation.

- Reports now take minutes versus hours.

“Working in partnership with the team at Datacom has been an effortless and enjoyable experience. The ‘added value’ payroll training courses run by Datacom are a great way to learn more about the legal side of payroll. We made the right choice.” Carolyn Bell – Office Manager LeasePlan

Flooring Brands improves processes through smart payrollFlooring Brands had gone through a period of strong growth through acquisition. However, it maintained the payroll on site after each acquisition resulting in 23 different entities. Each entity had a unique period end date and direct credit date, while all payrolls were weekly.

This complex system required a payroll administrator on site and a supporting staff member. The company also had a number of issues to resolve around payroll processes including the fact it had three payroll products, three reporting types, and only partial provision of a general ledger interface. Added to this, there was little tested disaster recovery, business continuity, or upgrade processes, among other human resource issues. Datacom met these challenges head on.

Our team centralised all employees on one database and a single tax entity over three months. Datacom also rolled out full provision of automated disaster recovery, business continuity, and database upgrade processes. Today, the company has a single point of reference for employee administration. This has led to a decreased requirement for on-site administrators and the organisation was able to restructure and spread administration across multiple sites.

Result:- Reduced tax reporting from 23 independent tax

e-filing and PAYE payments to six.

“The Datacom team’s high level of technical consultancy skills ensured we were able to achieve some tough project goals. Importantly, we did this within a short period of time which meant there was minimal impact on our staff.” Serena Tupou – Payroll Manager Flooring Brands


INDUSTRY: Building and Construction


INDUSTRY: Mining


INDUSTRY: Education

Stevenson Mining payroll improvements benefit staff relationsMining and construction is a tough business and Stevenson Mining and its union had been going through a challenging period as it struggled with Rotowaro’s complex payroll.

Adding difficulty, the payroll featured a variety of allowances, staff on rotating rosters and a nine-day work week. A heavily unionised site, staff were quick to let the company know any discrepancies in the payroll. Things had to change.

Identified was a need to improve all data capture methods, while improving onsite reporting processes. To resolve these issues, Stevenson Mining outsourced payroll to Datacom.

Our solution, integrated with IDT’s time and attendance software, streamlined the payroll processing. This in turn allowed for automatically generated filtered reports to multi-site administrators.

The new system has also decreased liability associated with wages and leave, as time and attendance data is now accurately captured. It improved exception and warnings reporting, highlighting the inaccuracies around recording of overtime and higher duty allowances.

Within six months of Stevenson Mining outsourcing, all eight of Stevenson Group’s businesses were using Datacom. Today, with the enhanced clarity and a renewed confidence in the system there is tighter control and effective management of payroll costs at the company.

Result:- Consolidation of eight Stevenson companies onto

one payroll product.

“Outsourcing our payrolls to Datacom has allowed the company to focus on its core business instead of worrying about the administrative by-product of having an inhouse payroll. Datacom has been a great partner to work with during both the implementation phase and the ongoing weekly, fortnightly and monthly processing of payroll.” Geoff White - Group HR Manager Stevenson Mining

Ministry of Education streamlines to beat non-attendanceThe Ministry of Education has the aim of reducing unjustified absence and non-enrolment of children and young people. Prior to 2013, the Ministry had two services supporting truancy – the District Truancy Service (DTS), which required 77 providers, and the Non-Enrolled Truancy Service (NETS), which was provided by our team.

The current approach was not delivering performance improvements across the country, particularly for priority groups (Mäori and Pasifika). The Ministry needed one system to better serve these children at risk. Datacom’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) experience, along with our hands-on involvement with other Ministry projects, ensured this could be achieved.

A pilot was rolled out by combining the NETS and DTS in South Auckland and Gisborne. Datacom was fully involved in the South Auckland pilot. Our solution included providing specialist people, supported by processes and a technological case management system as the backbone of the operation. Our lean management structure and technology provision ensured more resources could be channeled to front-line services.

The pilot was up and running within only 15 days. Datacom’s scalable model has been replicated across New Zealand to 18 service areas. Today, we directly provide attendance services to six of these areas, branded as ecase (every child attending school every day).

Result:- 100% of 2013 non-enrolled cases were closed

within 30 days, while 100% of cases are allocated within 24 hours.


Corporate Social Responsibility

At Datacom, we support higher achievement in every aspect of the economies in which we operate and recognise the interests of stakeholders beyond that of our shareholders – the broader community.We seek to do this through the support of cultural and educational institutions and charities, via financial grants, in-kind donations and sponsorships and through supporting the volunteer activities of our employees. We encourage our team members to become actively involved in their local communities.

The London Benchmarking Group (LBG) verified Datacom’s Group 2013 investment in the community at NZ$731,000, an increase of 20% on our 2012 contribution. The biggest increase being in our commercial initiatives - through nurturing long-term partnerships with charitable partners.

$731,000 2013 contribution NZD

1.44% CSR as a % of pre-tax profit


Helping hand for Auckland and Wellington City MissionsDatacom has had a close relationship with the Auckland and Wellington City Mission organisations for many years.

We provide food and financial donations, while our staff volunteer their time to support the organisation. Our annual Christmas drive includes donating toys for the children. In July, a group of 19 volunteers headed to the Auckland Grafton City Mission distribution centre to help prepare for the mission’s mid-winter Christmas party.

While the dedicated team worked very hard packing and sorting through items such as food and clothing, they intend to go back for another session in 2014. Another group of volunteers went to the Wellington City Mission to help sort out food following the “brown bag” appeal.

“In a relationship spanning over 12 years Datacom and their staff have supported the Auckland City Mission in many different ways. During that time $12,000, numerous gifts of food and hundreds Christmas presents have helped the mission support Aucklanders in desperate need. The recent inclusion of the mission in Datacom’s volunteer programme has helped strengthen a fantastic existing relationship between two very close neighbours. Datacom continues to make a real and tangible difference to the mission’s work and we are truly grateful for their support.” Diane Robertson – City Missioner / CEO City Mission

Datacom supports online safetyThe ThinkUKnow Australia programme is a joint initiative between the Australian Federal Police, Microsoft and Datacom and aims to educate parents and carers of children around Australia on how to stay safe online.

It encourages open lines of communication between adults and children so that activity on the internet is carried out in a safe and responsible manner.

Datacom has supported the pro-technology ThinkUKnow Australia programme since 2011 by providing a variety of IT services. These include general contact centre operations through to the development of online booking tools and the delivery of information packs.

Our staff, from across our Australian business, also volunteer to help deliver internet safety demonstrations to schools. Since the programme started, over 750 presentations have been delivered to more than 26,000 parents, teachers and carers helping keep children safe online.

In 2103, the programme was awarded the Outstanding Prevention Initiative by the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse.

“The Datacom team in New Zealand have been fantastic to deal with and we are thrilled with the design of the site.” Karen Bard-Greer – Chief Executive Independent Living Service

Team steps up for CanTeenDatacom has a close connection with CanTeen, which is an organisation that supports teenagers who have cancer, as well as their families.

Previously, Datacom had sold bandanas across our national New Zealand offices. However, in 2013 we stepped up efforts and sent a team to assist CanTeen to prepare for the charity’s annual bandana campaign. The team helped in a range of warehouse activities, including packing boxes and preparing orders. But we didn’t stop there.

Our ITM Auckland division entered the CanTeen 12-hour bicycle event, The Crank, and our teams fundraised over $10K in this tough physical challenge.

Datacom supports mental health youth organisationNot-for-profit organisation zero2hero aims to help address mental health issues openly among younger people.

The organisation is driven by its vision: through communication and early intervention, suicide can be prevented. Datacom has been supporting this worthwhile cause since 2009 and has been heavily involved in the development and expansion of the charity ever since then.

We have supported the organisation’s events, provided financial sponsorship, and offered expertise around web-hosting. Our Western Australia Managing Director, Basil Lenzo, also sits on the zero2hero Board.

“zero2hero has received fantastic and invaluable support from Datacom over the past four years. Datacom have not only contributed to our success thus far, but with their ongoing support have shown they are an integral part of our future.” Ashlee Harrison – Founder zero2hero

Independent Living Service (ILS) New Zealand provides advice, information, products and services to assist people with disabilities to live independently.

ILS was finding it a challenge to manage its existing New Zealand website and online store which was on ageing technology and had grown organically over a number of years. The system was broken in parts and was not functioning correctly.

As an extension of a relationship with Independent Living Centre (New South Wales), Datacom provided sponsorship to ILS New Zealand for a new website and online shop.

Designed and developed by Datacom, the new website enable ILS administrators to manage news, information, product catalogue and sales via their online channel.

Launched in November 2013, the site is hosted at Orbit, Datacom’s state-of-the-art data centre in Albany.

Support and services improve online channel

Queensland Theatre Company benefits from partnershipConstrained by ICT inflexibility, Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) needed to overhaul its IT environment and establish a more reliable hosted platform that would protect its data and systems from future natural disaster risks.

Financially, Datacom provided an in-kind partnership that enables QTC to achieve critical ICT expenditure savings and transfer all remaining ICT capital expenditures into operational costs.

In less than a month, QTC transitioned to the new infrastructure offering scale and rapid provisioning available through the Datacom Cloud. The resilient infrastructure platform minimises business risk from potential natural disasters or outages. The platform has enhanced server availability during ticketing and continuity of systems during theatre performances.

QTC now leverages Datacom help desk experts for end-user and server computing support, freeing onsite staff to shift to creative and strategic efforts. A productivity boost has also emerged from QTC’s new wireless environment, allowing staff to work from anywhere and no longer be desk-bound.

“The transition has, from our perspective, been quite seamless. Datacom’s professionalism and pragmatism contributed to the successful outcome of this project.”Nicola White – Finance & Operations Manager Queensland Theatre Company

‘Nerd Mobile’ helps needy children for VarietyVariety is a professionally run, international organisation dedicated to inspiring hope and enriching the lives of children in need under the age of 18.

For the second year, Datacom entered its converted Holden Nerd Mobile into the Variety SA Bash. This year’s team embarked on a week-long journey through the rural heart of South Australia, labelled

‘Off the Beaten Track’.

However, the SA Variety Bash is not just a one-week event but a 12-month programme of fundraising. Our team contributed $10,000 towards a huge $1.75 million raised for South Australian children in need.


Volunteers staff conservation projectConservation Volunteers was started in 1982 in Ballarat Victoria by a farmer who organised small groups into planting trees in their spare time. It has grown into Australia’s leading practical conservation organisation with offices across Australia and New Zealand.

Each year, Conservation Volunteers involves over 10,000 volunteers, plants one million trees and trains 1,000 groups and individuals – all through volunteers.

Datacom joined the cause in 2011, to provide support for the Eastern Barred Bandicoot Population Revival Programme. Over the past two years, 50 staff members have participated in nine volunteer days.

“The critical work being achieved through the Eastern Barred Bandicoot Population Revival Programme is only made possible through the generous support of our partners like Datacom. Through volunteering, Datacom employees have made a direct and significant difference to the future of Victoria’s most endangered marsupial to ensure they do not [become extinct].” Sonia Hartog – Corporate Partnerships Manager Conservation Volunteers

School classrooms for children in EcuadorCanoa is a small fishing village on the northern coast of Ecuador. Many of the local families live on less than $85 per month, with very few opportunities for employment. As a result, education is out of reach for many families.

Through the fundraising support of Datacom Australia Capital Territory, the community has been able to construct school buildings, repair existing buildings, significantly improve the salaries of key staff members including the principal, buy uniforms, purchase school books and provide daily breakfast for the children.

Most importantly, the school has been able to extend the number of years open to students by four ensuring the children can now reach year nine (previously year five).

Datacom donates dollar for dollar from all fund raising events, which has allowed us to send over $50,000 to the school since 2011.

Team supports child and youth protection charityNot for profit organisation Parkerville Children and Youth Care provides protection and care for the most vulnerable children and youth, offering a range of professional services.

The organisation’s core business remains the care and treatment of the “high needs child”, many of whom have suffered chronic histories of multiple abuse and display a range of trauma-related behaviours. The organisation also offers outreach services and programmes to the wider community.

In the last five years, Parkerville has increased its capacity to provide services from just 200 to 1,800 children a year. Datacom identified Parkerville’s important role and since 2008 we have been involved in the development and expansion of the charity.

Our staff volunteer at charity events, and we provide donations and financial sponsorship, as well as a high level of community and in-kind support.

“One in four girls and one in six boys will be abused before they reach 18 – 90% of them know the perpetrator. Datacom walk alongside us in giving hope to those who have suffered at the hands of trusted adults. Datacom have been on this journey throughout our expansion and their corporate philanthropy and advocacy has been integral to our success.” Basil Hanna – Chief Executive Parkerville Children and Youth Care (Inc)

Sponsoring e-Government at Victoria UniversityDatacom has been a founding and lead sponsor of Victoria University’s Chair in e-Government since its inception in 2007. In 2013, we extended this relationship for another five years.

The Chair, currently held by Professor Miriam Lips, contributes to Government initiatives and policy around a number of issues including privacy, security, identity and government’s online relationship with its citizenry.

Professor Lips is recognised across the world for her work, exploring issues associated with and benefits to be gained by the application of new IT technologies within government. The New Zealand Government is recognised as a world leader in this field.

Recent research projects include the role that new social media played in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes, public attitudes to the sharing of personal information by the public sector, effective record management in the 21st century, and a review of e-campaigning by political parties during the 2011 general election in New Zealand.

In addition to academic research, Professor Lips undertakes teaching and lecturing duties at Victoria as well as supporting post-graduate students.

“Datacom’s support for the Chair in e-Government at Victoria University, since it was established in 2007, has been invaluable in helping Government to add more value to e-Government solutions.”Professor Miriam Lips – Chair e-Government

Datacom as key partnerCandefero APAC Channel Partner of the Year

Symantec ExSP Partner of the Year ANZ: Datacom New Zealand

Symantec SMB Market Specialist Partner of the Year ANZ: Datacom Australia

Microsoft Country Partner (NZ) of the Year

Microsoft (CRM) Partner of the Year

VMware Asia Pacific Partner of the Year Service Provider Program (VSPP)

EMC Outstanding Achievement for Premier Partner in New Zealand

CISCO ANZ Innovation Partner of the Year

TIN100 Report No. 1 Company to watch

Canon Sales Excellence Award for Highest Alliance Partner Sales

Trend Micro Partner of the Year

Lenovo Business Partner of the Year

HP IPG Commercial Partner - Platinum

HP Office Printing Solutions Specialist

SOLGM GHD Local Government “Joined Up Local Government”

SOLGM GHD Local Government “Better Services for Less”

Sitecore Business Transformation Award (Auckland Airport)

BSI ISO27001 Security Standard

Datacom leads ANZ cloud provisionMicrosoft Platinum Partner for Cloud Services

Longhaus Pulse No. 1 Local Cloud Provider Australia

HP ESSN Data Centre Platinum Partner in Australia


Financial Reporting



STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITIONFor the year ended 31 March 2013

Consolidated Parent Company

Note2013

$0002012

$0002013

$0002012

$000

NON-CURRENT LIABILITIES

Other payables 22 1,722 712 456 525

Provisions & employee entitlements 25 5,927 4,752 – –

Deferred tax liabilities 5 4,367 4,892 237 1,585

Interest bearing loans and borrowings 23 47,455 12,805 31,843 4,000

Total non-current liabilities 59,471 23,161 32,536 6,110

TOTAL LIABILITIES 232,294 196,770 50,014 26,887

TOTAL NET ASSETS 141,902 135,956 45,225 47,377

EQUITY

Equity attributable to equity holders of the parent

Issued capital 26 8,694 8,789 8,694 8,789

Retained earnings 123,827 109,852 36,333 38,461

Other reserves 26 7,397 9,971 198 127

Parent interests 139,918 128,612 45,225 47,377

Non-controlling interest 1,984 7,344 – –

TOTAL EQUITY 141,902 135,956 45,225 47,377

A summary of Datacom’s financial position is provided in these pages, without the accompanying notes that form part of the full financial statements.

For and on behalf of the Board, which authorised the issue of the financial statements on:

J C Hagen DIRECTOR Dated: 31 July 2013

C D Boyce CHAIRMAN Dated: 31 July 2013


Note2013

$0002012

$0002013

$0002012

$000

CURRENT ASSETS

Cash and cash equivalents 9 54,227 34,133 11,331 488

Trade and other receivables 10 123,871 126,009 1,501 3,607

Finance lease receivables 13 4,666 4,578 – –

Current tax assets – – 250 6

Inventories 12 17,012 13,541 – –

Derivative financial instruments 24 – 25 – –

199,776 178,286 13,082 4,101

Assets classified as held for sale 21 7,863 – – –

Total current assets 207,639 178,286 13,082 4,101

NON-CURRENT ASSETS

Property, plant & equipment 14 122,196 113,849 19 21

Investment properties 15 – – 3,852 17,650

Other financial assets 11 314 27 280 –

Investment in subsidiaries 19 – – 24,863 23,480

Investment in associates 18 1,565 828 – –

Intangible assets 16 28,212 25,152 27 7

Finance lease receivables 13 3,786 5,999 – –

Deferred tax assets 5 10,484 8,585 – –

Other receivables 10 – – 53,116 29,005

Total non-current assets 166,557 154,440 82,157 70,163

TOTAL ASSETS 374,196 332,726 95,239 74,264

CURRENT LIABILITIES

Trade and other payables 22 74,627 80,210 3,527 3,159

Interest bearing loans and borrowings 23 28,180 54,470 7,146 17,413

Provisions & employee entitlements 25 48,943 33,026 308 205

Current tax liability 6,237 5,903 – –

Dividends payable 6 6,497 – 6,497 –

Total current liabilities 164,484 173,609 17,478 20,777

Liabilities directly associated with the assets classified as held for sale 21 8,339 – – –

Total current liabilities 172,823 173,609 17,478 20,777



Note2013

$0002012

$0002013

$0002012

$000

OTHER COMPREHENSIVE INCOME

Foreign currency translation gain/(loss) (1,662) (4,878) – –

Revaluation gain/(loss) on land and buildings 1,254 300 – –

OTHER COMPREHENSIVE INCOME FOR THE YEAR, NET OF TAX (408) (4,578) – –

TOTAL COMPREHENSIVE INCOME FOR THE YEAR 35,562 20,462 14,185 17,507

PROFIT FOR THE YEAR IS ATTRIBUTABLE TO:

Equity holders of the parent 35,229 23,649 14,185 17,507

Non-controlling interest 741 1,391 – –

35,970 25,040 14,185 17,507

TOTAL COMPREHENSIVE INCOME FOR THE YEAR IS ATTRIBUTABLE TO:

Equity holders of the parent 34,950 19,611 14,185 17,507

Non-controlling interest 612 851 – –

35,562 20,462 14,185 17,507

EARNINGS PER SHARE FOR PROFIT ATTRIBUTABLE TO THE ORDINARY EQUITY HOLDERS OF THE PARENT $ $

Basic Earnings per share 7 5.82 3.89

Diluted Earnings per share 7 5.57 3.75


Note2013

$0002012

$0002013

$0002012

$000

CONTINUING OPERATIONS

Sale of goods 336,573 332,499 – –

Rendering of services 526,037 451,862 834 834

Rental revenue 278 – 1,750 1,750

Other revenue 4(a) 3,333 2,943 15,843 18,623

REVENUE 866,221 787,304 18,427 21,207

Cost of sales (346,380) (341,581) – –

GROSS PROFIT 519,841 445,723 18,427 21,207

Other income 4(b) 3,618 965 272 774

Employee benefits expense 4(c) (365,600) (312,738) (2,196) (971)

Other expenses 4(d,e) (102,934) (89,314) (2,357) (2,356)

Finance costs 4(f ) (4,173) (4,306) (1,826) (1,368)

Share of profit of an associate 18 153 96 – –

PROFIT FROM CONTINUING OPERATIONS BEFORE INCOME TAX 50,905 40,426 12,320 17,286

Income tax expenses 5 (14,935) (15,386) 1,865 221

PROFIT AFTER TAX FROM CONTINUING OPERATIONS 35,970 25,040 14,185 17,507


STATEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOMEFor the year ended 31 March 2013




Note2013

$0002012

$0002013

$0002012

$000

CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES

CASH WAS PROVIDED FROM:

Receipts from customers 860,887 769,294 3,824 2,805

Rent 278 – 1,750 1,750

Dividends received 118 2 15,432 18,177

Interest received 2,030 2,331 13 48

Income tax refunded – – 302 1,048

Proceeds from insurance claim 3,348 – – –

Total cash provided 866,661 771,627 21,321 23,828

CASH WAS DISBURSED TO:

Payments to suppliers & employees 766,306 698,377 7,044 4,685

Income tax paid 16,677 13,013 – –

Rent/operating leases paid 16,019 13,931 – –

Total cash disbursed 799,002 725,321 7,044 4,685

NET CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES 27 67,659 46,306 14,277 19,143

CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES


Proceeds from sale of property, plant & equipment 15,526 186 13,603 5

Total cash provided 15,526 186 13,603 5


Purchase of property, plant & equipment 51,402 30,248 179 112

Acquisition of subsidiaries 20 6,481 – – –

Investment in associates 18 700 – – –

Total cash disbursed 58,583 30,248 179 112

NET CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES (43,057) (30,062) 13,424 (107)


Note2013

$0002012

$0002013

$0002012

$000

CASH FLOWS FROM FINANCING ACTIVITIES


Loans drawn 28,452 4,695 20,700 1,000

Net proceeds from employee share scheme (17) 116 – –

Finance lease receipts 4,999 1,629 – –

Total cash provided 33,434 6,440 20,700 1,000


Borrowings - subsidiaries – – 21,247 4,084

Repayment of borrowings - principal 14,601 3,834 – –

Interest on borrowings 2,741 2,910 4,872 1,344

Finance lease repayments 2,609 2,538 – –

Acquisition of additional equity in subsidiaries 20 8,577 1,484 1,579 1,329

Repurchase of shares 876 708 876 708

Dividends paid on ordinary/employee shares 9,175 13,485 9,175 13,485

Dividends paid to non-controlling interests 305 566 – –

Total cash disbursed 38,884 25,525 37,749 20,950

NET CASH FLOWS FROM FINANCING ACTIVITIES (5,450) (19,085) (17,049) (19,950)

Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents 19,152 (2,841) 10,652 (914)

Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year 23,562 25,907 488 1,387

Cash as part of acquisition of subsidiary 536 – – –

Net foreign exchange differences 197 496 191 15

CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS AT THE END OF THE YEAR 9 43,447 23,562 11,331 488


CASH FLOW STATEMENT For the year ended 31 March 2013



AucklandDatacom NZ Head Office210 Federal StreetAuckland, 1010PO Box 6041, Auckland 1141Ph: +64 9 303 1489 Fax: +64 9 303 3375

Engineering Services101 Wellesley StreetAuckland, 1010PO Box 7248, Auckland 1141Ph: +64 9 356 2490Fax: +64 9 357 2904

106 Vincent StreetAuckland 1010Ph: +64 9 303 1489

Payroll ServicesLevel 2, 48 Greys AvenueAuckland, 1010PO Box 173, Auckland 1141Ph: +64 9 366 1150Fax: +64 9 309 3494Sales: 0800 856 856

Level 2, 28 The Warehouse Way, Northcote, Auckland 1011 Ph: +64 9 357 5570

WellingtonDatacom Group Head OfficeLevel 9, South Tower, 68-86 Jervois QuayWellington, 6011PO Box 2063, Wellington 6140Ph: +64 4 460 1500

Datacom Systems Wellington68 Jervois QuayWellington, 6011Ph: +64 4 460 1500Fax: +64 4 460 1511

Engineering Services68 Jervois QuayWellington, 6011Ph: +64 4 385 9012Fax: +64 4 385 9102

Payroll Services 68 Jervois QuayWellington, 6011Ph: +64 4 460 1500Fax: +64 4 460 1511

HamiltonDatacom Hamilton115 Rostrevor StreetHamiltonPO Box 9144, Hamilton 3240Ph: +64 7 839 1318Fax: +64 7 839 1721

TaurangaDatacom Tauranga67 Hull Road, Mt MaunganuiTauranga, 3110Ph: +64 7 578 2810Fax: +64 7 578 2857

RotoruaDatacom Rotorua1231 Ranolf StreetRotorua, 3010Ph: +64 7 347 0897Fax: +64 7 343 7912

NapierDatacom Napier143 Dalton StreetNapier 4110PO Box 583, Napier 4140Ph: +64 6 835 0793Fax: +64 6 834 0211

ChristchurchDatacom Christchurch67 Gloucester StreetChristchurch, 8141Box 13510, Christchurch 8141Ph: +64 3 379 7775Fax: +64 3 365 3819

NelsonDatacom Nelson31 Bullen StreetTahunanui, 7011Ph: +64 3 546 5558

DunedinDatacom DunedinLevel C1, Meridian Mall, 267 George StreetDunedin, 9016Ph: +64 3 474 0931Fax: +64 3 477 0869

InvercargillDatacom InvercargillWHK House, 173 Spey StreetInvercargill, 9810Ph: +64 3 474 0931

SydneyDatacom Systems NSW1 Julius AvenueNorth Ryde, NSW, 2113Ph: +61 2 8875 3500Fax: +61 2 8875 3400

Datacom Connect Level 1, 1 Julius AvenueNorth Ryde, NSW, 2113Ph: +61 2 9023 5000Fax: +61 2 9023 0700

CanberraDatacom Systems ACTLevel 1, 212 Northbourne AvenueBraddon, ACT, 2612Ph: +61 2 6112 0200Fax: +61 2 6112 0299

BrisbaneDatacom Systems Queensland Riverside Corporate Park, Level 1, 25 Donkin StSouth Brisbane, QLD, 4101Ph: +61 7 3842 8888Fax: +61 7 38428899

TownsvilleDatacom Systems TownsvilleUnit 3, 264-278 Woolcock StTownsville, QLD, 4812Ph: +61 7 4728 7800Fax: +61 7 4728 7431

MelbourneDatacom Systems VIC190 City RdSouth Melbourne, VIC, 3205Ph: +61 3 9626 9600Fax: +61 3 9626 9699

Datacom Business Services101 Cremorne StreetRichmond, VIC, 3121Ph: +61 3 9907 9700

AdelaideDatacom Systems SA24 Crittenden RoadFindon, SA, 5023Ph: +61 8 7221 7900Fax: +61 8 7221 7999

PerthDatacom Systems WALevel 2, 184 Adelaide TerraceEast Perth, WA, 6004Ph: +61 8 6466 6888Fax: +61 8 9221 3570

Kuala LumpurDatacom Systems MalaysiaLevel 2, 1 Tech Park, Jalan Tanjung Bandar Utama, 47800 Petaling JayaKuala LumpurPh: +60 3 7721 1000

ManilaDatacom Systems Philippines25th Floor, IBM Plaza Building, Eastwood Avenue, Eastwood City,Bagumbayan, Quezon CityPh: +63 2 802 6600

Datacom Group Leadership TeamJonathan Ladd – Group CEO

Steve Matheson – Group COO

Robin Keall – Group CFO

Greg Davidson – CEO New Zealand

Peter Wilson – CEO Australia Systems

Kirsty Hunter – MD Business Services and Asia

Jonathan Usher – MD Solutions

Clark Hobson – Vice-President North America

Erica Lloyd – Group Communications

Board of DirectorsC.D. Boyce (Chairman)

S.J. Holdsworth (Deputy Chairman)

J. Holdsworth

B. Sutton

M. Coomer

J.C. Hagen

A. Hawke

J. Ladd

S.L. Matheson

Secretary: R. Keall

Datacom New Zealand Leadership TeamScott Green – Director, Auckland IT Management

Vernon Kay – Director, Auckland Systems & Integration

Mark Muru – Director, Wellington IT Management

Alastair Turrell – Director, Wellington Systems & Integration

Peter Mahoney – Director, South Island

Kevin Murphy – Director, Pay Systems

John Gill – CFO New Zealand

Datacom Australia/Asia Leadership TeamAlexandra Coates – Director, Systems VIC

Basil Lenzo – Director, Systems WA

Glenn Scown – Director, Systems QLD

Lisa Thorburn – Director, Systems ACT

Darren Williams – Director, Systems SA

Andrew Goodwin – Director Systems Asia

Mark McWilliams – Investments Australia

Nanda Kumar – CFO Australia & Asia


ORGANISATION


DIRECTORY

New Zealand Australia Asia



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