About M Group Services
M Group Services delivers a range of essential infrastructure services within the water, energy, transport, and telecommunication sectors in the UK and Ireland. It is a trusted employer to approximately 11,000 skilled specialists working across multiple divisions from 240 locations, enabling comprehensive service delivery.
The Group is committed to profitable and sustainable growth, achieved both organically and through strategic acquisitions that enable a broadening of capability across its service offering. Their company culture priorities safety, operational delivery, efficiency, and customer service.
About Project
The project began in April 2019, with the first modules going live a year later in April 2020. Mastek’s phased approach has since progressively rolled out HR, Payroll, Finance, Project, Supply Chain, and developed CIS modules across the various Group businesses. As of July 2023, the Group completed the transition of HR, Finance and Procurement modules the whole Group.
M Group Services Business Objectives
The business wanted to design and deliver a ‘20/20 vision’ to enable future growth by replacing multiple ageing finance, HR, and payroll systems with a single, fully integrated, best-in-class ERP solution.
As a rapidly growing enterprise with complex, industry specific requirements, the executive team recognised the importance of selecting both the right technology and implementation partner. The Group engaged internal and external experts to facilitate a best-practice selection process, resulting in the decision to implement Oracle Cloud, covering ERP, SCM, HCM and Payroll with Mastek as the system integrator.
Solutions Implemented
We developed a custom cost transfer solution for meeting the requirements of timesheet data upload in the new system and for the payroll costing, which was integrated with General Ledger of Oracle Cloud. A Financial Director cost report was built for extracting the costing information from the system and sending it to FDs and CDs (Commercial Directors) for validation and approval.
We further enabled a custom sub-contracting solution on Mastek PaaS application to handle requirements of subcontractor payments. This was integrated with Accounts Payable in Oracle Cloud, so the sub-contracting application uses existing suppliers from Cloud supplier master data and creates AFP (Application for Payment), triggering an Accounts Payables invoice in Fusion.
The custom sub-contracting application gets the contract-related information from another custom application ”Customer Billing” which has been built on a PaaS application. This custom application gives the option of creating and managing MGroup Services contracts with their client and suppliers. It is integrated with Project financial to gather and map the project information with contracts and customer details from Accounts Receivable.
For the client invoice creation, another custom application has been built over the PaaS platform. This application gives access to wider MGroup users for the creation of customer invoices, either by using the simplified user interface or through Excel-based upload. Invoices created through this form are integrated with Account Receivable and create the invoices in Oracle.
Custom cost transfer solution on the PaaS application now manages the entire approval process for costs in CVR (Cost Value Reconciliation). Once approved, the costs are interfaced with Oracle General Ledger Cloud.
Implementation Journey
We delivered a multi-phase technical implementation of various Oracle Cloud solutions while creating a shared service and engaging with stakeholders across the Group to ensure the various business needs could be met with a single solution.
The programme benefited significantly from following best-practice processes, strong leadership buy-in, tight scope control, and a clear target operating model. This resulted in delivery remarkably close to the intended timeframes and budget, despite the added challenges of COVID-19, which introduced further risk and complexity to this large-scale programme.
Business Benefits
- Data rationalisation: The data, which was fragmented across multiple systems and sources, has been consolidated within the ERP solution. This inherently reduces risks associated with ageing legacy applications, data duplication, and manual spreadsheets and increases data security, accessibility, control, and accuracy. Improved confidence in the data has already driven better-informed decision-making across the Group’s businesses.
- Process standardisation: Fusion 2020 project enabled M Group Services to standardise and streamline key business processes. Substantial process efficiencies have resulted in reduced administrative overheads. For example, simplified procure-to-pay processes have improved supply chain management and removed redundant paper documents, reducing environmental impact and improving business efficiency.
- Better user experience: Oracle’s ‘Employee Self-Service’ toolkit has empowered employees and managers to perform tasks related to managing their personal information themselves. They can submit and approve leave requests electronically, without unnecessary form-filling, paper trails, or process hand-offs. This approach has provided individuals with greater control and accountability, while reducing the burden on local administrative resources.
- CIS control and Subcontracting compliance: Mastek’s CIS module has enabled the Group to implement an improved process for subcontract applications and certifications. Additionally, it has leveraged PBCS to meet its Cost-Value Reconciliation requirements, a crucial component of M Group Services’ reporting and organisational governance.