The Challenge

A leading New Zealand energy company, Meridian Energy is a sophisticated business that places great emphasis on smart systems and efficiencies.

When Meridian made the decision to partner with APX, it already had Fraedom – a travel and expense management system – embedded in the business to provide oversight of total travel spend. As APX had not previously had experience integrating this system, it was highlighted as a requirement and APX stepped up to the challenge – confident in its financial management expertise and ability to innovate to meet unique client requirements.

The Process

Integrating Fraedom with APX’s existing systems did indeed prove complex, however APX, Fraedom and Meridian worked in partnership to push the boundaries and achieve a workable solution.

APX Business Solutions Developer, Mike Zhang, worked around the clock to create a report that would translate the data provided by travel suppliers such Air New Zealand, cross-check this data with APX’s own records and client information, and produce an extract for upload into Fraedom.

Outcome

APX and Meridian have together achieved a solution is fully workable and ensures data integrity, at no additional cost to Meridian.

In addition to offering business efficiencies, this solution offers;

• the simplicity to liaise with one supplier for all travel expenses
• enhanced transaction information which enables users to easily identify a transaction to improve the accuracy of coding for approval
• the flexibility to correct any data field before the point of upload for a seamless workflow of all transactions to its users.

The process of achieving this solution has resulted in valuable learnings for APX, in particular leaving APX well placed to carry out future integrations with Fraedom.
 

“The capability of APX’s technology and business solutions and agility to test and deploy extract files successfully with Meridian’s Expense Management System were paramount to the success of this project. These qualities were a key reason Meridian selected APX for Travel Management Services and the outcomes of this project enable an efficient and transparent mechanism for managing our travel expenditure.”
- Nick Robilliard, Corporate Procurement Manager, Meridian Energy