Joint venture to streamline benchmarking survey

Joint venture to streamline benchmarking business survey

MYOB and the Waikato University Management Research Centre (MRC) have recently entered into a joint venture to fully integrate The New Zealand Business Benchmarking Survey data submission and reporting processes within MYOB software.

The New Zealand Business Benchmarking Survey is an annual financial survey detailing business performance, trend analysis and startup information of SME businesses in New Zealand. In association with MRC, MYOB has developed a tool that will automate the data collection process, enabling participating Accountants to easily submit business information to the MRC's secure online site.

Associate Director of the Centre for Executive Education at Waikato University, Rob Douglas says that after 25 years of manual data entry and report generation, the move toward partnering with a software developer to develop a benchmarking solution was a natural progression.

"Discussions between MYOB and MRC over the past two years have culminated in this joint venture, enabling both parties to focus on what they do best and provide the combined benefits in one easy package," says Rob Douglas.

"This will significantly expand and enhance the robustness of benchmarks and offer the benefits of an integrated and automated service, including access to results and generation of comparison reports online."

"With its software expertise and track record of service to the accountants market, MYOB was the clear and preferred choice."

For MYOB, the joint venture with MRC offers an opportunity to add further depth to the financial reporting processes available for SMEs through benchmarking.

"MRC is an established, credible and independent source of financial information, recognised in the industry as the accepted standard for benchmarking SMEs in New Zealand," says MYOB Managing Director David Lowe.

"In combining with MRC we are able to extend our service offering of business resources to better equip accountants - making it easier to submit survey information online and pass on the benefits of timely comparison reports to their clients."

As a first step, MYOB has provided a software program for manual entry and online submission of data to the current survey. A fully integrated and automated submission system is scheduled as part of a future MYOB Accountants Office update, combining the power of the NZ Business Benchmarking survey with MYOB ProfitCents.

Data submission for the 2006 survey closes on March 10, with the web-based and hardbound reports available at the end of May.

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