Serica Energy

Serica Energy plc is an international oil & gas exploration and production company with primary activities in the UK North Sea, Spain, Indonesia and Vietnam. The company was formed in early 2004 as a result of a merger of the publicly traded Kyrgoil Holding Corporation and the private Petroleum Development Associates (pda) Group of Companies. The group's mission is to provide outstanding shareholder returns through selective investments and direct ownership in exploration and production assets. Its primary strategy is to invest in focused, low risk exploration in regions with proven petroleum systems, and by leveraging cutting edge technologies to reduce front-end drilling risk.

Rob Tamburrini joined Serica as Group Finance Manager in November 2004, bringing with him over 18 years' experience in the oil and gas industry. On joining the Company, Rob found that he had a very short time frame in which to select and implement a financial accounting solution at Serica – not least because at that time most of the accounts were being run on spreadsheets.

Prior to Rob's appointment at Serica, the management team had been reviewing IDEAS as a potential financial accounting solution. Rob added SunSystems to the shortlist having used the solution extensively in previous positions, and contacted Sapphire since he had worked with the company in the past to good effect.

A swift decision was taken to implement SunSystems from Sapphire. Rob observed "SunSystems is a tried and tested product. Bearing in mind the timeframe we had, it was an easy choice to make. One of SunSystems' key features is its flexibility, so we are able to put our own structure in place. What's more, we found Sapphire's help and advice whilst we were looking for the right business solution was very good."

Speaking on his decision to contact Sapphire, Rob tells us "I have always found Sapphire's technical team and support team to be excellent - and the online support available to customers is very useful." He goes on to say "During the implementation and design period Sapphire's team were friendly and helpful and we received exceptional service from the Principal Technical Consultant in particular."

Speaking on the rollout of SunSystems at Serica Rob said "In terms of timescales it was very quick; we had SunSystems up and running in a matter of weeks. It took a couple of months to build the final structure, since I was the only person working on it, without a team."

Serica has now been using SunSystems for some time and Rob observes "The solution is working very well and we have also just started making better use of the Vision reporting tool in addition to the reporting available with SunSystems. Vision XL enables me to export relevant information to Microsoft Excel, which allows financial information to be shared for reporting throughout the company."

The finance team at Serica has grown since the initial SunSystems implementation and it has been easy to train new users on the system. Rob comments "As with anything, it's easy when you know how! I have been using SunSystems for years, so find it very easy to use, but I would also say that new members of the team have found it quite easy to learn how to work with SunSystems from scratch. We now have up to six users logged into the solution at any one time." He goes on to say "Further development of our SunSystems application and integrating it with other systems will depend upon how our business continues to grow and Serica's future needs, but it is certainly something we would look at when the need is there."

Rob concludes "I would definitely recommend SunSystems as it is a structured solution that is tried and tested with the added bonus of flexibility. I would also recommend that companies considering SunSystems look to Sapphire as their implementation and support partner. Sapphire's support provision is excellent and the level of service we receive is very high; the technical team are especially helpful and overall Sapphire is an easy organisation to deal with – we have never had any issues!"

Media contact: Victoria Park +44 (0)20 7648 2008 Victoria.park@sapphiresystems.com