Company Background
Stantec has continued to improve the quality of life in communities around the world while working behind the scenes through its projects. Stantec takes pride in a long history of being part of the communities it serves. Stantec started in 1954 as a one-person firm, and today, the Stantec community unites approximately 25,000 employees working in more than 400 locations across 6 continents. This growth has been guided by its founder and first chief executive officer (CEO), Dr. Don Stanley, and previous CEOs, Ron Triffo, Tony Franceschini, and Bob Gomes. The firm’s fifth and current CEO, Gord Johnston, continues a legacy of tenacious leadership and community focus.
BST Global first became partners with Stantec through Cardno, a professional infrastructure and environmental services firm out of Brisbane, Australia. Stantec acquired Cardno in late 2021.
The Stantec + BST Global Partnership
Stantec’s Challenge
In 2005, before Cardno was acquired by Stantec, the firm had approximately 560 staff working for 26 companies in 16 offices, predominantly located throughout Australia. The company had a customized financial solution that met its requirements but not its need for scalability to accommodate future growth and expansion into other countries. Furthermore, there were several different legacy systems in use within businesses that Cardno had acquired, which limited the firm’s ability to produce consolidated financial and management reports.
The company’s focus on international growth through acquisition and the need to produce multi-currency consolidated financial statements more efficiently were the primary requirements behind Cardno’s search for a new global business software solution. The new system would also need to address the operational requirements of a professional services firm. In addition, Cardno had established a strategy that, if successful, would rapidly grow the size and reach of the business — the firm’s new business software solution would need to be able to support that expansion seamlessly.
The BST Global Solution
In July 2005, after a rigorous business system evaluation process, Cardno selected BST Global as its business software solution provider and deployed BST10 across its operations the following year. The reasons for Cardno’s ultimate selection of BST Global included:
- The ability to have a feature-rich, integrated business software solution that aligned with the needs of a professional services organization
- Integrated support for a multi-company structure and complex intercompany transactions
- Multi-currency features
- The ability to streamline and automate various business processes using workflows
- Reporting and query facilities to support management of project and company performance
The Impact
Since implementing BST10, Cardno has grown from 560 staff and 16 offices in 2005 to a global consultancy with 8,000 staff and 290 offices in 2021. The improvements to Cardno’s business management capabilities with BST10 have been significant, including:
- The introduction of a greatly improved billing process with invoices produced and sent to clients more efficiently, resulting in improved cash flow
- The delivery of multi-company and multi-currency capabilities, resulting in more streamlined business processes
- The ability to provide project and operation managers with complete and comprehensive visibility into any project with real-time information
- Comprehensive utilization and productivity reporting across the business that supports monitoring and management action on resource allocation and deployment
