Environmental Protection Authority Managed Support and Continuous Enhancement Across the Oracle Cloud Footprint
Environmental Protection Authority
The Environmental Protection Authority (Te Mana Rauhī Taiao) is New Zealand’s national environmental regulator. As a Crown agent it operates at arm’s length from Ministers, with statutory responsibilities covering hazardous substances, new organisms, the Emissions Trading Scheme and activities in the Exclusive Economic Zone.
Its corporate systems run on Oracle Cloud: Oracle Fusion ERP and Oracle EPM Cloud for finance, planning and reporting, extended with PaaS components built on Oracle Integration Cloud and Oracle Visual Builder Cloud Service.
Support That Keeps Pace With Statutory Change
The EPA needed more than steady-state managed support. Regulatory and operational change arrives on fixed dates, and the platform has to move with it, so the agency needed a continuous pipeline of enhancements alongside day-to-day support.
The previous arrangement delivered support indirectly through intermediary partners. That added contractual layers between the EPA and the practitioners actually doing the work, and limited the agility the agency needed to evolve its platform at pace.
Business Challenges
- Support delivered indirectly, adding contractual layers between the EPA and the practitioners doing the work
- Limited agility to evolve the platform in step with statutory and operational change
- Need for steady-state support and a continuous enhancement pipeline from the same team
- Oracle footprint spanning Fusion ERP and EPM SaaS plus PaaS extensions on OIC and VBCS
- Statutory deadlines including the New Zealand Government e-invoicing mandate and the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024
- Manual effort in corporate card reconciliation, supplier creation, applicant billing and debtor follow-up
- Annual planning cycle still dependent on off-system spreadsheet models
Nine Years of Continuous Engagement
James & Monroe has been involved in the EPA’s Oracle Cloud platform since 2017, when J&M implemented the EPM Planning and reporting components of the agency’s Oracle FMIS Cloud solution. Following go-live, J&M provided managed support and enhancements indirectly from 2017 to 2022, then directly to the EPA from 2022.
In February 2023 the EPA engaged J&M to provide direct managed support across the entire Oracle Fusion ERP and EPM Cloud SaaS estate. In 2025 support for the Oracle Cloud database underpinning the EPA’s IUCLID hazardous-material management system also transitioned to J&M, bringing the final element of the Oracle footprint under a single delivery partner.
Alongside steady-state support, J&M has delivered a continuous programme of enhancements covering metadata integration, forecasting, detailed workforce modelling, allocation process design and reporting improvements, and provided the Oracle ERP, EPM and cost recovery delivery underpinning the EPA’s response to the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024.
Solutions Delivered
Managed Support
Direct managed support across the full Oracle Fusion ERP and EPM Cloud SaaS estate, extended in 2025 to the Oracle Cloud database behind the IUCLID system.
EPM Planning & Reporting
The platform underpinning the EPA’s annual budgeting, forecasting, workforce planning and management reporting cycles, in place since 2017 and enhanced continuously since.
Workforce Modelling & Allocations
Detailed workforce modelling and allocation processes designed and embedded in EPM Planning, taking spreadsheet models out of the annual planning cycle.
Banking & Payments Integration
Corporate card transaction ingestion, payments, receipts and bank statement integration, plus automated foreign currency rate updates, removing manual file handling.
e-Invoicing (AR and AP)
e-invoicing capability delivered to meet the New Zealand Government mandate, with suppliers onboarded and system-to-system invoice exchange in production.
PaaS Extensions on OIC and VBCS
NZBN organisation lookup and supplier creation, and the Fast-track cost recovery capability, built as extensions to the SaaS platform.
Key Benefits
Corporate card reconciliation eliminated: an end-to-end integration ingests corporate card transaction data directly into Oracle ERP Cloud, removing the manual reconciliation that preceded it.
Planning off spreadsheets: workforce modelling and allocation processes now run inside EPM Planning, removing off-system spreadsheet effort from the annual cycle.
Statutory delivery to deadline: Oracle ERP, EPM and cost recovery configuration for the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 delivered inside the legislated 40-day implementation timeframe.
Cleaner supplier master data: NZBN integration via OIC and VBCS provides online organisation lookup and supplier creation, removing manual data entry at source.
e-invoicing in production: AR and AP capability meets the government mandate, and the EPA has since onboarded several suppliers to system-to-system invoice exchange.
Less manual chasing: dunning statements in Oracle Fusion AR and Collections automate notifications to delinquent applicants, and revised invoice and statement templates align to EPA branding standards.
One partner across the footprint: ERP, EPM, PaaS extensions and the IUCLID database sit with a single delivery partner, with no contractual layer between the EPA and the practitioners.
Rationalised master data: consolidation of chart-of-accounts and supplier master data supports cleaner reporting and lower maintenance overhead.
Extending the Platform
Work in flight includes integration with the EPA’s banking provider for international payments. Planned work covers automation of travel invoice import into Oracle Fusion AP and automation of the monthly applicant billing process, alongside user capability development, usability and operational efficiency improvements, and applied AI in the finance process.
James & Monroe
Since 2004, James & Monroe have provided Advisory, Solution Design, Implementation and Support services for Oracle ERP, Oracle EPM and Corporate Performance Management platforms across Australia, New Zealand, and Asia.