Global Traffic Network builds a stronger foundation for global finance with Oracle NetSuite

An international business with an innovative model

Global Traffic Network has been connecting broadcasters, advertisers and audiences since launching in Australia in 1997.

Its business model is distinctive. GTN provides broadcasters with traffic information and tailored content, including the familiar helicopter “eye in the sky”, helping radio stations avoid the cost of producing that content themselves. In return, GTN gains access to advertising inventory that it packages for advertisers, particularly around valuable peak drive-time audiences.

From its Australian origins, GTN expanded into Canada, the United Kingdom and Brazil, creating an international media business spanning four very different markets.

As GTN grew internationally, its finance systems and processes hadn't evolved at the same pace.

When Charlie Leung joined GTN as Head of Financial Transformation in 2024, much of the finance operation still relied heavily on spreadsheets, paper and processes that differed between countries. Legacy ERP systems were in use, but there was no standardised platform across the business.

As a listed business operating across multiple jurisdictions, GTN also needed strong governance, financial controls and visibility across its operations.

GTN needed a finance platform appropriate to the size and complexity of the organisation, while giving its teams a more consistent and controlled way to work.

Finding the right ERP platform and implementation partner

GTN undertook a detailed evaluation of its requirements and the available platform options, looking at both the technology and the implementation partners capable of delivering it.

Oracle NetSuite emerged as the preferred ERP platform, providing the core financial capabilities GTN needed without introducing unnecessary complexity.

The same discipline was applied to selecting an implementation partner. Potential partners were assessed against a balanced range of criteria that mattered most to GTN, with Fusion5 chosen to deliver the implementation. For Charlie, an important part of that decision was finding the right fit between the implementation team and the GTN team.

GTN doesn’t have a large internal technology team or extensive experience of ERP implementations. It needed people who could provide technical expertise while also working patiently with a busy finance team, many of whom were experiencing a platform implementation for the first time.

The team we got were the right cultural fit for GTN,” says Charlie. “They were very patient with people who hadn't been through this before.”

Moving four countries onto a common foundation

The project brought finance operations across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Brazil onto Oracle NetSuite.

That meant navigating different teams, languages, time zones, regulatory environments and levels of experience, while keeping the organisation running throughout the transition.

One of the biggest lessons came from data migration. For a team accustomed to working in spreadsheets and manual processes, the scale and discipline required to prepare data for a new ERP only became obvious once the work began.

Charlie says that experience changed how he would approach a similar project in future. Understanding the organisation's own capabilities, not simply the technical requirements of the implementation, is critical when deciding where additional time and support will be needed.

GTN also made a deliberate decision in its approach to change management. Rather than investing heavily in training well ahead of go-live, GTN placed greater emphasis on having support available when people began using the new system for real.

That meant users had help on hand when they had an invoice to process or a task to complete, rather than trying to reference something they had been shown weeks earlier.

With small finance teams in each country, the approach worked well and created a concentrated period of shared learning as the new platform went live.

Making finance processes faster and simpler

The difference is particularly visible in accounts payable.

A largely manual invoice processing exercise that previously took around two days can now be completed in a morning, with much of the paper handling and manual data entry removed.

OCR technology captures invoice information digitally, while users have visibility over where an invoice sits within the process.

Previously, when someone asked what was happening with an invoice, finding the answer could involve checking different sources or following up with other people. Now authorised users can see whether an invoice has been captured, where it is in the approval process and whether there is a reason it has been rejected.

For Charlie, one word captures much of the difference: certainty.

Teams have a clearer source of information and greater confidence about where things stand.

A different way of working

The impact goes beyond individual transactions.

Moving onto a common platform has introduced greater process standardisation across GTN's international operations. Finance teams in different countries are increasingly able to share knowledge and help one another because they are working with the same system and similar processes.

That has produced an unexpected cultural benefit.

Charlie has seen team members in one country proactively contact colleagues elsewhere to explain how they solved a problem or offer to walk them through a process. Teams that previously operated more independently are beginning to collaborate across countries and time zones.

The nature of finance work is also beginning to change.

Finance team members are increasingly becoming custodians of the information and processes that allow the system to work effectively. Maintaining accurate supplier details, payment terms and other data becomes more important when automated workflows and reporting depend upon that information.

It shifts more attention from processing transactions to maintaining the quality of the data and processes that support them.

Building from a stronger foundation

GTN's finance transformation can now gather pace. With the core finance platform established, the organisation is progressively bringing more activities, including approval processes, into the platform.

The immediate changes are already tangible: less paper, less manual processing, greater consistency and clearer visibility across its international finance operations.

With Oracle NetSuite now in place, GTN has the foundation to keep optimising how it uses the platform, introduce further automation and continue improving the way its finance teams operate.

For a business that built its success by helping people understand what's happening on the roads around them, its finance teams now have much better visibility of what's happening inside the business too.