From paper purchase orders to $10-13M: How McKay Lang is building their future on Nexvia
Business name: McKay Lang
Location: New Zealand
"As we grow bigger - and we're expecting to grow substantially bigger in the next five years - we want Nexvia to be our main working platform."
$10-$13M turnover
Annually from small works to large-scale projects
Up to $6M Projects
Nationwide high-volume and commercial works
10-15 office staff
Achieved scaled and controlled team growth
About McKay Lang
Established: 2018
Integrations: Xero
The challenge
When Shannon Baker joined McKay Lang six years ago, the business was small – two directors, herself and a handful of site staff. Pricing was done in Excel. Purchase orders went through a paper book. There was no central system, no single source of truth and no easy way to see how a job was tracking.
As the business grew, the cracks started to show.
"We saw a lot of gaps in how we were managing our books and how we were reporting on costs…As we were getting more projects, we needed to find efficiencies in how we deal with things and move away from things like paper books."
The accounts side was particularly exposed. With more projects running at once, gaps in how costs were being managed and reported became harder to ignore. Shannon, who comes from a project management background where end-to-end systems are standard, could see what was needed – data in one place, costs visible in real time and a platform that could grow with the business.
However, the search for a solution wasn’t straightforward. McKay Lang evaluated several options, including a custom-built platform developed with a local web developer. It looked promising until a critical problem emerged – there was no way to import their existing pricing information into it without a significant and costly rebuild of their pricing portals.
"We got quite far with it when we realised it wasn't going to work. We were going to end up having to spend a lot of money changing all of our pricing portals."
They kept looking. Shannon came across Nexvia through a Google search and noticed that several of their competitors and subcontractors – including companies they worked alongside regularly – were already using it.
Why Nexvia
For McKay Lang, the decision came down to fit. They needed a platform that could handle both their commercial fitout work and their high-volume small works – and that was built for the pace and complexity of interior fitout rather than long-cycle construction projects.
Nexvia had been built out of exactly that environment. The fact that competitors they respected were already using it gave Shannon confidence that it could handle what McKay Lang needed.
"A lot of our competitors use it - the likes of Woodlands and Dimension. We also do a lot of work with Fit Out Solutions and we know that they use it and they like using it."
What changed with Nexvia
For Shannon, the tendering function alone changed how the business operates. As main contractors, McKay Lang regularly manages 10 to 20 trade sections per tender – and sends each to three subcontractors for pricing. Previously that meant searching up each trade individually and sending emails one by one. A single tender could mean 30 or more manual emails.
Now the process takes a fraction of the time. Shannon selects a trade, her established subcontractors come up automatically – filtered by proximity to the project location for nationwide work – and one email goes to all of them with the same information.
"Before, everything was really done manually. When you're doing that, it can take a lot of time. Now the information is there - who we have relationships with. I'll select electrical and all of my electrical contractors will come up. You send one email to all of them and they all get the same information. It's fair opportunity. It's also really great because we do a lot of nationwide work. So it'll bring up whoever's closest to that site, which helps as well."
The budget visibility has been equally valuable. Costs update in real time as invoices flow through from Xero – there’s no waiting until the end of the week for numbers to load in. Jobs that are drifting show up immediately.
“From the start that's one of my favourite functions, but also having the budget there to see - and it's constantly updating. As invoices come in to Xero, it talks to Nexvia and it's there. And we can see if anything's going wrong - it's in a big bright red colour.
The impact has been most noticeable on the accounts side, where managing high volumes of invoices used to be time-consuming and manual.
“From an accounting perspective it makes a lot of sense - I find it really useful. I like having that budgeting function. I like being able to issue POs and easily see when invoices come in. Quite often at the end of the month you've got 300 to 400 invoices to review. Being able to just see right next to the bill that this is the purchase order I raised for it - it matches - that makes that whole process a lot quicker.”
One of the more unexpected wins has been small works. When McKay Lang first came on board, they assumed Nexvia was too large and complex for their high-volume, fast-turnaround maintenance jobs – and used a separate system for that side of the business. After amalgamating their companies and bringing small works into Nexvia, that assumption proved wrong.
“We see a lot of value in it with our small works, which is interesting. When we signed up for Nexvia, at the time we were using a different program for our small works because we felt Nexvia was too big and it didn't really suit. But now that we have amalgamated both companies and we're using it for small works - it actually works incredibly well. Our team find it really easy to just quickly price, invoice, do everything out of it.”
Why it matters
McKay Lang is still on the journey. Shannon is candid that there are features they haven’t fully explored yet and workflows they’re still building out. Yet, as the business works towards doubling its annual turnover, their direction is clear.
For a company that started with paper purchase order books and Excel spreadsheets, the shift to a single platform has fundamentally changed how work gets done day to day – particularly in how costs, budgets and accounts are tracked and managed.
That foundation is only becoming more important as the business grows. Nexvia isn’t just supporting how McKay Lang operates today – it’s becoming the system they’re building the next stage of their business on.
“Everything that we're doing outside of it is a temporary measure for now. Our business is very committed to this being a work in progress. We want to be living and breathing Nexvia in the next few years.”
Highlights
Moved from paper purchase order books and Excel spreadsheets to one central working platform
Gained live budget visibility, with Xero invoices flowing into Nexvia as costs update
Reduced tender admin by replacing 30+ manual subcontractor emails with faster grouped trade requests
Made month-end invoice review easier, with purchase orders and bills matched side by side
Brought high-volume small works into Nexvia, enabling faster pricing, invoicing and job management
Created a scalable operational foundation to support McKay Lang’s next stage of growth
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