Doyle selects financial software from Causeway

Group Financial Controller Ian Carr explains his system choice

Tuesday, 9 December 2008

Customer profile 

Business: specialist construction, concrete and interiors group
Turnover: £168 million (2007)
Staff: 493 (2007)
Solution: Causeway Jobmaster

Established in the 1960s, Doyle plc is a specialist construction company with expertise in high quality interior fit outs and innovative working methods in the concrete sector.

What was the issue for your business?

We'd been struggling with the limited functionality of our existing financials package, but things reached a head when the provider announced that the product would no longer be supported. That was the catalyst to find an alternative, better solution - one that would be able to support our growing business and provide the management information we'd be lacking up to that point.

Describe the process you undertook to find a solution

There were a couple of established companies on our initial shortlist, to which I added Causeway Jobmaster because of the very positive experience I'd had with the product at a previous company. We assessed the different options and made the decision to go with Jobmaster.

Why Causeway?

I knew from direct experience that Jobmaster was a modern, easy to use construction accounting package that could provide the support and additional functionality we need. With more accurate forecasting and better cost control, the risk of unpredicted costs is minimised.

Causeway's staff are excellent and when you ask for something to be done, you know it will happen. We have great one-to-one relationships with the people there.

How was the new implementation rolled-out?

As with all change, there's a certain amount of trepidation and you hear horror stories about how difficult the implementation of new software can be. That wasn't the case for us. We introduced the product module by module, starting with payroll which obviously needed to come in quickly and efficiently and I can honestly say that nobody was even aware of the change.

I led a team that did all the preparatory work and the change over went seamlessly. We very quickly rolled out all of the modules we needed, including contract costing, purchase order management, works management and the Vision business intelligence tool.

What have you found to be the main benefits?
 
We've seen benefits across the board from the totally integrated solution. On payroll alone it has saved us a huge amount of processing time and automated purchase ordering has transformed the shape of our accounts function.

It gives us the ability to drill down to the details of individual transaction documents and outputs high quality, meaningful information to users. Because Jobmaster monitors and implements all the regulatory changes from HMRC, we don't have to worry about that side of our business and the system is now in use across our group companies including John Doyle Construction, Ibex Interiors, Bell Projects and iPFI. 

What the Causeway solution does for Doyle plc

- Time-saving payroll processing
- Drill down to detailed information
- Fully integrated solution
- Windows based look and feel
- Meaningful management reports

"Causeway Jobmaster is a fully integrated solution that gives us total control of our costs and of the complete financial management function" Ian Carr

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