JJ Churchill invests in new accounting and business system

Wednesday, 1 April 2009

The prospect of efficiency gains persuades leading engineering company to switch to the IRIS Exchequer Accounting and Business Management solution

With a turnover of £20m per annum and market leaders in components and assemblies for aerospace,  power generation, defence and high-horse power diesel engines, JJ Churchill has specified the IRIS Exchequer system to provide the efficiencies and time savings, the company now appreciates are only possible through integration.

The integration between IRIS Exchequer and Jobshop, its production planning and control system, provides engineering and manufacturing companies with improved cost control and the ability to accurately forecast costs to project completion; an important differentiator in today's economic environment.

JJ Churchill has battled for the last eight years with an accounting system that was unable to provide traceability for its £10m of purchases per year. Whilst efforts were made to provide seamless electronic interface from 'Jobshop' into the accounting software, there were still manual processes required, especially on the purchase side.

Ken Patel, Finance Director, explained: "Purchases were a complete nightmare whenever there was a need to drill down for further information. While we could pick up some data electronically, there was no traceability as we were unable to go back into 'Jobshop' from the accounting system. To overcome the problem, we had to follow the audit trail through the journal that was prepared once a month so that we could analyse the purchases but this was extremely time consuming and inefficient."

In addition, every time Jobshop issued an upgrade, JJ Churchill was faced with a cost from the suppliers of the systems to 'upgrade the interface'.  Ken commented: "We realised all these additional costs were inhibiting our upgrade capability with Jobshop and that we should be 'brave' and switch to an accounting system that would integrate across the board."

"Jobshop told us of the accounting systems they link to: Opera, which we had used until eight years ago, Sage, which we rejected as unsuitable for an SME with a turnover of £20m and IRIS Exchequer. We had originally looked at Exchequer eight years ago and liked it but due to budgetary restraints, we opted for Access. We knew the pedigree of Exchequer and had no hesitation in placing the order."

Ken sees the implementation of the IRIS Exchequer system as 'solving a long-term' problem and is looking forward to a go-live date of mid April. "The team has been working in the fast lane to keep on schedule and we are pleased with the project's progress", Ken added.

Paul Sparkes, Product Director of IRIS Exchequer said: "We are delighted that JJ Churchill has now opted for the IRIS Exchequer system which allows full 'drill-down' into Jobshop; their key requirement. In the current economic climate, no company can afford to be without a full 'drill down' capability."

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