Customer
Powerminster Ltd., a subsidiary of MJ Gleeson, whose expertise divides into three major areas: Commercial, Building Services and Service, the latter handling major mechanical and electrical maintenance contracts.

Requirement
The Service division required a system better able to cope with the volume of calls and speed of response. Parent company systems were geared more towards schedules lasting weeks and months, rather than hours and days. Finance Director, Darrell Fox explains: "Our service business consists of high volume, low value jobs so we need to be able to react instantly. If an engineer calls at premises in the morning but can't get access, the client may contact us to rearrange the appointment and we have to be able to send the engineer back there the same day. And we need to invoice within two days."

Solution:
A full Intellect integrated suite with accounts, costing and service management system.

Supplier:
Cognition Solutions

Results:
Fox explains further: "Because Intellect is truly integrated and operates in real-time, we get instant integration. So, when we input data into, say, the service management system, it pushes right through to the project costing and accounts modules. That means we can manage maintenance on both a contract-wide and a case-by-case basis."

With clients like Bradford City Council, for whom Powerminster handles gas and electrical maintenance on 23,000 properties, Cognition has enabled Powerminster's Intellect system to hook up to Bradford's own every five minutes to check for new service requests. These are uploaded back to Powerminster, a file generated for each and an acknowledgement sent back to Bradford, all completely automatically. Even job details, invoices and test results are passed on to the client electronically.

Comment:
Fox concludes: "You've got to look at the company and the people behind it too. The Cognition team really listened to what we wanted to achieve in the longer term. What also came across very strongly was the way that they were prepared to tailor their product to fit our needs, rather than try and change the way we worked to fit their product - that was a real USP."

Customer
Rialto Homes plc, house building and specialist property development company with annual sales of over £100 million and a five-year land bank.
Requirement

Rialto's management team relied upon IT staff for reports and inevitably suffered from the effects of delayed information. With further successful growth in mind, they recognized the need to update their computer system. Simon Gurney, who later became Rialto's IT director, states the objective: "To fast-track the implementation of an integrated software that provides financials, payroll, house building procurement, subcontract and supplier valuations & payments and house sales.  In addition, we had to renew our hardware system, discard the out dated stand-alone terminals and bring in a network." 

Solution
COINS

Supplier
Computer Systems for Business (CSB)

Results
Throughout Rialto's business, COINS' software facilitated the required improvement in business processes as evidenced by the following comments from Rialto staff:
Jim Dawkins, Divisional Commercial Director: "COINS' excellent system allows us to look up information on all elements of the production process, from estimate through order to payment.  The procurement solution is perfect".

Brian Curragh, Group Financial Controller: "Going live wasn't a problem, we had an excellent project management team which worked well with our accounts staff to ensure a successful implementation.  There was a learning curve to get into it, but COINS is easy to use.  The more information we throw in, the more benefits we get out of the system".

Comment
Rialto selected COINS software because it was written and is supported by professionals with a deep knowledge and understanding of the house building and construction industries. In Simon Gurney's words: "COINS clearly demonstrated a commitment to its clients and product in a way that provided us with the comfort to move forward".

Customer
Turner & Townsend Group is one of the largest independent international firms of construction and management consultants in the world. The company operates through key business units with services ranging from project and cost management, facilities management, value and risk assessment, health & safety advice and contract services. Turner & Townsend has 36 offices worldwide and employs almost 1,000 staff with an annual turnover in excess of £57 million.

Requirement
Jeremy Lathom-Sharp, Turner & Townsend's Financial Director explains that in the late nineties, the organization identified the need to invest in a project based software package to meet the demands of being a much larger group. The company needed to standardize and improve the efficiency of their reporting systems and timesheet capture: "We were looking for a powerful system with full integration between project and financial ledgers."

Solution
Ramesys' Progression suite, including Progression AEC and Electronic Time Capture (ETCi)

Supplier
Ramesys

Results
Progression AEC, which is built around a comprehensive and flexible set of project ledgers, is an operational and financial system. It enables the staff that manage and operate projects to understand what is going on quickly and request their own reports without needing to wait for the accounts department.

Within this £1m program, Ramesys have provided an upgraded version of the Progression solution, which has been rolled out across the UK operations.  This version has greatly benefited the business according to their Finance Director, who comments: "It has provided much improved functionality at the user end by giving much greater drill down into the project ledger, speed of reporting, and ease of access."  He added: " The implementation of ETCi is also a big step forward as it allows all of our consultants to deliver their time records directly into our project ledgers from remote locations. This will add to the efficiency and user friendliness of our systems."

Comment
Lathom-Sharp concludes: "As a leading construction and management consultancy, we want to be able to support our clients efficiently and expertly, and to do this we need leading edge, quality IT tools such as those supplied by Ramesys."

Customer
Established in 1985, Scotscape's business is divided into two separate companies, one dealing with building and refurbishment and the other with all aspects of landscaping works.  The company now employs 42 people and has worked on many prestigious private developments with the BBC and many large commercial projects, including a Thames-side development for Rialto Homes currently worth £1.7 million.

Requirement
Complete process control from accepted estimate to final retention release.

Solution
Construct and Sage

Supplier
ATW Computer Services Ltd

Results
Trevor Kenward, Contracts Manager of Scotscape Ltd explains the new control process: "All costs and sales incurred on a project go through Construct. Once a project has been secured a job is created. All sale lines are entered in Variations under Original Quote and costs are placed in a Variation called Budget.  This is used to establish a target percentage. Each job is carefully monitored during the month with month end reports. No goods are purchased for a project without first having a Construct purchase order. All purchase invoices are checked against the orders. Sales are generated via valuations, which progress to an invoice or an application. An internal invoice is generated once payment is received against an application."

Comment
"As a company we are now entirely reliant on Construct and Sage and have found the transition from using Excel spreadsheets relatively painless due, in part, to the excellent support at ATW.  We found it beneficial to get one department running smoothly and then training internally the other key staff, bringing their departments on line once training was complete."

Customer
Fitzpatrick Contractors Ltd., one of the UK's largest privately owned multidisciplinary construction organizations. In 2002, the company's turnover was over £260m from a range of fields including heavy civil engineering, rail, highways maintenance, paving, building and facilities management.

Requirement
Following significant expansion, Fitzpatrick needed better quality business information and greater financial control across the company than was possible from its existing system. "A major requirement for its accounting system was the ability to handle current Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) requirements but the system had to offer flexibility to adapt to future changes not only in this area but the industry in general," says Ian Smith, Group Accountant at Fitzpatrick. 

Solution
OpenAccounts total finance solution including contractors, subcontractors ledgers, retentions, CIS reporting and integration to specialist third party packages.

Supplier
OpenAccounts

Results
High levels of functionality, ease-of-use and unrivalled levels of integration. 

Comment
"When selecting a replacement financial management package, Fitzpatrick decided on a best of breed approach to complement its existing highly functional IT systems," concludes Smith.

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