Estimating, calculating and quoting labour costs are core business activities for Armflame a gas and pipe Installation Company in Queensland Australia. With over 30 field staff covered by multiple pay and award agreements the calculation of labour is complicated. This being the case it’s not surprising that John Todd, Armflame CFO required any new software system to automatically calculate and charge back payroll costs to the job without having to re-key data. What was surprising for John was that only a handful of software vendors had actually figured this out.

“The Greentree partner was able to easily explain how Greentree’s payroll integration meant that we didn’t need to re-key data and we could convert an estimate into an actual budget or quote early if we wanted to.”

Having experienced several software and systems implementations over the years, John knew exactly what he was looking for from a software supplier. The key attributes were the ability of the supplier to quickly grasp requirements and explain in plain-vanilla English exactly how the offering would meet those requirements. John and his team of eight ERP evaluators invited product demonstrations from Greentree, SAP and Pronto but the stand-out performer on a number of key factors was Greentree. Navision was looked at but eliminated as it did not have an integrated payroll system.

John explains that whilst the other suppliers could provide all or some of the functionality required, one wasn’t integrated with payroll at all, and the others were simply too costly, lacked the ability to be quickly deployed or the demonstrators simply weren’t able to make that all important connection with the evaluators.

Super-tight CRM, Payroll, Job Costing & Financials Integration = one-time data entry, instant updates and easy quote conversions

For any project/job-based business, job costing is a key business activity and the accuracy with which the labour component is estimated, directly impacts the bottom-line. Armflame needed complex labour calculations to be automatically charged back to the job, updated in real time and passed through all the relevant financial and reporting systems so managers could track costs to budget as the job progressed. Armflame were re-keying and calculating this in Excel so the scope for human error and omissions was significant. Needless to say, John wanted to eliminate this from the payroll and job costing processes which is why he looked long and hard at how Greentree handled this.

Greentree’s tight integration between the various modules will enable Armflame users to enter estimates for jobs they quote on via the CRM system, and if these are successful they can easily create a new job and budget without re-keying any data. As payroll timesheets or accounts payable invoices are entered, jobs are updated with the recovered costs in real-time, meaning managers can immediately see how their jobs are tracking against the estimates. This will save Armflame huge amounts of time and improve the accuracy of the quote to job process whilst staff can be re-assigned to more progressive business activities.

Surprising functionality and value for money for a mid-market offering

Several other aspects of Greentree swayed the evaluation team which included users from sales, HR, offi ce administration, management, and inventory areas of the business who were all well impressed with the look and feel and the opportunity to personalise the desktop. Greentree stacked up as simple to use when compared to its rivals with comparative if not greater functionality at a fraction of the expected cost – as far as John can see all the functionality is there and the lower cost of ownership is a pleasant surprise.

Skills search facility a winner for HR

Finding and matching the right skills to the right job is often a headache for Human Resource and Project managers and this is an area where John can see Greentree will help them to better utilise the skills available for any given job. The Skills Search facility is more than just a storage area for qualifications and skills, it’s a searchable database which enables HR to quickly search for specific skill requirements and allocate them to a job plus update qualification and training records for individual employees. Having the right staff and skills will enable Armflame to grow whilst taking advantage of the current resource boom being experienced in Australia.

Expected outcomes in just over four weeks

John expects that Stage One (financials, job costing, payroll and purchasing) from design to working in a live environment will take just over four weeks which as far as deployment of an ERP system goes is pretty rapid. This will enable Armflame to quickly replicate the current working system with little disruption to business continuity. He is certain that development of Greentree will enable Armflame to track and manage growth over the next 5 years and beyond. He’s confident that…

“Greentree will give us the ability to add value to our business, control our job cost and improve the way we do business over the long term, but also with some quick short term gains.”

About Armflame Pty Ltd

Armflame is a specialist pipe laying and gas installation company based in Northern Queensland, Australia. Clients range from large oil, industrial and telecommunications companies through to city councils serviced by 30 plus highly skilled field staff out of offi ces in Boyne Island and Moranbah.

For more information visit www.armflame.com