Calculating labour costs easy with Greentree

Prior to Greentree, a lack of integration meant labour cost calculations were a time-consuming headache...

Estimating, calculating and quoting labour costs are core business activities for Armflame, a gas and pipe installation company in Queensland. 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 Armflame CFO John Todd required any new software system to automatically calculate and charge back payroll costs to the job without the need to re-key data. What was surprising for Todd was that only a handful of software vendors had actually figured this out. Having experienced several software and systems implementations over the years, Todd 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 English exactly how the offering would meet those requirements. Todd 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.

Todd explains that while the other suppliers could provide all or some of the functionality required, one wasn’t integrated with payroll at all, and the others were  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.

The power of integration
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 had been re-keying and calculating this data in Excel so the scope for human error and omissions was significant.

Greentree’s tight integration between its various modules  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. Ultimately 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
Several other aspects of Greentree swayed the evaluation team which included users from sales, HR, office administration, management, and inventory areas of the business who were all 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 –  Todd says all the functionality is there and the lower cost of ownership is a pleasant surprise. Greentree applications in personal were also impressive. 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 Todd says Greentree will help Armflame 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,” he says,  “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, he says.

Todd 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 five years and beyond. “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,” he says.

For more information

www.greentree.com/customers/profiles/armflame.cfm

Greentree
Graham Hill, Channel Manager
Email: graham.hill@greentree.com
Phone: 1800 000 737
Fax: 1800 090 487
Web: www.greentree.com

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