How a family run engineering company based in Tipperary has reduced turnaround time for individual client billing from days to hours.
About the company
Barry Plant and Civil Engineering (BPC) is a Tipperary based family run Plant hire and civil engineering company that provides plant hire services to the infrastructure development industry.
The Challenge
BPC realised a core issue in their processes was the amount of time spent record keeping and manually processing data. Some of their clients could have as many as 500 input transactions per month depending on the size of the client account.
They found their existing workstream was excessively manual, inefficient, and prone to error. Another issue they faced was how they recorded man hours and machine hours daily. They wanted to find a digital solution that could accommodate different standard hours per day, particularly between weekdays and weekends and different overtime periods and rates.
What did they do?
By reviewing their current processes of how they recorded man hours and machine hours, they realised they could resolve this time-consuming method by creating unique client and jobsite profiles where all the variables could be recorded and referred to using dropdown menus for swift selection, this user-friendly digital system has improved efficiency, eliminated potential errors and is scalable to their business.
How did it help?
Digitisation of this workflow now means that the company has reduced the number of keystrokes by 80%. Individual client requirements and pricing arrangements are accommodated yet computations and totalling is 100% accurate and error free at all times.
While the solution will be initially used via desktop and tablet at head office level it has been developed with the future transfer to individual sites via mobile device in mind.
Conclusions and future outlook
“The turnaround time for individual client billing has now been reduced from days to hours. The solution is scalable and will facilitate a growth in the business without significant time being added to the processing of invoices. Accurate digital records are now available and can be retrieved quickly when required in future.”