In the stories section you’ll find articles of enduring value (versus the News section consisting of announcements). These include descriptions of client implementations, white papers on various aspects of running an ERP system, and in depth looks at some of our software modules.
-
Greely goes Live!
It’s an early Saturday morning in Spring, 2017 at Greely Sand and Gravel in Greely, Ontario, just south of Ottawa. Nineteen trucks are standing by, ready to roll into the greater Ottawa area with mulch, playground sand, compost and conventional aggregate, more commonly known as sand and gravel, and even Greely’s trademark top dressing soil, certified for organic growing!
A summer corps of part-time help has been hired and trained to handle the onslaught of phone calls and Internet orders. Greely’s management team has been busy training the new staff and with a brand spanking new software system from Greycoat Software this is a nervous time for them. A bit of nervousness being generally a good thing!
The new software program is used to schedule and route all deliveries, automatically capture all Internet orders and phone orders, bill commercial customers, and provide management information on a state-of-the-art dashboard.
The program has been months in planning, programming and training by our company, Greycoat Software, working with the Greely management team. The benchmark we set for our installations is that the day our customer goes live with new software should be a non-event, or we have not done our job properly.
The day our customer goes live with a Greycoat Compass installation should be an uneventful day, or we have not done our job properly.
Even so, there are always risks. Although our core Compass program has been in service now for two years at a major multi-national materials company, Greely Sand and Gravel has a different business model emphasizing the consumer retail landscaping market. The truck scheduling module that Greely will use is brand new. We have added features for handling landscaping and soil products, and for Greely’s distinctive fleet of boom and small tandem trucks designed to navigate the cul-de-sac neighbourhoods of the greater Ottawa region and eastern Ontario.
Greycoat Software wanted to live up to Greely’s corporate image and high standards of customer service. Greely is a family owned and operated company that has grown its landscape and construction products business for over 35 years, servicing homeowners, contractors and municipalities from a sand pit operation and two landscape depots in eastern Ontario.
Greycoat Software had been able to do all our software work from our Kitchener-Waterloo location with only one on-site visit in the Fall of 2016. For these first busy days in Spring, our product development manager, Ryan Anderson, would be on-site to provide any final tweaks to the program, and, if necessary, provide on-site triage for any serious technical problems. And Ryan did keep busy, adjusting a few report formats, ensuring program efficiency and hardware and network reliability. But orders flowed in, dispatch lists and tickets and trucks rolled out, and invoices printed, as routinely as if the software had been in place for years. All the planning and effort by Greely staff, led by Gilles Laplante, Tara Hall and Neil Quinn, working with our company, had paid off, proving again the ancient adage that an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure.
The average life span of a successful software program is 18 years, so a successful effort establishes a legacy for efficiency and continuous growth and improvement. Greycoat is an established software company, but also a tech startup, having served the construction materials industry since 1989, but just recently rolling out our new line of software, called Compass. It’s important for us on a contract to establish a good foundation, and we hope to work with Greely Sand and Gravel for some years to come.
… Henry Slofstra
-
‘One touch’ Invoicing
In soccer, the very best teams play “one touch” football, handling the ball deftly and quickly, and passing it on with ‘one touch’. Learn how to apply this principle in your company using the Invoicing cycle as an example. We describe the benefits that accrue in tightening up your Invoicing cycle, and finally, how Compass software will help you to up your game.
In working with construction materials customers and implementing Compass Software, we’ve developed various approaches for ensuring that implementing our the software benefits your bottom line.
It’s important to always begin with goals for the business, not purely technical goals, in order to improve profitability. Generally stated those goals are: to improve operational efficiency, to facilitate communications and better teamwork, to support effective decision making and to improve customer service.
In terms of operational efficiency, we look at tightening up work flow cycles. Compass enterprise software touches on a number of business cycles, especially those involved with moving material by truck. Daily cycles include balancing cash, closing dispatch tickets, and scheduling deliveries. Weekly cycles include invoicing, sales reports, and there are also monthly cycles.
One specific area we try to improve is the weekly or bi-weekly invoicing cycle. How long does it take for you to produce invoices, including all steps from close of business until the invoices have been printed or e-mailed. If your cut-off is Friday or Saturday, are you printing and e-mailing invoices 15 minutes into your Monday work day or does it take until Wednesday or Thursday?
There is no universal answer as to how long the process should take, but most companies can improve and tighten up their invoicing process. The basic idea is to take tasks that occur after the end of the week, and perform them as the week goes along.
For example, you may look at reviewing and correcting scale-house, transfer and inventory tickets each and every day, instead of weekly. Compass’s batch editing and review process, using Microsoft’s .NET user interface, makes it easy to find errors, and bring up a given ticket for easy correction. The process is designed so that it can be easily run in the office, every day.
Pricing deliveries and charging out trucking can be another time consuming exercise when left to week’s end. Compass makes it easy to maintain a real-time pricing system, so you can price as you go, whether from price lists or price quotes. Effective dates on all price lines make it easy to review and increase prices ahead of time, and you can charge delivery based on a ton-mile or zone system. Footer charges such as MNR levies, fuel surcharges and sales tax are all taken care of in the software.The goal is to have in place a 100% fully automatic pricing system that incorporates all features of your pricing strategy. If pricing is not fully automatic, then manual over-rides are necessary, and these slow up the invoicing cycle, and can be a source of errors, especially if they are missed.
Compass also allows you to mobilize your sales team with a formal quote system, so that all prices are put in place correctly and completely ahead of time.
Why tighten up your quotation, pricing, ticketing, and invoicing cycle? Just add up the benefits.
1) Work load for the office staff evens out across the week; no more “crunch” time. Rushing at “crunch” time is a source of errors and costly shortcuts.
2) Information accuracy increases when a system is able to capture data in real time. By that we mean that data capture or entry should occur in sync with the conduct of your business. Not later in “catch up” mode. Thus, put in pricing information when the deal is negotiated; don’t wait until later when key elements may be overlooked or forgotten. Capture all delivery information, and ensure quotation and price determinants are in place when the load goes out.
3) Timely information ‘in’ means timely decision making support ‘out’. For example, Compass can send a KPI report to all managers overnight with shipping and budget information up to date to the end of the previous day. But the report is not useful, or impossible, if delivery and pricing information is incomplete at time of delivery.
4) Billing errors have a very negative impact on customer relations. You work hard to deliver the right material on time, and then lose that good will when the invoice is wrong, causing aggravation for your team and your customer.In soccer, the very best teams play “one touch” football. They touch the ball once, and it moves on. This is what you want to do in handling information within your operation. Fill out a quote once, correctly, and move it on. Have a delivery ticket that is complete, accurate and properly priced (in the system),and it moves on to the next step. Apply this principle to all the information you handle. Part of the process in implementing Compass software is to find the “traps” and “fumbles” so you can execute more successfully as a team, and ultimately, score more goals than the competition.
Compass Software is designed to fit the needs of a construction material company, providing good quotation software, easy ticket review and correction, a pricing program that covers 100% of your pricing needs including MNR levies, fuel surcharges and trucking charges. So that you can work better as a team, and up your game. Be Barcelona!
