Customer: Bridge Precision Engineering Ltd
Location: Wimbourne, Dorset
Industries: Diverse Manufacturing
Contact: Tony Goodwin, Managing Director
Using basic spreadsheets to operate meant a lack of a paper trail. It resulted in many invoice queries. Since Fitfactory’s implementation, the number of queries has dropped to none.
Synopsis
Bridge Precision Engineering was founded in 1997 and provides manufacturing solutions to a diverse client base that includes aerospace, oil, diving, air bearing and commercial industries.
In the past three years the company has grown to meet the requirements of an expanding customer book, increasing the company’s annual turnover by more than 600%.
Prior to implementing the system, Bridge Precision managed work using basic Excel spreadsheets. Managing Director, Tony Goodwin commented, “We had just begun to use job cards, however a lot of the tracking was carried out verbally. So a job would be booked in and go through the factory without a paper trail.”
He continued, “Fundamental things like the pricing of materials was done by memory while the tracking of jobs involved asking those directly involved with the work. A client ‘phoning to track a job would mean leaving them on hold while I went to the factory floor to ask. Each invoice that we sent out was manually created, and going from a book of 400 jobs to 20,000 by December 2008 often with multi-invoice requirements, this workload took up three days of every working week. Inevitably as the company developed it began to get difficult to keep track of work and mistakes began to creep in.”
Selection Process
Bridge Precision considered four solution providers and requested demonstrations from three companies including Fitfactory. At this time Bridge Precision also improved its administration capability through the upgrade of IT systems.
Tony Goodwin stated, “The decision to purchase from Fitfactory was based on a number of factors. We liked the flexibility of the software; it’s a system that uses common screens from the creation of a job right through to invoicing. This means there was little instruction required which enabled us to get up and running quickly and efficiently. This was a deciding factor for us.’
He continued, “What impresses us about Fitfactory is their continual professionalism. From quote through to installation, the Fitfactory team were efficient and wholly supportive of our requirements. After training we were given the option to ‘go live’ with the software or to trial run. Confident in Fitfactory, we chose to go live without any hitches.”
Implementing the system
The professionalism experienced with Fitfactory during the implementation phase is continued to the service support received. During the two months after implementation, Fitfactory ‘phoned once a week to check on progress. These ‘phone calls were not just quick courtesy checks. The Fitfactory employee would always be able to help with our queries, no matter how long the call lasted and without putting us on hold or passing us through to someone else.’
Impact on Business
Goodwin concluded, “The software works as we hoped it would. Gaining access to information such as knowing where materials are sourced and costings is simple. And if we receive repeat work, it only takes a minute to copy a works order and modify it for the new job. This leaves us free to concentrate on other work.
Invoicing now only takes 2-3 hours, 1 day a week, freeing up time for other members of staff. As for those mistakes that were starting to creep in, invoice queries have fallen from 8-10 a month to none.”