James Taylor has undergone huge growth since its founding and is now a multi-million-pound organisation, focusing on providing a personable, reliable and efficient service to its loyal group of existing customers. James Taylor began using Construct for Sage 50 in 2005, in which time the Group’s turnover has grown from circa £10million to over £80million.

What challenges were you facing?

Before selecting Eque2, James Taylor managed all job costing using Sage Job Costing. We met with Michael Coath, Finance Director at James Taylor who told us, “We used Sage Job Costing for all our job costing needs, however, it created a list of invoices per job, but it didn’t categorise them”.

Michael mentioned that “The main issue with our previous processes was due to the fact we were growing, and contract sizes were getting bigger. We didn’t have much visibility on cost, other than a list of invoices, which were not easily accessible. All our subcontractor certificates were produced manually, as were many of our processes.”

Why did you select Eque2?

Michael commented “We selected Eque2 because of the fact we could stay with Sage and we therefore did not have to suffer the disruption of changing our accounting software. It was also reasonably priced and we could see how it would support our needs as the business grew”.

Michael continued, “As Construct looks similar to Sage, it was very easy for our employees to become comfortable using it quickly. For example, now our surveyors use the software we have gained full visibility of our subcontractors. When we had a paper based system, the surveyors would submit an order for £1 million and I wouldn’t know about it unless I looked at the carbon copy of their order. But now we have visibility, if I want to, I can look at each project and see the level of orders and who we are issuing orders to, very easily.

What other benefits of using Construct have you experienced?

Michael commented, “What is good is that we made all the electronic versions of our documents look like our existing paper documents, which look very professional and are faster to produce and easier to manage. We used to have a subcontractor order form which we replicated in Construct which was quite important, as our subcontractors were familiar with that form and could not deal with too much change.”

Eque2 can add your company logos and required text boxes to a range of document types, this enables customers to issue out consistently branded documents such as purchase orders, subcontractor payment certificates, invoices and sales applications. In most businesses, this is very important as it ensures all documentation is presented in accordance with brand guidelines and looks professional, however, it also ensures suppliers and customers are familiar with your logo and your companies paper assets.

How do you now manage your procurement process?

“Before we purchased Construct for Sage we used Sage Job Costing, however there was no functionality for raising orders in that particular system, so until someone invoiced you, you were not aware of the total cost for a job. Now we use Construct to issue our orders, and our exposure to costs is recognised much earlier than previously possible”.

Construct provides you with full visibility over your entire job costing process, from raising purchase orders to recording delivery notes. Reporting is a key feature within Construct and allows you to pull advanced reports such as, what has turned up on site vs what was ordered, this provides users of the software with full visibility in real-time. There’s no longer a need to manually search through stockpiles of paper, with Construct you can instantly pull reports at the click of a button.

How do you now track your retentions?

“Well, we can now track our retentions accurately unlike previously. When we were growing and we did small jobs, the bigger issue for us was our sales retention, however, in the last 10 years it has been more relevant knowing what our liabilities are to our subcontractors”.

If you would like to see more information on James Taylor Construction, please visit: http://www.jamestaylorgroup.com/.