Eque2 work with the Quantum Group
The Quantum Group is a development investment group operating in a number of specialist property sectors, headquartered in Bournemouth, England. Quantum has gone through tremendous growth by focusing solely on creating lovable environments hand in hand with the local communities it operates within. Understanding local needs and markets has enabled Quantum to deliver innovative solutions using their specialist in-house teams.
Quantum specialise in the following industries; Residential property development, Nursing & dementia care home operations, Investment management, Architecture & design, Land acquisition and planning, Hotel management & hospitality.
Challenge
Prior to selecting Eque2, Quantum used manual spreadsheets for all job costing and purchase ordering. We met with Gayle Swaffield, Finance Business Partner at Quantum who commented, “Duplication was a key issue for us, we weren’t sure if we were capturing all our costs for projects and we couldn’t report on them as accurately as required. Orders were being raised on-site, and if the orders didn’t get sent to HQ, those costs would have been missed and not reported on”.
“We also used to manually write out orders, which then came into the finance team, however we would also need to manually type them into a spreadsheet”. Using manual spreadsheets meant that duplication was high in the business and often made reports difficult to manage and reconcile.
This is one type of excessive duplication that Construct helps to minimise, rather than manually typing purchase orders out two or three times, you can raise purchase orders directly within Construct which then links into Sage Accounts. In addition to this, you can also limit the order value for specific users, providing more control over spend. This helps businesses to keep an eye on costs and ensures purchase orders have the correct approval.
Solution
Construct for Sage provides businesses such as Quantum Group with far better visibility than previously possible, this means that issues such as missing paperwork, or invoices received after a project is completed are no longer a strain on a business’s finances.
After beginning to use Construct for Sage, Gayle commented “Time is definitely being saved in the finance team. We have full visibility around purchase ordering, we’ve reduced paperwork as its now handled electronically, and we are able to pull reports and make decisions faster than ever before.
Gayle continued, “We can pull reports by region, see actual costs on any project and run purchase order reports to see what costs we have committed on a daily basis. We can also refer back to procurement schedules for each site, and most importantly we can make a judgement call on whether we are ahead or behind on schedule/costs”.
What is the most important benefit Construct has brought to the business?
“One of the biggest benefits of using Construct for Sage is that we are now confident with all the numbers we use to run the business. Whether we need to look into the detail of a particular cost on a project or check the cost of historical projects, we can quickly and easily access the information we need to make timely and well informed decisions.”
If you would like to see more information on The Quantum Group, please visit: http://quantumgroup.org.uk/