Reliable IT Services

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the managing director at Crummock Surfacing Ltd. We are a construction company based near Edinburgh, Scotland.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Redtable Information Systems?

We have European standards for quality and quality assurance systems. We needed to integrate several different systems into one system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We needed a system that would merge our email system with our record-keeping system so that we can save emails, letters, and any other communication to specific projects. I wanted everything to work as a piece of software on an iPhone. I told them everything has to be obvious—I wanted people to instinctively know how to use it 

We hired Redtable Information Systems and discussed how to formalize our quality assurance system, which included several tasks we do in the construction industry, such as risk assessments, statements, timesheets, diaries, and other things. They came up with quite a few ideas on how to do it, and we went from there. 

Continuous improvement is part of our quality assurance system; we are always trying to add tweaks into the system or develop things we already have. Redtable Information Systems put in place a tool to make sure that our accounts package talks to the new system and vice versa. Since the system went live, they have supported us, our computer system, and parts of the main network. 

During the project, we repeatedly changed the scope. When we more fully understood what we could do, we wanted more features than what we initially asked for. We added a lot to it since the project started, such as doing integration with our accounts package. We didn’t know that we could get data directly from our accounts package into this package. That way, someone like the site manager could see all the purchase orders against his job and categorize them. Also, the timesheets can integrate directly into the payroll system that we have. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Rob (Technical Consultant, Redtable Information Systems) and another person from the team.

How did you come to work with Redtable Information Systems?

Someone recommended them to me.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent upwards of £60,000 (approximately $104,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in May 2018, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Thanks to Redtable Information Systems, we become a totally paperless office; we don’t even have a filing cabinet on-site anymore. I am quite happy with what we’ve paid and what we’ve received. People don’t need a lot of training to use the system despite its size. I’ve been in the construction industry for a long time, and I don’t know any other companies that have an all-in-one system that does what we have now.

We get feedback all the time. We have a user group that regularly talks about how something could work better or could be displayed differently. For example, in our industry, we are all very health- and safety-conscious. Before we start a job, a client will insist on us providing risk assessments for the project. We have multiple template risk assessments that are all categorized by the types of work we do. We can go through every kind of work and see a list of all the risk assessments involved in each. You can tick off which ones you want, and the system creates them all and saves them in a folder to be ready for us. We’re no longer creating everything from scratch. It is a straightforward process for everyone.

How did Redtable Information Systems perform from a project management standpoint?

The team has been very reliable; they do what they say they will do. Rob’s communication is effective—the team used IBM Notes—and he’s very responsive. If anyone’s messed up the project, it’s on our side.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Unlike other contractors we’ve worked with, Rob didn’t disappear and do another job when he should have only been working for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If we had learned more at the start, we could have directed them better. I often wonder if he could have helped us with that more.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very specific about what you are trying to achieve. We thought we were being specific, but we changed our minds too often. We started with an idea but ended up with something a lot better than we expected.