Composite Energy

Realising the vision

There’s a lot to be said for going back to basics – and that’s just the approach adopted by Composite Energy, of Stirling, when rapid growth of Composite and its six subsidiary companies demanded a more sophisticated cost-tracking system.

Sitting down with PlusOne and the proverbial blank slate, Group Finance Manager Jackie Kipps discussed her vision of achieving a step change transformation of the five-year-old company’s financial function. The PlusOne solution – an upgrade from Composite Energy’s Sage Line 50 online package to a Sage 200 system with bespoke project accounting module and tailor-made management reports – was implemented within three months.

“I’m very happy with the new system; it certainly delivered what it promised,’” says Jackie. “Our business focuses on exploration and development of coal-bed methane within Europe and every well we drill needs to be accounted for as a separate project. The Sage 200 project accounting module enables us to do this very efficiently.”

“The integrated stock module is extremely useful,” she adds, “and is used extensively by one of our group companies, Geometric Drilling, to control the movement of stock between warehouses and stock issues to wells. Geometric Drilling also drills wells for third parties, and the project module is an excellent tool to capture rechargeable expenses and monitor the profitability of each project. The ability to enter project budgets at a ‘project item’ level also allows fast and accurate variance analysis.”

Jackie is pleased with the smooth implementation of the system: “PlusOne were fantastic; they worked incredibly hard and were very efficient and responsive to our needs. We were going through a major IT overhaul at the time and PlusOne were very supportive of that.

“They have also provided good continuity. This means we deal with the same technical and training contacts all the time. As a result they know our business very well, which saves us the time and effort of having to keep explaining things from scratch.”

www.composite-energy.co.uk