No shortage of enthusiasm at Dales Engineering!

When a printer hardware problem prompted long-standing PlusOne customer Dales Engineering Services to upgrade from Sage Line 100 to Sage 200, the expanding Aberdeenshire steel fabrication company took the opportunity to implement a fully-integrated cost centre.

“There were a few sceptics to start with, because it was a big change for us,” says Operations Director Kevin Thomson. “But now everybody would be lost if they couldn’t access the system every day.”

The 22-year-old Peterhead firm, which specialises in fabricating structural steelworks and pipe spools for offshore oil and gas subsea and topsides applications, previously used Sage 100 for accounting only, having upgraded from its original Line 50 package.

Traditionally, the company used Microsoft Access as its cost control database, which meant working with individual databases for time sheets, purchase orders, invoices, delivery notes, etc. Adding a cost to a job meant entering the same information three times over. Now, with the Sage 200 integrated core accounting and project accounting package, a task that previously took an entire day takes less than a couple of hours. This efficiency saving has allowed the administrative staff to take on other more productive cost-management roles – such as chasing invoices and looking to reduce costs on purchases – which are delivering notable cost benefits for the company.

Implementation has involved a number of ongoing bespoke developments, such as custom-designed job card templates. “We told PlusOne what we’d like to be able to do and they’ve been able to accommodate 99% of our quirks!” says Kevin.

However, he says Dales Engineering Services has learned first-hand the pitfalls of over-enthusiasm: “When implementation began, it was planned to be in three stages, but everyone was so keen to use it at this end that we raced from module to module without taking enough time to understand the system’s full capabilities.

“Fortunately, the PlusOne team has been brilliant. I’ve never yet phoned them with a problem or query and hung up wondering how it’s still to be fixed. They’re always on hand when you call them and they always have the right answer!”

www.dalesengineering.co.uk