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A
world of
possibilities ...
As a leading
technology partner for
asset intensive industries in the areas of defence, government, mining,
transportation and utilities, Australia’s largest enterprise software
developer, Mincom, needs to manage the workload of hundreds of
consultants
across the globe. This isn’t easy.
‘Until about a
year ago, multiple
spreadsheets were used across business units around the globe to manage
and
collate consultant information,’ recalls Nicole Murphie, the resource
management project leader in customer services at Mincom. Then the
company
implemented Retain.
‘To begin with we were only planning to install the system for one
business
unit in Australia,’ Murphie says. ‘But it was so well received we
decided to
roll it out globally and across many business units.’
Retain is now
being used to keep
track of the availability and skills of more than 300 finance, HR,
supply chain
and maintenance consultants in Australia, Africa, South America and the
US. The
system’s versatile and integrated computer wall chart offers continuous
planning, so it provides a much clearer picture of resource allocation
and
availability than the spreadsheet alternative. ‘It’s pretty simple to
use,’
enthuses Murphie, ‘so users find it very easy to see what’s going on.’
It can be difficult to persuade people to change they way they do
things, no
matter how painful the current process is, but Mincom had no such
problem with
Retain. ‘Once we started using it, its popularity spread by word of
mouth,’
says Murphie, and it was no problem to sell to staff. ‘As soon as they
see it,
they like it and they want it,’ she explains.
" ‘Once we
started using it
(Retain), its popularity spread by word of mouth "
Retain also
makes it easier to
change booking details on the fly. ‘The scheduling details can change
half a
dozen times between the initial booking and date the consultant goes
out,’
comments Murphie, and this was a nightmare with the previous system.
She adds:
‘The administrative overheads were huge.’
The Retain system has a built-in database for job-costing and revenue
forecasting, and can provide automatically updated fee/costs analyses.
Its
integrated report writer enables users to tailor data fields to meet
their
specific requirements, and construct their own reports. So, in addition
to
making the human resource allocation process less time consuming and
labour
intensive, while also removing complexity and reducing errors, the
system has improved
the availability and quality of information for the Mincom management
team.
‘Because Retain
shows clearly the
sort of advance bookings that have been arranged, and the associated
charges,
it gives management a better feel for revenue expectation for a
period,’ says
Murphie, ‘and people are very excited about this.’
Mincom uses its
own software
in-house, so the company has linked Retain to its flagship ERP product
Mincom
Ellipse, for costing and so on, and to the Lotus Notes system that the
company uses
for internal communications. ‘Our ability to link data across all three
systems
has big benefits for Mincom,’ says Murphie, ‘but we would never have
been able
to build our spreadsheet-based resource management system into an
end-to-end
solution like this without Retain.’
The Retain
resource management
solution has been so successful at Mincom that its use may eventually
extend
across all business units around the globe. ‘We’re not mandating its
use,’ says
Murphie, but she is expecting other business units to pick it up.
‘Although
Retain is only available in English this has caused very few problems,’
she
says. ‘When I visited the office in Santiago, Chile, to talk to staff
about
using the software they had no problem picking it up despite the
language barrier,
because it’s so intuitive.’ And it’s been so popular with staff that it
could
be deployed right throughout the organisation. ‘In a year’s time, we
could have
nearly everyone in the organisation on Retain.’
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