CASE STUDY
HansaWorld UK
September 2007

HansaWorld mobility, efficiency wins over telecoms engineers

Background

Telecommunications engineering firm ICEE specialises in the installation
of communicaitons
and electronic equipment for both fixed and mobile network operators.
ICEE offers full
network deployment and project management services, along with
engineering support that
includes the design, manufacture and fitting out of bespoke telecoms
enclosures. The
firm’s headquarters and factory are at Waterlooville in Hampshire, with
additional
offices and warehouses at Warrington in the North. There is also a
network of five
regional offices in England, Scotland and Ireland.

Business Need

During 2002 ICEE decided to replace its existing accounting package,
which had an outdated
DOS-based job costing module. The firm need to tighten control of
operational costs and
increase efficiencies to maintain the quality standards needed for ISO
9001: 2000
certification.

“The ISO 9001:2000 quality standard is a benchmark for our
organisation,” says founder
and MD Paul Harris. “To consistently achieve this we needed to implement
new IT systems
at the core of our business operations.”

The main challenge ICEE faced at the time was to find a single,
integrated product that
would provide the firm with real-time information to support its
business activities,
including financials, job costing and stock management. ICEE wanted to
avoid using a mix
of bolt-on applications from different software providers. The firm also
sought a solution
that would provide easy co-ordination between its different offices.
Solution

In mid-2002 ICEE chose HansaWorld’s integrated financials, job costing
and stock
management software solution to run its business. HansaWorld’s job
costing functionality
was key in the selection process, said Harris: “ICEE opens job records
to keep track of
customer orders and associated costs, including materials and employee
expenses, while
incorporating the time spent on each job. Many of these jobs are open
for several years,
with customers continually increasing or changing their orders, which
means that ICEE
requires a very detailed breakdown of this information.”

HansaWorld offered ICEE the ability to drill down to a very detailed
level, along with a
very user-friendly interface. “HansaWorld offered the only solution in
its price category
that had the level of functionality that we were looking for within a
single database,”
said Harris.

Results
Five years on from its initial implementation, HansaWorld has supported
ICEE’s growth to
become one of the leading firms in its market. HansaWorld software is
now used by 75
people across two companies. The operational areas it covers have
expanded from accounts,
job costing and stock management to include expenses, fixed assets,
order processing,
purchase orders, quotations, customer relationship management and email.

“HansaWorld has given us functionality in a single system that would
normally take at
least three separate packages to achieve,” says Harris, “without the
costs of
maintaining three systems and writing interfaces between them. This
single-application
approach means we have been able to make regular upgrades, and keep
running costs low.”

¨HansaWorld's customisation language has allowed us to develop the
solution precisely to
suit the needs of our business, rather than the solution forcing us to
change our business
practices to suit standard functionality.¨ says Paul Harris

Overall, says Harris, “HansaWorld has really improved the way we manage
our business
information and ensures that we can meet the ISO 9001:2000 quality
standard. HansaWorld
has the scope and flexibility to suit our future requirements as we
continue to expand.”

HansaWorld’s drilldown capability has helped ICEE identify and control
costs, while
intelligent purchasing has enabled considerable time savings and
improved stockholdings.
“We have been impressed by the simplicity of costing time and expenses
against jobs,
holding this data for multiple years, and then invoicing it whenever
required,” says
Harris.

ICEE has also found HansaWorld’s remote and mobile access functionality
particularly
valuable. “Many of our engineers spend long periods working at customer
sites, and some
customers do not allow us access to their computer networks. It is a
major benefit that
HansaWorld enables our engineers to log in over mobile phone networks to
enter time and
materials against jobs.”