The CompanyEstablished in 1759, Sykes & Son have been operating in London and the South East for over 250 years. Today, the company houses three major business streams to deliver a range of building and engineering solutions and maintenance packages. Since their inception Sykes have remained dynamic and flexible, adapting and evolving to meet industry trends and client demands. The three distinct disciplines within the business give Sykes the ability to work independently or offer a ‘one stop shop’ solution to client’s needs.

RedSkyCASE STUDY:SYKES & SON LTD

BackgroundA full turnkey solution covers all critical aspects of project delivery from conception through to completion. This includes objective setting, feasibility studies, planning, design development, enabling works, construction and builder’s work, commissioning, aftercare and on-going maintenance work.

• Applying 250 years of industry experience to client’s needs. • Redefining expectations of a modern day contractor. • Incorporating the full scope of building and engineering services. • Rationalising resources and raising supply chain efficiency. • Providing on-going support and maintenance beyond the construction period. • Conception to Completion to Continuation.

Sykes & Son has been a RedSky IT customer for over 25 years and in the last 15 years the company has grown from a turnover of £5m to c£28m. In this time Sykes has also expanded M&E and associated maintenance areas. This growth of turnover and expansion of work types meant that the cost and nominal structure needed revising to provide better segmental analysis. Sykes decided to take the opportunity not just to review the code structure of their system, but to use this requirement as a springboard to investigate the benefits that would be delivered by migrating to Summit.

The ResultsDATA MIGRATION: The migration of existing data into Summit included mapping the old code structures onto new ones, which were configured to support business stream structures. For example, Sykes can now monitor the cost of individuals and vehicles against individual jobs within business streams. Peter also used this change process to improve VAT reporting as this was not being used in the old system, and to introduce BACS processing, reducing the cheque run from 250 to less than 10 a month. REPORTING: As the company grew, it began to rely on exporting data into spreadsheets for analysis. However as AXiM did not use a data base, the ability to share and manipulate data repeatedly was difficult. Migrating to Summit would include storing data in a SQL*Server Database, the foundation for sharing data. Summit also has the ability to integrate with Excel for direct reporting on live data. INVOICE SCANNING: One of the benefits of using Summit is the ability to scan and store invoice images against transactions when posting the data into Summit. Sykes used to key invoice data into spread sheets to track approvals by the operational team before posting, whereas this is can now be done on line, and with visibility of the transaction as well as the invoice image. SUMMARY: The migration to Summit provides the foundation for Sykes to continue to grow the business without adding to their administrative overheads. Summit also has the ability to increase user counts as the business grows, and further operational modules that can extend into other key business process functions such as procurement. Sykes may also in future consider the addition of the XCIPIO document management system and the Summit service management module for their maintenance division.

The main benefit we have achieved in using Summit functionality is having the administration team focusing on how they can work smarter rather than just logging data

Peter Banks, Finance Director

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RedSky software enables construction companies to achieve and maintain competitive advantage. We make real-time actions visible, enabling you to control change, eliminate risk and achieve ongoing incremental gains from improved operational efficiency. Across all types of construction and contracting projects, RedSky is scalable, modular and proven to improve performance, efficiency and success.

FOR THE END GAIN

sales@redskyit.com

RedSky, Breakspear Park, Breakspear Way, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 4TZ

www.redskyit.com

+44 (0) 20 3002 8600

The Process Peter Banks, Sykes’ FD, led the review process and identified some key drivers for change:

• Improve the coding for better segmental analysis • Revise the structure and use of the Sales Ledger • Introduce cashbook and follow through rather than rely on existing manual processes • Reduce the reliance on Spread Sheets • Introduce BACS payments rather than issuing cheques

Sykes chose to migrate to Summit 3000 as this would establish the platform to build on for the next 25 years. It could deliver against their current drivers and provide further benefits, going beyond their current immediate needs.