Livity was started in 2001 and has grown to thirteen people and is still growing as a result of the ethos and energy of the team. The agency is now established as a maverick force in youth communication and understanding in both the private and public sectors. Since its foundation, Livity has built an impressive client list, which continues to grow rapidly.

In March 2007, Livity purchased Paprika and went live with the system six weeks later. Lyeloon Kazi, the Finance Manager at Livity, spoke recently about the experience.

When we sat down and saw Paprika demonstrated to us, we thought, 'This is it!'

Why Paprika?

"Before Paprika our systems were manual and we knew something was going amiss. We needed a central system that everybody could use. We needed job bags, but not the huge plastic kind stuffed with bits of paper that we were relying on! I used a well known finance system, but it did not give us the kind of information that everyone could look at. We needed a system that would enable us to estimate time and costs for our clients. When we sat down and saw Paprika demonstrated to us, we thought, 'This is it!'"

An Electronic Job Bag

"It was basically a job bag on a screen! Everyone could go into it. We could put our client estimates on Paprika, we could enter our time and costs, invoice the client from the job bag and work out exactly how profitable the job was, which was something that we had never done before.

With Paprika we are improving as a business

Before we had Paprika, the amount of money we must have lost is just too scary to say! On one job alone, I know that we made an initial loss of over £25,000! We were giving so much, committing so much, but not realizing how much. Using Paprika we can find a balance, where we say, 'Ok, we need to stop here now. Look at our budget. Look how many hours we've spent on this.' Either we have to go back and ask for more money or we cut back. Luckily, with this new software, we managed to recoup that money."

One central source of information

"Paprika is one system that everyone can use and literally everything on the system ties in. This is exactly what we wanted. Before using the system we were apprehensive because it was something new but when we started using it, it was so easy.

Everybody is entering his or her time to Paprika. It is simple and easy to use and this has already saved me several hours a week. Before Paprika time was entered into spreadsheets."

External Reporting

"Because local authorities and various agencies are funding us, we get monitored a lot, so that at the end of every quarter we have to provide a number of reports to explain and show how we have spent their budget. With Paprika it's great. We just go into a job enquiry and view all the invoices that have been raised against that particular quarter, and against that funding. We can do the same with time entries. It's all there. I feel confident in explaining it all to the funding agencies."

Was Paprika the right choice?

"I cannot force myself to think back on the number of jobs where we undercut ourselves in the past. We are only looking forward. With Paprika we are improving as a business. Paprika helps us understand what is happening in our business and allows us to take action before it is too late and we end up over-committing to something. Now we can be realistic with our clients.

The system works absolutely brilliantly, it's a fantastic asset.

The cost of Paprika was recovered in just a couple of months and Paprika has earned us tens of thousand of pounds by ensuring we charge our time correctly and are proactive with our clients when approaching a job over-run.

The system works absolutely brilliantly, it's a fantastic asset, and I would definitely recommend it to another agency."