Locke Carey
Fire Safety Design
Engineering Management
Glenn Horton - Director
Locke Carey is a highly successful team of fire safety specialists with offices located worldwide. The company provides advice on all aspects of fire safety for those involved in the design, construction and management of buildings. Since its foundation in 1989 Locke Carey has built an impressive client list, which continues to grow rapidly. The company's objective is to provide a consistently high level of advice to its clients in a prompt and professional manner to achieve a safe and cost effective solution to any fire safety problem.
In July 2007, Locke Carey purchased Paprika for its UK office and went live with the system 10 weeks later. Glenn Horton, a Director at Locke Carey spoke recently about the experience.
Why Paprika?
"We were looking for software to manage our projects and we had looked at a number of systems over a long period of time. Our existing system had lots of errors in it, which meant that a lot of the time that was being recorded just wasn't being invoiced. Coupled with that, it was quite difficult to make a timesheet entry, which meant that we were sure that we weren't booking in all the time worked anyway. Because of this we did not feel in control of our projects. That was a big spur to get something far more efficient in place.
What we wanted was to run the software and not be run by the software.
As soon as Paprika was demonstrated we knew it was the right system for us based on the functionality and configuration options. What we thought was great was that the software was highly configurable. What we wanted was to run the software and not be run by the software. The other thing that was really important to us was that Paprika was pro-active in providing alerts to users rather than waiting for them to run a report. "
Time is Money
"Since going 'live' with Paprika on October 1st, our monthly invoice value has routinely doubled. We've found an additional £600,000 per year in revenue. My feeling is that we've always been busy, and we're still busy now, so I think the results are a lot to do with Paprika. We haven't had that much more work, so it was quite simply a benefit of using the system. This alone has resulted in a return on investment of under one month.
Time spent doing commercial work has also become far clearer. In just three months, the targets we set were met and often exceeded. It became apparent that 75% of our consultants' work was in the commercial sector but before Paprika, we were struggling to reach 30%. I don't think that is the result of our staff suddenly being busier, they're always very busy, it was as a result of Paprika allowing us to be far more streamlined."
One Touch Does It
Paprika has made life easier for the staff been to use.
"Paprika has made life easier for the staff. It's easier for them to book their time and therefore it's easier for them to show to us, as employers, how hard they're working and to quantify exactly what they do. Before, we had people working from seven in the morning to seven at night, five or six days a week, and only booking in about 20 hours a month, which quite clearly is crazy. Now it's easy for them to say, 'look, I'm working hard,' and so from their perspective it's been really well received because it's really easy for them to use. Staff have been able to reduce their hours by 30% but we are invoicing more time than ever. Paprika has improved our efficiency and enables us to publish a report with just a click of the mouse."
What we need - When we need it
"Paprika has also allowed us to be more certain about our cash flow and turnover.
Paprika has improved our efficiency.
Because of this we've introduced a bonus scheme for our staff based on efficiency targets and on the back of that, Paprika has given us the ability to monitor and understand what people are doing and gives consultants a clearer idea of what they should be doing. We've requested that everybody puts comments on their timesheets about the job they're working on so now it's so much easier to deal with any queries we may have with a project. It's difficult to put a specific value on that, but anything that makes life easier has got to be a good thing.
Paprika has also allowed us to see a trend over a period of time as to how busy our consultants are which is quite useful for our resource planning and recruitment. Previously we hadn't been able to do any of that.
Benefits:
Improved efficiency in dealing with clients.A return on investment of under one month.
Increased invoicing of £600,000 per year.
A 30% reduction in staff time.
Certainty over cash flow and turnover.
Introduction of a staff bonus scheme.
Central shared source of important company information.
In summary, Paprika allows us to understand our project work far better as all our projects are on one central database. Now that all of our fees, budgets and costs are together, we can produce effective forecasts about the quality of clients and projects, which we couldn't have done previously."
Training and Support
"Our hardest job was trying to explain how we worked and what we wanted. We had to make some tough business decisions but ultimately it was worth it. It's meant that we've got it working how we want it to work.
The support has been great. If you call up Paprika, someone can normally sort you out quickly. There have been some reports that have been set up specifically for us, and so sometimes it takes more time for the Help Desk staff to advise but it doesn't take long to get an answer to a question."
The Result
"In the five months that we have been using Paprika, there haven't been any major concerns about using the software. A return on investment has been achieved in less than one month and the staff are eager to use the system.
I would definitely recommend Paprika to another project-based organisation. If they need to manage something from start to finish, all the way from the enquiry stage to closing reports, then I can imagine that the system would benefit their company.
We're just about to start implementing Paprika in our Middle East office..."