When looking for a system to help streamline existing operations and establish the foundation for the future, Melray Electric chose the local company with an in-depth knowledge of the contracting and construction industry.
Melray Electric general manager, Glenn Connor, who has worked with the company since 1993, says when the organisation began searching for software that would help support their development, after outgrowing their existing system, it had a particular set of requirements.
“I was looking for a package that provided job costing first and foremost,” says Glenn Connor. “There’s lots of software out there, but a lot of them focus on accountancy, and have job costing as an add on.”
“When it came to understanding the needs of the contracting industry, the CostCon guys knew what we were talking about and I think that gave me confidence,” says Glenn. “They’re not accountants trying to sell me an accountancy package. The fact that they were local as well, and they had other big clients on board that we also deal with, helped me make my decision.”
Used by leaders in the building and civil contracting industries, CostCon helps businesses to manage a full range of essential tasks, including project costing, contract work, performance management and accounting. CostCon is a job costing, accounting and management system developed specifically for building contractors and trade companies that work under the Construction Contracts Act.
With a growing customer base across the sector, from residential and commercial building to civil contracting, sub-contractors and manufacturers, director Don Rapley says CostCon products are designed with the needs of local businesses in mind.
“CostCon gives you the freedom and the knowledge to focus on building your business,” says Don Rapley.
“Our approach has been to develop a management system that puts costing and project management first,” says Don. “This includes a fully integrated accounting system and a range of modules designed to meet the needs of local businesses, including web timesheets, advanced procurement management, forecasting and comprehensive document management.”
Handling some of the most complex aspects of construction and contracting – variation orders, retentions and progress claims – CostCon is not only comprehensive, but also designed specifically for QS and project manager users.
“Progress claiming is a big part of what we do – you’ve got to get your payment claims done every month or you’ll have no income coming in,” says Glenn. “Prior to CostCon we still created our claims on excel spreadsheets, which took up a lot of my time. CostCon gave us the advantage of having those payment claims within the system.
“Time saving, accuracy of claims and reduction of errors are all the benefits of using CostCon.”
As well as a large team devoted to new builds, including projects like the new ANZ Centre, St George’s, the Vodafone building and the new central library, Melray Electric has a dedicated group of technicians managing ongoing maintenance contracts.
The system Melray Electric was using for the maintenance team’s job allocation, reporting and materials, however, hadn’t changed much since the company was first formed in 1987.
“Everything was getting handled three or four times. And even though service and maintenance is only ten per cent of what we do, from an administration perspective, it would probably take about forty to fifty per cent of our time,” says Glenn. “That’s where simPRO came in.”
simPRO Software’s mobile solution is designed to streamline workflow, from estimating, to service delivery. As a cloud solution, the system is able to be accessed anywhere, letting Melray Electric’s team work from the job site to manage time, materials and job details, in real time.
“We came to the conclusion that if we could get a hybrid of simPRO and CostCon, it would tick all of our boxes,” says Glenn. “simPro is purely a job costing service provider, it doesn’t do accounting and everything else is an addition. We wanted to use CostCon because all of our accounting goes through it, but in order to do that, we had to build the link between the two.”
Don says providing a seamless connection between CostCon and simPRO was key to ensuring Melray Electric captured the time-savings and reduction in paper handling at every stage of the job.
Glenn says although Melray Electric is still bringing staff up to speed on the new system, he expects to see real efficiency and productivity benefits once everyone is using the tablet-based system in the field.
Overall it is that ability to provide better information in a timely manner that has been one of the key advantages of working with CostCon according to Glenn.
“We have much better visibility than we did before,” says Glenn. “And that gives us confidence when managing all the challenges that come with being a contracting business.”
Don Rapley says his organisation is proud of what they’ve been able to achieve for Melray Electric.
“We’re a local company, building on local expertise and experience to deliver greater efficiency and more productivity for the best in the business,” says Don.
