Action Engineering

IT Objectives

• Facilitate the management of all accounting and inventory through a single software solution.
• Support continued growth.
• Avoid the error prone and time consuming process of duplicated data entry.
• Increase administration productivity.
• Enhance management reporting.
• Provide advanced stock control, on a daily basis, to assist cash flow management.
• Streamline re-stocking to ensure adequate levels are maintained and to give better purchasing patterns.
• Manage multiple warehouses including that run for third parties.

History

In the past four years alone, Action Engineering has seen a growth in staff from 18 to 65 people and currently has an annual turnover of $7.8 million.

However, solid and consistent expansion has been a part of the company’s history, since its inception.

And to properly manage that, and to allow for future growth, the organisation’s owners determined that its use of IT needed to be enhanced.

At that time, for example, a number of disparate systems were in use. This meant that the same data was often being entered several times, which was recognised as being time consuming and error prone. Management reporting was not as timely as was wished. Additionally inventory and warehouse management had become far from effective.

As Action Engineering General Manager Greg Clothier adds, “that stock problem was of added concern as we not only warehouse our own 265 SKUs but, in a separate warehouse, provide a third party logistics service to customers such as One Steel. This 3PL work typically adds around a further 150 SKUs.

“So having a good warehouse management system capability had a dual importance.”

Partnering with Pronto Xi & MDS

After an extensive evaluation of possible software solutions to meet its requirements, Action Engineering elected to install the Pronto Xi system that is supported by MDS. Specific Pronto Xi modules now being used including:

• Pronto Foundation
• Pronto Financials
• Pronto Distribution
• Pronto Project Costing
• Pronto Payroll

As Mr Clothier explains, “our choice of software was based on several criteria. Pronto Xi could clearly do everything we wanted. It provided a very cost-effective option when compared to some other systems. We were able to implement it on our then existing computer hardware.”

Outcomes

• Financial reporting frequency has been substantially increased. From yearly to six-monthly to quarterly. The capacity exists for even greater frequency should the company wish.
• Stock is being effectively controlled on a daily basis giving substantially enhanced cash flow control.
• The targeted re-ordering goals have been achieved to avoid out of stock situations and to improve purchasing patterns.
• Cross checking with third party warehousing client One Steel’s own stock system is now automatic and direct between the organisations’ computer systems.
• Administrative costs have been reduced by 20 percent, and admin staff by 60 percent, despite further ongoing and substantial growth.
• Multiple users are readily supported.

Further Directions

As Mr Clothier notes, “one of the key things we’d like our IT to do, in the future, is to help us with labour scheduling. We have 65 tradesmen and seven project managers. And it would deliver considerable benefit to be able to allocate that labour daily on a highly automatic basis.

“That would involve knowing which staff are unavailable because of things like training commitments, RDOs and annual leave.

“We’d also aim to know the budget outcomes of that labour, know the costs and returns of our labour allocation and have a clear view of the profit generated by a day’s work."