Case study:
Access COINS helps Campion Homes discover efficiencies with a single source of truth
Access COINS ERP helped Campion Homes re-define their digital business management systems, providing an integrated system to support their rapid growth.
Business size
Medium
Industry
House building
Product
Access COINS ERP
Challenge
- Following a significant period of growth, Campion Homes needed to transform their business management systems to move away restricting spreadsheet-based processes and bring all their processes into one platform.
Approach
- Campion Homes implemented COINS ERP to integrate all aspects of their business in one central platform and provide a single source of truth.
Results
- Since implementation, Campion Homes has seen a huge increase in business efficiency, saving over 1000+ hours traditionally spent on administrative tasks such as payroll processing and organising subcontractor payments.
Scottish homebuilder Campion Homes is a family owned, award winning business that has been building quality homes across East Central Scotland for over 30 years. They pride themselves on delivering best-in-class quality and choice and have recently seen massive growth.
Awarded a coveted Home Builder Federation CSS 5 star rating, Campion Homes are responsible for building exceptional properties, for both the affordable housing and private sectors.
Due to their recent growth, Campion Homes were in need of business management software that could keep up with their business trajectory and move them away from the more traditional spreadsheet-based processes which was holding them back.
Supporting business growth with Access COINS ERP
Susan Jackson, Joint Managing Director of Campion Homes, realised that to grow their business a major change was needed, one which would transform not only their current construction technology and systems, but also their processes – integrating all aspects of their business. It was critical for them to achieve a single source of truth to identify margin savings and performance insights.
Campion Homes had gone through a significant growth period, with turnover doubling in the period ending June 2017. As a result, they were facing a major technological challenge, as their existing systems were unable to support their future objective of steady and stable growth.
Not only were their existing core commercial and finance packages inflexible, they had outgrown their contract costing package, and a huge amount of manual intervention was required. Campion Homes also needed the ability to identify business insights – specifically around reporting functionality which was critical for them to identify where they could make margin improvements.
We were a business that was operating with far too many spreadsheets.
Susan Jackson, Joint Managing Director, Campion Homes
The first stage in their digital transformation was to enlist the support of Scottish Enterprise. With the expert guidance of an IT consultant specialising in construction ERP solutions, a thorough selection process culminated in COINS being selected as their construction technology partner.
Achieving leading cashflow forecasting functionality
Campion Homes were particularly impressed with COINS cashflow forecasting functionality, as well as the comprehensive range of applications for managing the entire construction lifecycle. The COINS Choices module was also very important to their business.
We pride ourselves on the significant level of choices which Campion Homes offers to customers, these are one of our key USPs, so management and data analysis of these is really important to us.
Susan Jackson, Managing Director, Campion Homes
The correct approach to successful ERP software implementation
A ‘big bang’ approach towards the COINS implementation was planned. This would involve the replacement of existing systems, alongside the development of new processes, posing a major challenge for the delivery team. They quickly observed that successful implementation would rely not only on the technology, but also the relevant training for the people who will be using it.
Rigorous planning was necessary to ensure processes and training were in place for the live date of 1 July 2019 to ensure a seamless transition from the legacy systems to COINS ERP.
Throughout the solution design process in 2018 many of the Campion Homes team ‘bought into’ the new solutions – so we were really pushing against an open door.
Roger Vaux, COINS Business Development Manager
Joint Managing Director, Susan Jackson worked with the core delivery team, which included herself along with both Campion Homes Director of Surveying and their Head of Finance. They were tasked with leading the change, with clear messaging about why it was happening and to establish to the wider teams that this was a joint-effort and everyone was in it together.
Training was viewed as a top priority – with attendance being non-negotiable. The initial focus was on commercials, finance and payroll as these three systems were all being entirely replaced by COINS ERP’s integrated solutions.
Improving team efficiencies with Access COINS ERP
In the first year of using Access COINS, Campion Homes had already made huge time savings. They witnessed a severe reduction in the time taken to run the weekly payroll saving them a day and a half every working week. This efficiency has allowed the payroll assistant to focus more efforts on HR, adding more value into the business.
With the implementation of the Access COINS ERP payroll systems, Campion Homes have unlocked over 600+ hours every year which can be spent by the relevant team members on more pressing business objectives.
Digital transformations and a new way of working efficiently
Implementing Access COINS has forced Campion Homes to rationalise how they operate and change the way they do things.
COINS SureStart is a construction-specific package of software, business processes and implementation services which includes configuration settings and predefined tables.
By embracing COINS SureStart for homebuilders, Campion Homes have benefitted from sector-specific configurations designed to help standardise, simplify and automate their processes.
COINS came to us with Surestart, why would we not learn from the experience of construction technology experts? If there is a better way of doing things and COINS is showing us the way then we should do it that way.
Susan Jackson, Managing Director, Campion Homes
As part of these changes, the surveying team now have more control and visibility over subcontractor payments, which has provided the added benefit of saving time for the finance team – estimated at one day a week.
As a result of the process Campion Homes have restructured their budgets, as well as rationalising contract costings and providing them with a much more straightforward approach.
The golden thread: A single source of truth
Since the implementation of Access COINS ERP, Campion Homes have achieved their goal of a single source of the truth, the mantra which cascades across their business. Replacing multiple spreadsheets and systems with a single, easy-to-use solution, with an intuitive interface accessible to a variety of users has had a huge impact for their construction business.
One source of the truth, that’s what a construction ERP is all about. Data goes into COINS once and is accessible across so many different parts of the system by a variety of users.
Susan Jackson, Managing Director, Campion Homes
Remote working helped Campion Homes thrive during COVID-19
The impact of the sudden construction sector closure on 23 March 2020 in Scotland as a result of the coronavirus was huge. However, Campion Homes have seen unexpected benefits from moving to a cloud-based construction solution, with data being easily accessed from anywhere via a range of devices – from mobile phones, to tablets and computers.
We would have ground to a halt as a business without COINS; we could not have worked our old systems remotely. Everyone working on COINS commercial, finance and payroll was able to seamlessly work from home.
Susan Jackson, Managing Director, Campion Homes
Access COINS has enabled Campion Homes to operate in such a way that anybody interacting with them during that period would not have noticed any difference – enabling them to give out the clear message that Campion Homes is still very much open for business.
At the height of the shutdown Campion Homes were able to run their business with a reduced team of only ten people and six directors. Prior to COINS they would have been unable to operate with such a small team, saving them money during this difficult period.
This core team discovered they were easily able to collaborate remotely. Access COINS is built and hosted on Microsoft Azure, which integrates with Microsoft 365, compatible with SharePoint, Outlook, Teams and more.
I would say that we would have struggled badly without COINS during lockdown. Web-based access to the system has allowed us to work remotely from each other and be fully aware of what others have been doing. COINS also forces a more standardised approach which allows us to pick up on the work of others more easily.
Director of Surveying, Campion Homes
The finance team have also seen the benefits of remote working using Access COINS. During the lockdown period they have been able to seamlessly convert to a paperless way of operating with COINS being absolutely integral. This will have long term benefits with the finance team planning to continue this new paperless way of working into the future – a change which could have taken months to achieve but with the support of COINS has been easy to implement.
The future looks bright with Access COINS ERP
Campion Homes are still on a journey with Access COINS, with plans to ensure the solution is adopted throughout their construction business in the coming year with key areas identified as:
Groundworks - by analysing hard data Campion Homes will be able to determine on which projects to use their own plant division as opposed to subcontracting this activity.
Reporting – a key focus will be ensuring the data they need is entered onto the system in the first place, allowing them to run the reports they need at the end.
Construction Managers – a challenging next step is to integrate site-based processes - with their site managers adopting the COINS mobile construction app.
My absolute goal is that COINS will support business growth without us having to employ more people as we now have the capacity to manage more.
Susan Jackson, Managing Director, Campion Homes
