BSRIA

“This level of integration has enabled us to produce our management accounts far more quickly. I would say efficiency has increased by 50%."

BSRIA is an independent organisation, providing collaborative research, product testing, consultancy, project management and market intelligence for the building services industry. With almost 50 years of experience and a team of 120 specialists to call upon, it is able to meet the information needs of everyone from engineers and contractors to government bodies and utilities.

The Nature of the Problem

Two persistent problems caused BSRIA to re-evaluate its business and accounting systems. Firstly, consolidated management accounts could take up to 20 days to prepare. Secondly, project managers found it difficult to monitor the progress of their individual projects…and even harder to gain control over costs.

The Unexpected Benefits of Integration

Improved Purchasing Control: as an added benefit, Dimensions was also able to improve BSRIA’s invoice approval process. With 60-70 individuals placing their own orders, managing and approving invoices was a considerable challenge. Prior to Access, BSRIA used a spreadsheet for recording invoices and tracking approval. This was far from ideal, as information had to be re-keyed into the spreadsheet and there was very little security control. It was also difficult to establish who had overall responsibility for which invoices.

Access was able to provide a solution through its purchase order processing and invoice register modules. With a secure environment, careful tracking and a user-determined sequence of approvers for each invoice, things are now much simpler. “If a creditor or supplier rings in, we can easily see if we’ve received their invoice, and straight away we know who is responsible for it,” says Brian.

Integrated Stock Control: BSRIA is also able to have one central system for controlling stock across a diverse range of activities. From items in its bookshop, to non-hire instruments and market research publications, the sale of any item is automatically reflected in the accounts. Integrated stock also has the added benefit of increasing the speed and efficiency of sales invoicing and sales analysis. When raising invoices, stock information is automatically added through selection of the required stock code. This eliminates re-keying of stock information onto the invoice. Sales analysis codes against each item enable BSRIA to analyse sales performance of relevant stock items.

Looking to the Future

Within 12-months of implementation, BSRIA was enjoying significant improvements in efficiency across many different areas of its activity. Now the organisation is looking to maximise the available functionality of its new system.

One of the first steps will be using the costing module to view and prepare estimates and quotations. These can then be turned into live projects with no additional work.

At the same time, budgeting is set to be streamlined through the use of Access add-ins for Microsoft Excel. Preparing a spreadsheet with current accounts data within seconds – and manipulating this data using Excel’s own tools – will make budget amendments quick and easy. And because any changes can be written straight back from Excel into the accounts, re-keying is completely eliminated. This will be of great benefit to BSRIA, as continual changes to funding impact greatly on its budgeting process.