Castlemead Homes Ltd

Leading developer of luxury homes

Company Overview

Formed November 1994, Castlemead Homes is dedicated to a single ideal – to create luxury homes of character and distinction.The company prides itself on the ability to marry the best of modern building technology with the unchanging values of traditional craftsmanship.

Based in Wrexham, Castlemead Homes build quality developments that range from two bed apartments to luxury five bed houses. Each individual property type has its own external variations to ensure a degree of individuality.

With numerous sites both in the local area including Wrexham, Flintshire, Denbighshire and Shropshire, Castlemead Homes are a leading developer within the North West.They also have a number of commercial projects throughout the country, currently in Liverpool, Betws y-coed, Swindon and Blackpool.

The company is three-times winner of the Built in Quality Award for the borough of Wrexham, winning the North Wales Award in 2005. Castlemead have also been awarded the Customer Care Award for Wales and Midlands region by Zurich Guarantee Company.All of these awards reflect Castlemead’s high standards and ongoing attention to customer needs.

The Challenge

In a constantly shifting housing market, the ability to provide concise information on demand is essential for any financial director within the construction industry, as Darren Pender, financial controller for Castlemead Homes, explains.

“The housing market is notorious for rapid changes in circumstances, as anyone wishing to buy or sell a house will know. My role is primarily to provide the information that enables the company to react to these changes in the market – not to pay attention to predictions about what may or may not happen.” Several years’ ago, it became clear that Castlemead’s existing system was not able to support these everincreasingly complex demands for information.

“Previously, we used an Integrity Software Solutions package” Darren continues.“This system was fine for basic day-to-day running, but had limited reporting capabilities. In addition, because it was not linked to our ‘costing’ spreadsheet (where we enter all the costs associated with each build), running a report was very time-consuming as information had to be re-keyed from one system into the other. I spent all my time producing the reports, with no leeway to analyse the information.”

Key objective

Castlemead’s main objective was to implement a system that would align the costings spreadsheet with sophisticated reporting facilities, so eliminating the need to re-key and providing substantial time savings.“The costing spreadsheet is a crucial document,” Darren explains, “because it collates every detail relating to a new build, from top-level site costs such as road clearance and ground investigation right down to plot costs, such as stairs and kitchen fittings.” He continues “We didn’t want to change how we already worked, but to address the reporting issues without changing the look and feel of the front end.”

Choosing Access

Castlemead researched a list of vendors, whittling the shortlist down to Access Accounting and Iris Exchequer.“To be fair, there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the systems” says Darren,“but the Access Specialist Centre swung it for us; we knew we’d be able to work with them.”

Integration

The Access Specialist Centre was confident that the integration facilities provided by Dimensions’ Access Office Integration facility would be the first step to achieving Darren’s objectives. By seamlessly linking the front-end costing spreadsheet with the back office accounts, Darren would be able to work within the familiar Excel environment then update information to the accounts with a single click. Board reports could be processed by the industry-standard application, CrystalTM, or the information exported to Excel to satisfy ad-hoc reporting demands.

Implementation

The first task for the Access Specialist Centre was to integrate the existing costing data with Access Dimensions. “This was a mammoth task” Darren recalls.“Years of historical data was re-coded to represent the various stage of each build and it was completed by our Year End deadline. All credit to the consultants, who were really keen to make sure we got it right.Their support was brilliant.”

The reporting question Has the new system delivered? “Certainly” says Darren.“The reporting facilities are exceptionally easy to use and have made a real difference to our decision makers. With our old system, it took me two weeks to re-key the costing data into the accounts – it now takes 30 minutes to consolidate the information. Before, it was a race against time; now, I actually get a chance to look at the figures and see what’s going on before people ask questions.”

Work in progress

“WIP for us is unsold square footage with a set of committed costs allocated to it” says Darren.“There are so many costs relating to cost of sale that tracking them manually meant reporting used to take forever.Thanks to Crystal reports, we can clarify what is WIP and what is related to cost of sale – this enables us to keep a close eye on what profit will be made.”

Inter-company reporting The new system also enables Darren to easily manage complex inter-company reporting requirements.“We have nine trading companies within the group. Previously, producing a consolidation report would mean extracting the data relating to each company, re-keying it into Excel then adding it all together.Then we’d find we’d missed a line off, so the report would be wrong. Now, whether we want to analyse by company, job, date, or year – I can have a report ready in an hour, not days.”

Purchasing and budgeting

Once work gets going on each site, tight budgetary control is essential.“I’ll be asked questions about why a project is running longer than it should, which, before we implemented Dimensions, was a real headache” Darren says.“Again, because purchase order data had to be re-keyed into the costing spreadsheet, it was never up-to-date.We have resolved this problem by installing the web-enabled Purchasing module.”

Instant visibility

Because this part of the system can be accessed remotely, purchasers can raise orders while off-site, with data automatically updating the accounts. This provides much greater control over costs. “Before, it wasn’t until we were producing the costing reports that we could establish where we’d overspent.

Now, there’s instant visibility of what’s been pre-ordered, which helps make budgeting decisions then and there rather than finding out further down the line.”

Managing retentions

Darren is also able to easily manage retentions.“When the order is produced, I just enter the percentage that is to be deducted and the system shows it as an amount owed against the project.When the site’s finished, the supplier can ask for the retention that is owed and we can release it – it’s just one less thing to worry about!”

Going forward

Darren is enthusiastic about Access Dimensions and the support that he has received.“The system definitely lives up to expectations” he concludes. The Access consultants really listened to what was required and have delivered reporting facilities to make my job much easier. Now, I can focus on analysing financial information and guide future business decisions, which is what I’m here for.”

Benefits

Close control of profit margin – Flexible reporting options allow users to compare site-related costs against budgets at any stage of the project. This visibility highlights factors that may affect the overall profit (e.g. a rise in materials costs) and allows early corrective action to be taken.
Access to quick and accurate information – two-way data exchange between familiar Microsoft Excel application and the accounts eliminates the need for information to be re-keyed, saving time while simultaneously reducing errors.
Tighter control of purchases – On-line purchasing module available through Dimensions Portal allows offsite workers to raise purchase orders, providing a real-time view of committed costs.
Fewer administrative tasks – Access Dimensions provides the functionality to cater for specific requirements of the construction sector, for example, retentions.
More time to fulfil strategic objectives – Previously, reports could take days to produce leaving minimal time for indepth analysis. Now, reports can now be run in seconds, giving the finance function time to use the information to guide company strategy.