“STAND STILL, YOU’LL END UP AT THE BOTTOM. THAT’S WHY A GOOD RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR MIS PROVIDER IS ESSENTIAL”

THE PROBLEM

Over twenty years ago, when OPM first approached Tharstern, it was using SuperCalc for its estimating and had recently introduced computerized accounts. However, it had no stock system, no data collection, and no way to connect everything together.

THE GOAL

OPM’s Joint Managing Director, Chris Ellison, had a vision to significantly improve the company’s efficiency by setting up one of the three production facilities as the administrative center controlling the whole group. Chris knew that he would need to use technology to achieve this vision, by digitizing the remaining areas of his business and connecting them all together.

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THARSTERN

The implementation project presented the OPM team with something of a learning curve - “When we first put in the new system, we underestimated the commitment required to really get the most out of a comprehensive MIS solution. We tried to train on the job, which in hindsight was wrong, and when we turned scheduling on, we were frightened to death of it and turned it back off again! We initially went for the quick wins, like linking the accounts system to allow us to analyze job costings, but we didn’t dedicate time to utilizing all the features.”

A few years later, when OPM embarked on a major upgrade to its IT systems, including the hardware, network and MIS, the company adopted a different approach. Joint Managing Director, Susan Ellison took charge of the project, creating a training room with a dedicated server so the staff could run demo programmes using their own data to test out how it worked and understand the benefits. To enable the business to carry on running as normal, Susan created training groups which consisted of one or two people from each department enabling the knowledge to be disseminated across the business.

"We definitely learned from our earlier experience and completely amended our approach the second time. We also learned a lot about communication and how important it is to keep a constant line of dialogue open with your MIS supplier,” said Susan.