Symbiotic Projects saves £100,000 per annum in operational costsand enjoys closer co-operation with its accountant

Introduction

Symbiotic Projects Limited (SPL) is a provider of portfolio programme and projectmanagement services. It was founded in 2006 when the company’s managingdirector, Paul Garside, successfully completed a management transfer of the projectmanagement arm of Siemens. The company has grown rapidly, focusing on its corestrengths: delivering high quality professional services, based on industry bestpractices delivered in a flexible manner that fits its clients’ business requirements. Itoffers a wealth of experience ranging from locally delivered telephony infrastructureto global IPT and ITIL based organisational process re-engineering and bespokeprojects such as large outsourcing transitional programmes.Paul understood the importance of getting the right technology solutions to supporteffective working practices across the company, so when he was setting up thecompany he spent a great deal of time and energy investigating various options.One of the most critical applications was the finance and project managementsystem, as this would be used by the company’s 50-strong team of projectmanagers.Paul commented: “I work in a people-led business and I like to deal with mysuppliers in the same way that I deal with my customers. I was looking for a partnerrather than a supplier – a company who would provide a personal service and whowould take the time to listen to my needs.”

Solution

For the finance and project management solution, Paul looked at everything fromSage to SAP Project, including several online providers. Researching online, hecame across e-conomic and was tempted by its free two-week trial. Paul assessedthe software by trying out various project scenarios. Pleased with what he saw, hearranged to meet with e-conomic in person to investigate the service further.Paul commented: “It’s a leap of faith taking your accounts online - it’s like entrustingyour heart into someone else’s care. So it was really important to us that we felt we

could trust e-conomic and get a personal service. We put over £3m of businessthrough our books using e-conomic; some of the other systems I looked at were toosimplistic and didn’t have the depth of functionality I was after. As a projectmanagement company, we needed a system that would offer integrated finance andproject management reporting facilities, and a system that would develop with us aswe grow. Most of the other systems seemed to offer only one or the other, but e-conomic does both well.”e-conomic uses a Software as a Service (SaaS) model which means that end usersaccess the system through a web browser and an internet connection. There are noupfront installation costs, only a monthly subscription which includes unlimitedsupport and upgrades. The basic subscription of £13.50 includes all the core financemodules needed by a business – general ledger, accounts payable, accountsreceivable and electronic invoicing – plus a number of innovative time-savingfeatures such as automated bank reconciliation and direct integration with MicrosoftExcel. Additional modules are available including stock management, projectaccounting and scanning.

Figure 1 – e-conomic enables real time, multi-user cooperation

SaaS takes away a lot of the pain associated with IT management, such asinstallation, back-ups and upgrades, which can only be a good thing for smallbusinesses, especially for those without an in-house IT team. Paul continued: “As allour other management systems are also web hosted it made sense to also take ouraccounting online. We knew it would be a better option and it saves us more than£100,000 per annum

.”

Benefits

An online accounting solution was perfect for SPL as it meant that the projectmanagers could access the system from anywhere and at any time. Paul says: “e-conomic enables our project managers to do their project billing, timesheets andexpenses from the client’s site – that makes a big difference to time and efficiency,and the project managers love it! More importantly, the power of being able to sendup to the minute reports and information on project progress is extremely valuable forour clients, and that ability has strengthened our own proposition.

Figure 2 - Time logging window in e-conomic Project Accounting

“e-conomic has benefited our bottom line in terms of savings made. We have alsosaved money on salaries – without online accounting we would have had to employ afull time bookkeeper. Fortunately, our accountant has the foresight and

This figure comprises the cost of local IT infrastructure (local server, software, connectivity, etc.),cost of training, and the cost of employing an IT manager, a full-time book keeper and an administrator(to manage timesheets). None of these are required with the e-conomic solution.