Working in a secure and highly dynamic environment at some of the world’s busiest airports Sword Services are required to produce a significant volume of mandatory records and documentation supporting the supply, installation, commissioning and locations of equipment installed over several million square meters of site. Multiple data entries, checks and repeat configurations and the need for embedded photographic data made this largely manual task slow and laborious.

Seeking to improve the process the work flow was completely reviewed and a new work method mapped. Centred around a database the revised system captured a full range of cost, technical specification, specialist codes and even PDF details and was able to compile the required documentation with a speed accuracy and repeatability far beyond the highest expectations of the company.

Subsequently Fruitful was commissioned to automate the quotation process. The previous method involved a mixture of Excel and Word and was very time consuming. Working closely with Sword Services, Fruitful developed a new spreadsheet that allowed groups of parts and single parts to be priced quickly. Many locations can be priced at the same time and at the click of a button a Word document with the completed quote produced.

Keith Dymond, Commercial Director at Sword Services commented;

“We believed we could automate the process; however our unique operating environment meant that many proprietary solutions fell short. We were not prepared to set up a entirely bespoke system and were delighted when we approached Fruitful to find that they were not only commercially aware but offered an outstanding solution based around Microsoft product. That gave us the confidence in the resilience of the system and Fruitful's common sense approach ensured we got exactly what we asked for. An added bonus was the system's resilience - the system has remained stable and resilient under all of the loads and inputs we have placed upon it. Any on line support needed although limited anyway has always been fast and efficiently handled.”

Pentagon stored information on its quotations and sales on spreadsheets but had not been able to extract the reporting information it required, for example across marketing channels or customer types. After analyzing the spreadsheets Fruitful made the changes to the structure of the data and added the reporting formula and code. Pentagon can now quickly analyze its sales and marketing performance.

A second project commissioned after the success of the first was to build a spreadsheet to create bill of materials. Pentagon play areas can be built bespoke and / or made up of a group of existing assemblies. Naturally there are many common parts which need to be added together before a purchase order is created for the appropriate supplier. Working closely with Pentagon as they built their assembly lists Fruitful automated the creation of bills of materials by suppliers based on the customer’s order. The parts list and supplier’s detail are then added to a newly created PO form for emailing to the supplier. Fruitful worked quickly and responsively to enable Pentagon to get its new system in place in time for its new assemblies.

Michael Bischof commented;

“Fruitful went through our requirements and because Tim understood what we were trying to do he made an additional suggestion that has enabled us to get more from the sheet than we originally thought possible.

The work was done quickly and delivered what we specified. It’s brilliant to have Fruitful who can work so quickly and remotely.”

As an international company with divisions across the globe, Dürr Dental wanted to consolidate accounts information into one system in Germany. This involved extracting data from Sage Accounts in the UK and producing pipe delimited rather than comma delimited files. The task needed to be run every month and unless automated would be very time consuming and prone to error. Fruitful produced a spreadsheet that extracted the required information from Sage via ODBC, made some business specific changes to the data, produced the pipe delimited files and appended these to an email with the press of one button.

Ian Pope commented;

“We made some attempts ourselves and even the accounts program company tried and failed!

In exasperation I looked on Google and found Fruitful. I e-mailed and spoke to Tim to discuss our requirements he made some suggestions and came up with a solution that achieved what we needed. Tim then visited us twice to install, tweak and train on the solution which automated the whole process down to two mouse clicks from extraction of data to a sent e-mail. It left me looking for other things to get them to automate!

The work was done quickly, when we wanted and how we wanted.”

The chamber had seven different logs split across each month of the year for one of their products. The updating, controlling and reporting across these was time consuming and prone to error. Tim from Fruitful came in and analyzed the data and processes and proposed a solution that greatly simplified the way the data was held, reducing the complexity and improving the availability of the data for reporting. The new solution has enabled the Chamber to reduce its administration time, reduce errors and achieve end of period reporting in seconds rather than hours or days as had previously been the case. It has been so successful for the Watford Chamber that they have started to sell it to other chambers.

Fay Thomson, Office Manager, commented;

"Tim visited our office and after establishing our needs has created 1 log that undertakes the work of the 7 original logs. Hiding some field and entering formulas that make our accounting procedure a much smoother less time consuming process."

Although the sales and payment information provided by the ecommerce solution used by NeedUndies is detailed it does not give it in a form that is easy to report on in, and certainly not in the way that NeedUndies wanted to see. Creating an Excel add-in Fruitful automated the processing of parsing and converting the data into a format that NeedUndies wanted to see

Andrew Needham commented;

“I have to say how impressed I am with the add on. I tested it using the last 20 days worth of order data and it worked an absolute treat, exactly the report format we need!

Fantastic.”

Looking to consolidate their sales and marketing data to give them a quick and easy view of the results of their efforts, Lime Interiors approached Fruitful. Lime Interiors were keen for a solution that would match their requirements, be easy to use and not be overloaded with unwanted functionality and therefore cost. Fruitful produced a spreadsheet solution that allows Lime Interiors to get this information and to track when they need to make follow up calls.

Gary Grant, director, commented;

“Tim visited our offices and spent time listening to us rather than prescribing a ready-made generic program that could have been for anyone. He took time to understand the real needs and underlying needs of our business and then returned to us with a software solution that helped me to be able to accurately assess what was working for us regarding our sales and marketing, whilst at the same time capturing useful sales info.

The benefit to us now we know what works and what doesn’t. Rather than bits of paper everywhere containing the information we need, it’s all on 1 simple to use spreadsheet. The back-up provided also by Fruitful is responsive and polite. We are looking at other ways Fruitful can help us as our business moves forward."