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Case Studies

Sword Services Ltd

 Systems Integrators: CCTV, Access Control, Intruder Detection, Control & Monitoring

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.”

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Pentagon Sports Ltd

 Bespoke Playground solutions

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.”

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Darent Wax

 Speciality Wax Manufacturers

The Darent Wax Company Ltd are speciality wax blenders, based near Dartford in Kent, manufacturing and distributing a huge variety of products into a huge variety of industries - both here in the UK and across the globe.

Their product lines include depilatory waxes, polishes, wood-stains, greases, adhesives, casting waxes and lots more. They sell into hundreds of industries, e.g. Beauty, textiles, packaging, agricultural, healthcare, leisure, TV & Film etc, and as because of this diversity it’s very rare that they sell the same product to more than one customer.

Tom Ward from Darent Wax found Fruitful after a web search and commented

“As a result of the growth of the sales over the last 5 years, we’ve had to expand our operations. Most of our time had been spent doing things computers should be doing, and this is why we started looking at various database options. After a brief look at off-the-shelf products we realised we needed a bespoke system, so we found a company and gave them a go. They promised a lot but couldn’t deliver.

After quickly realising what we DIDN’T want, we changed IT companies and after two years we got somewhere close to what we needed. However the system still wasn’t as flexible as we needed and there were serious problems which required us to become more rigid in our production methods. As our flexibility is a major contributor to keeping us above our competition, we had no option but to go back to our original stone-age system.

After lots of discussion on suitable database platforms we found Fruitful’s website. Our first meeting with Tim gave us confidence that Fruitful would be able to deliver in the way that others had not because of their experience in the manufacturing sector (Tim having owned a sheet metal business meant he understood the pressures and constraints we operate under). Instead of indulging in techie-speak they talked in plain English about our business and way of operating. It was refreshing having a conversation about IT systems with someone who knew how important it was for us to retain flexibility and make the system flex for us - not us flex for the system.

Throughout the build process the Fruitful team have been excellent at communication and helping solve problems. I don’t think we’ve encountered an issue that they’ve said “No” to! We now have a system that has reduced our admin time and giving us better control on the business.

I am happy to recommend Fruitful, and I’m sure we’ll be using them whenever we need added functionality in the future."

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Diespeker

 Suppliers of marble, granite, slate, limestone and other associated products

Diespeker suppliers marble, granite, slate, limestone and other associated products. It uses a select team of craftsmen / tradesmen to install its products which are cut using modern Italian machinery at its location in London.

Diespeker had an existing Access database that was no longer supported by its developer. This stored quotation information and allowed a degree of management reporting. However, the database had some bugs which needed to be fixed. Additionally the company was not capturing all its quotations, nor was it producing information on those as quickly and efficiently as it wanted.

The quotations;

  • Were manual processes and therefore slow and error prone.
  • Could not easily make use of similar phrases in previous quotations.
  • Had to be re-entered into the database system.

Fruitful was recommended to Diespeker. Tim came in and discussed these issues. Having experience of quotations in many different companies, Tim knew there are as many different ways of quoting as there are people quoting, even if the product is identical. Therefore it was important to get the best of all methods to produce a system all would be happy to move over to.

It was important that the system linked to the existing database and removed any double typing so Fruitful proposed a system that;

  • Used Excel for the quotation building. Stock phrases are selectable in this, as is the type of quotation.
  • Linked to the database to get the address details of existing customers.
  • Saved data back to the database if the user wanted.

The benefit of this system was that it used the existing database system and kept development costs low.

The system was then developed and installed.

MD Ewart Krause commented;

“Fruitful offered the perfect expertise for this project – Excel and Access as well as knowledge of how quotations work for different people in different companies. They came in and interpreted correctly the complex requirements, and immediately gave us the confidence they could provide the solution. Which they did – we are very happy with. It has made quotations simpler and quicker and given us more reporting information. We were pleased not to be pushed down one route as they built a system that fitted our existing systems and the way we work.”

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NetStar

 IT Support and Consultancy

Netstar provide IT support, consultancy exclusively for the Small Business sector and, as a result, are able to offer expert advice and solutions designed specifically for small businesses at a competitive rate.

One of Netstar’s tenets is that it is offers the complete IT package – a one stop shop for its clients and by using Fruitful it has been able to provide this.

When one of Netstar’s customers approached them with an Excel problem which they knew was outside their skill set, Netstar searched the web for an appropriate company to help them. After researching Fruitful, they were given the customer’s details and asked to get in contact. The customer had some bugs in a business critical spreadsheet. Fruitful was able to identify the cause and sort it out very quickly.

The next customer to contact Netstar had an issue with a shared spreadsheet. Again Fruitful were passed their details. After assessing the problem Fruitful advised replacing the spreadsheet with an Access database and in the interim making some changes to the current set up. In this case no work from Fruitful was commissioned but the client was so pleased with the advice they received that they used Fruitful for a subsequent Excel project.

The third customer to contact Netstar wanted to improve their view of their stock across various MS SQL systems. Fruitful met the client and has completed an Access project for them.

Mit of Netstar commented

“We service our customers to a high standard and we expect our specialist suppliers to match that standard. Fruitful fulfilled this expectation.”

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Dürr Dental [Products] UK Ltd

 Hi-tech dental products and services.

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.”

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Watford Chamber of Commerce

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."

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NeedUndies.com

 Hi-quality branded underwear provider

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.”

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Lime Interiors Ltd

 High quality kitchens

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."

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CFP Solutions

 CFP Solutions are a full service digital agency and web consultancy based in London.

CFP Solutions needed an Excel dashboard for one of their clients. It had to be visually appealing, tying in with CFP Solutions high design standards, flexible, simple to use and reliable. It would use data from a mySQL database and it had to be done by a week on Friday. And it was already Tuesday.CFP Solutions needed an Excel dashboard for one of their clients. It had to be visually appealing, tying in with CFP Solutions high design standards, flexible, simple to use and reliable. It would use data from a mySQL database and it had to be done by a week on Friday. And it was already Tuesday.

Colin Fitzpatrick, MD, commented;

“After researching the web and reviewing different organisations Fruitful was awarded the contract. Tim from Fruitful was at their office the next morning. The various ways to extract and hold the data was discussed and Tim was able to call on Fruitful’s experience of dashboard reporting to propose two options.

Fruitful produced the quotations the next morning (Thursday), one option was selected, the project was signed off and work commenced immediately.

Fruitful and CFP Solutions developers worked together closely over the next week to produce the Excel dashboard system the customer wanted. It allowed the user to view the data across dates and other sub-divisions and showed it in a visually appealing and understandable way. The project was delivered on the Friday as promised and the customer was happy.

We were impressed that Fruitful had done similar work, quickly understood what we wanted, promised to deliver in the tight time frame and did...without fuss and according to the terms of the contract. We now view Fruitful as an extension of our core services."

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