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Client background
A well-established business in the plant hire industry, operating across multiple depots in the UK and Ireland. With a large workforce and a high number of subcontractors, they support projects nationwide.
The challenge
As the business grew, manual processes and legacy systems became a barrier to efficiency. Routine admin tasks were taking too long, data was difficult to access, and errors were creeping in.
The solution
Fabric & Power Platform
Having sustained continued, rapid growth, our client needed to upgrade their internal processes to ensure they could scale effectively. Numerous manual processes and legacy systems were starting to show signs of needing updates and business insights were proving difficult to obtain.
Processes were taking the team too long and human error was becoming a problem, so these inefficiencies needed to be addressed.
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The client’s timesheet process relied heavily on manual input. Staff submitted paper forms via photo and email, which were then individually reviewed, verified, and rekeyed into another system, taking up approximately 120 hours of staff time each week and introducing a high risk of error.
Invoice processing presented a similar challenge. Each month, invoices were submitted, and a small internal team spent over 240 hours manually extracting data and entering it into the appropriate systems. This was not only time-consuming but also prone to inconsistencies.
When reviewing each project, we were able to establish savings for each process. It was calculated that 85% efficiency savings could be realised from each project by introducing Power Automate’s AI Builder and Cognitive Services technology.
By setting data markers on each process, the AI tech was able to extract this data at the point it was received into a central mailbox. A trigger was then set into motion and the data was collated in a central database held on SharePoint before automatically uploading into a separate system. Within the process, validation rules were built into the flows to make sure any inaccurate or incomplete entries were rejected and shared back to the team for re-submission.
A further development has been scoped to include a mobile Power App for direct time tracking data entry by the subcontractors to further ensure accuracy in data entry, which is a secondary phase of the project.
Through automating a large part of the timesheet reader process and removing the main requirement for manual checking, the client has made a revenue saving of £65,000 per year.
Extracting data from invoices at the point they are received, and sending this data automatically to their existing finance system, has saved the business £32,500 per year.
The combined saving of £97,000 is being allocated within the business to other technology which will further help the client with their ongoing digital evolution.
Business impact: In addition to the savings made, the team of makers are now actively creating Power BI dashboards, Power Apps and using Power Automate for process flow improvement
As well as supporting the client’s development team with the projects categorised for in-house development, we will be working on some strategic deployments over the coming months. Namely, a Power App to reduce the paper forms currently used at the start of the timesheet submission process, a Power BI report which displays live job status information, and a holiday tracker for the resourcing team
Discover more on 5 ways to get the most out of your data.
