Jolly Good Software
Business Systems
In 2010 Mike Greer homes had a good team of ten staff, and they built around 100 houses a year.
The business essentially had three departments: Project Management, Accounts and Design. Then there were a couple of people that did pricing and other tasks. The project managers used Excel as their primary tool for managing the construction, and they had Word templates for sending orders to suppliers.
We originally started by looking at quoting. As that aspect of the project progressed, the other departments started to struggle with their manual systems, because of growth.
As the company grew, project management became a priority. We replaced MYOB in a single company, and then started swapping all the companies into "Hummer", Mike Greer's new Jolly Good Software system.
“However beautiful the strategy,
you should occasionally
look at the results.”
Winston Churchill
Background
The Outcome
When you first talk to a sales consultant, your details are entered into Hummer. The sales team send your job to Design, who add value and send it back to Sales for your approval. Sometimes this cycle is repeated as changes are made to the design. When you are happy with the design, Sales send the job to Pricing, who use 'recipes' to create a price; they then send the result back to Sales, who present it to you. You love the plans and want to proceed, so the job is passed to the Working Drawings team, and a list of tasks is started. Eventually the job goes to the council, accompanied by a cheque for the council's fees.
The job comes out of Council, a project manager and builder are appointed, and the build starts.
Invoices start arriving and are paid. The slab goes down, and you receive your first progress payment invoice.
The build continues, and it's the end of the GST period, so the finance team prepare the GST return for all 30 companies. Meanwhile, all the staff are entering their time and allocating it to the relevant job so that back-costing can be performed. They finish your build, you move in, and are super-happy with your new home.
The Journey
"Hummer" is the system that Jolly Good designed and implemented for Mike Greer. Between 2010 and now, the company of ten people has grown to be a company of over 300. These are some of the changes that Hummer has taken in its stride:
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New departments have been created, and new branches have come online. A single system now manages over 30 companies and all the intricacies caused by branches of varying size.
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As a result of the earthquakes, an issue arose with archaeological sites. Before a site could be excavated, it first had to be tested for historical interest: failure to do so would result in a huge fine.
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A Masterbuild inspector was engaged to check the framing before plasterboard could be installed.
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The company entered into a joint venture with another company to start building houses in a factory.
Every time the business changed, so did Hummer.