"Nobody likes filling in time sheets so we wanted the process to be as easy and as painless as possible."

Doug Orange is CTO at Velrada. He has to ensure that Velrada’s ICT budget delivers real productivity benefits for the business: He says, “It’s often the small things that can deliver the biggest return. Nobody likes filling in time sheets so we wanted the process to be as easy and as painless as possible.”

An IT and business consultancy, Velrada manages time and billing for a large number of concurrent projects. The business needs to accurately track the amount of time spent on customer engagements and create meaningful reports.

Orange had been looking for a solution that would integrate with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. He says, “Our technical background is around the Microsoft platform so we wanted a timesheet system that we could plug in to SharePoint. We also like the way it integrates with SQL Server and Reporting Services. This means we can easily extend the system to integrate with other business systems and build our own custom reports.”

Orange came across PointBeyond through a Web search, and found the online evaluation extremely useful. He says, “Being able to access an evaluation environment made it really easy to work out whether this was the right tool for us. PointBeyond was very responsive to our questions and receptive to feedback and feature requests.”

The system was easy to install and required minimal training. Because Velrada is such a new company, it is not possible to measure cost reduction, but Orange is pleased with how the system is performing and how easy it is to use. He says. “The main feedback is lack of feedback. We have fourteen consultants using the system and they are all able to complete their timesheets without issue. We are still finalising the reports we need but we know that we have the flexibility to get the information out in the format we require.”

Velrada was also impressed with the levels of customer service on offer. Orange says, “PointBeyond has responded quickly and comprehensively to our questions. They were happy to provide support during installation but, I’m pleased to say, it wasn’t necessary because it was so easy to install.”