Kaamos Group develops and builds real estate. Based in the Estonian capital, it is present in Estonia and Latvia. Its total turnover in 2018 was 68 mln euros. The company strives to build houses that are impressive to look at and blend harmoniously into the surrounding environment.
They wanted to reduce the amount of manual work involved in budget management. That required something that would integrate with their accounting software and give a real-time overview of the budget and forecasts.
After trying to build custom software on their own, they found the real solution with the help of Planyard. Both project managers and accountants now save several days per month on duplicate data entry. Subcontractors are the only ones who still enter data. The difference is, though, that they can’t make mistakes anymore.
Challenges
Up until 2018, all the progress reports and approval rounds were done on paper, and the same was true for invoices.
"I joined Kaamos four years ago. Like everywhere else, there was a high stack of papers waiting for me on my desk."
Purchase orders reached us via post, or they were printed out by the project manager. The project and cost codes were written on the POs manually, as were the calculations. Project managers received a copy of the invoice, which they then put in a physical folder. The CEO approved every cost with a signature on paper.
But that was only half the job—the accountant then needed to re-enter data from the purchase order into the accounting software. After it finally got paid, the invoice was put into a physical folder.
It was quite time-consuming and frustrating for everyone involved.
Budget management was done in Excel, but that was quite painful as well.
"During busy times some of the invoices tended to get forgotten unless they were dealt with immediately."
Later on, when things didn’t add up, it was very hard to find where the mistakes happened.
"No matter how small the error, it meant going through a tall stack of printed invoices one by one."
It is evident to them that something had to change.
Trying To Build A Custom Solution On Their Own
In 2018, the board at Kaamos Group met and decided to decrease the manual labor involved in entering data and to gain a better overview of project budgets.
They were already using an accounting software called Directo, so it felt logical to commission Directo to integrate the new solution into the software.
"We tried to build a custom solution by ourselves. But just developing the budgeting module took us half a year alone."
They did manage to get a better overview of the budget and ensure that there is a single place for making approvals and tracking the approved costs.
This meant that they reduced some of the manual data entry work and tracked all the budgets in one place. They also digitized invoice approvals. However, the project managers still needed to manually enter all the invoices into Directo when the month ended. That took several days and sometimes ran well into the night.
Also, the project managers felt another pain – compiling a budget review for the construction manager was hard. The data was split between Excel and the accounting software.
"We also wanted to track progress reports and budgets in the same place for all the projects, but we never got to building those modules."
Kaamos Group Starts Using Planyard
When Marek heard of Planyard, he realized it did exactly what they wanted the software to do without having to build it themselves.
"Our goal with Planyard was to reduce the tedious data entry between Excel and our accounting software Directo."
When the decision was made to use Planyard, things happened fast.
"As a construction manager, it was easy for me to transfer all eight ongoing projects to Planyard. It only took two weeks."
He added that the team at Planyard was of great help during onboarding. “They answered our open questions and built an integration with Directo, our accounting software.”
We heard similar comments from the project managers at Kaamos. “I pretty much got how the software works on my own,” comments Martin. He says he didn’t need to look at the training videos.
"The subcontractors have come along with the new software nicely as well."
Results
Kaamos Group has been using Planyard for some months, and the results are in.
"We save four working days each month per project manager. The biggest efficiency booster came from getting rid of duplicate data entry."
"Subcontractors are the only ones who still enter data. However, the progress reports and invoices they send us are always connected to a line in the budget, a contract, and a progress report. This means that they can’t make mistakes in data entry."
"I can check in real-time the costs, income, and forecasts for every line in the budget."
Martin Kaljumäe, a project manager at Kaamos, is pleased that he no longer has to work in Excel.
"I spend 50% less time on budget management now. This saves me several days per month."
The calculations that he previously had to do manually are now done automatically.
He estimates that he also saves around half the time it takes to work on bids thanks to Planyard’s construction bidding tool. That’s several days for every object he has to manage.
He is pleased that, as a side effect, the number of emails he gets has decreased, too. Invoices, commitments, and RFQs now go straight to Planyard instead of his inbox.
"Dealing with paper invoices and commitments seems like the stone age compared to Planyard."
"We have taken an even bigger step forward thanks to Planyard. We have reduced the time it takes to process purchase orders several times over."
"Today, a few seconds for a quick visual check is all that’s needed by the accountant to approve a purchase order in Directo."
"We have gotten rid of copy-paste completely."
The project managers from Planyard are now sending the invoices directly to Directo as pre-approved. All the information is already included—which costs are associated with which projects, line items, and construction codes. The pre-approved invoice has approvals from both the project manager and CEO.
She says she doesn’t have to check which costs are related to which projects and line items anymore. “Nor do I have to enter this data myself anymore,” she adds.
