Wates' Chris Bowman

Wates is one of the UK’s largest privately owned construction companies with a turnover of £945 million. This family-owned business, established in 1897, now employs more than 2,000 people and has 12 offices throughout the UK.

As with any business spread across different sites, retaining control of and sharing information is crucial to Wates. It helps them deliver projects on time and to budget. It’s also particularly important for them to keep control of their costs, whilst allowing project teams to manage subcontractors, suppliers and payments at site level.

Chris Bowman, Group IT Director for Wates, says: “Sage Construction has allowed us to improve control over the business in total. Risk is a big issue within the construction industry and our latest move to go to monthly reporting has helped the currency and accuracy of our forecasts which has helped us take the risk out of our projects, improve governance and financial control.”

By dealing directly with subcontractors and suppliers, Wates’ site managers can deal with issues on the spot, and use their local knowledge to drive a good deal. So it’s vital that their f nancial and contract management software is easy to use, as Chris Bowman explains: “The users primarily are remote from head off ce and have little need for direct support. Sage Construction gives us a comprehensive solution to our needs as a business without being overly complex. It provides all the functionalitythat we want and givesus plenty of opportunity to grow.”

He also notes that using the software has helped simplify their processes: “One of the major benef ts of using Sage Construction is that it’s very self-contained, so it hasn’t added to the complexity of our business systems. Which means it’s a relatively low cost solution in business terms and support terms for an organisation of our size. It’s not overly complex; it’s not fraught with issues on a daily basis. It simply goes in, runs and does the job that we need it to do.”

Starting off from f rm foundations is essential in the construction business, and that’s carried through into the way that Wates and Sage have developed in partnership. Chris Bowman is full of praise for the support they’ve received. He says: “We had a very good working relationship through various developments of the product, whereby we’ve worked with the developers to identify those things that could be included in the core product. The responsiveness from the Sage team during implementation was second to none.”

Click here to view the Wates Video Case study.