{"id":8702,"date":"2019-06-24T02:37:45","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T02:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totalsynergy.com\/?p=8702"},"modified":"2022-09-19T14:38:46","modified_gmt":"2022-09-19T04:38:46","slug":"how-salt3-shook-up-their-engineering-firm-with-industry-specific-management-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totalsynergy.com\/how-salt3-shook-up-their-engineering-firm-with-industry-specific-management-software\/","title":{"rendered":"How Salt\u00b3 shook up their engineering firm with industry-specific management software"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t
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Born five years ago in regional Victoria,\u00a0Salt\u00b3<\/a>\u00a0provides engineering services and consultancy for traffic, transport, and waste. From those recent and humble beginnings, Salt\u00b3 director\u00a0Jo Garretty<\/a>\u00a0took the wheel and steered the company\u2019s expansion to include offices in Melbourne and Sydney, and projects not only in the home state but also in NSW, South Australia, and Queensland across government and private sectors. So, how has Jo kept the success of Salt\u00b3 shakin\u2019?<\/p>\n

Waste not, want not<\/h3>\n

\u201cWe offer ourselves as a boutique firm,\u201d says Jo, \u201cThere’s a lot of crossover between the traffic and waste services, so the teams do work quite closely together to deliver reports and advice and engineering solutions to our clients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elaborating on the crossovers between traffic and waste engineering, she explains that in a residential development, the traffic team will look at carpark design \u2014 how trucks will service the development, and how waste will be collected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s where the waste team comes in,\u201d she says, \u201cThey design the systems that transfer the waste from within the building from each dwelling. If it\u2019s a high rise building, it might have shoots that go down into a waste room. The waste team design how big that room needs to be, how many bins need to go in there and how often the truck needs to come and collect the waste. Often each waste report has a traffic sweep path in the back of it, for example, showing the sweep path of the truck.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does being the director of a waste and traffic engineering firm look like?<\/h3>\n

\u201cI still do project work, but a lot of other things take up my time, like running the business, business development, and managing staff,\u201d Jo says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I do enjoy the project work as well. It’s enjoyable going out meeting clients and architects and everyone’s excited about the projects because many we do are amazing. I mean, they win awards and they look great \u2014 there’s something tangible out there as a result\u201d.<\/p>\n

Read more Synergy customer stories \u2014<\/a><\/strong>
\nfind out how leading AEC businesses find more time for design.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The journey to Synergy savvy at Salt\u00b3<\/h3>\n

Salt\u00b3 previously used another software product for practice and project management but had some real challenges with that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was limited in what it could offer, particularly if we wanted to get people in the team using it, becoming their own project manager and invoicing for projects as well,\u201d Jo says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other program didn’t really allow that, it was all managed through one or two admin people arranging all the invoices and sending them out, and it just took up a lot of time. The reporting side of it was limited as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe set out to look at other products which could give us more, and we did look at a couple of different options. We landed on\u00a0Synergy<\/a>\u00a0because it ticked boxes that most of the others didn’t as it\u2019s designed specifically for consulting engineers like us.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we’re engineers, the particular way we invoice traffic and waste can be very intricate as some of the projects aren’t massive. It’s not always a fixed fee, sometimes we have time and expense, or we might have a combined invoice that has a fixed fee and a time expense component. Additionally, we’re now often combining the waste and the traffic invoices in one. These are some of the features that we’ve been really glad to have with Synergy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting up for success<\/h3>\n

We\u2019re well aware that implementing a new business and project management software isn\u2019t exactly easy, folks, and it takes an investment of time<\/a>. We asked Jo how she and the Salt\u00b3 team found that process and whether she felt they\u2019d recouped the expenditure with the streamlining of systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning a new program is always a bit tricky, especially if you’re not IT savvy, but it wasn\u2019t overly arduous,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got there in a week or so and everyone picked it up, and they’re using it no problem. We use it daily for different reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daily does it \u2014 employee autonomy all the way<\/h3>\n

Jo explains that choosing a software specific to the architectural, engineering, and construction design (AEC) industry has been crucial to their staff being able to carry out their projects quickly and autonomously.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people enter their\u00a0timesheets<\/a>\u00a0every day. Everyone has Synergy open every day, and it gives them the flexibility to go in and generate an\u00a0invoice<\/a>. Say they close up a\u00a0project<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 they can draft the invoice for approval at any time, from wherever they are, so we don’t have to wait until the end of the month.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore it was an entire admin role, and now it still is as a final step, but by allowing project managers to generate their own invoices, we\u2019ve probably saved five days a month overall with just that benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about the importance of a project management software being industry-specific, Jo says she\u2019d give it an eight or nine out of 10. \u201cI really think it\u2019s quite important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Best practice \u2014 AEC success advice<\/h3>\n

For Jo Garretty, success is about relationships with the clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don’t have any clients then you’ve got no work to do,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s processes as well. I know sometimes people don’t like doing invoicing and that kind of thing, but you just need to keep on top of that using systems. When we started out we didn’t have a timesheet and invoicing program, we did it all in Excel, but when a business gets bigger and you employ people, that limits your ability to grow. So, once you start employing people, just think, ‘well, I can’t do everything myself because I’m not going to generate the work’. Save time on admin with the right systems and processes and free up time to grow the business.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s ahead for Salt\u00b3 (no Pepa)<\/h3>\n

Salt\u00b3 is a firm driven by their values: approachability, loyalty and transparency. Servicing their clients is their focus, Jo says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd not just being on the other end of an email, but actually developing relationships with them. We try hard to get face-to-face time with our clients \u2014 delivering things on time and giving quality advice and maintaining our relationship with other stakeholders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want our clients to feel they can call us up and have a chat, that we’re not going to be saying we won’t help you, because often things are quite challenging and a certain solution might not work, but we’ll come up with another way to get around it for you \u2014 we want to offer solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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