New Touchstone Solution Cures Headaches For Facilities
Managers
30 October 2007: Early visibility of the
profitability of contracts need never again be a problem for
facilities managers, thanks to Touchstone Contracts Management
Solution (CMS), a new product from Touchstone Group, the leading
AIM-listed IT provider of integrated business software solutions
and consultancy.
Getting good visibility of committed costs,
WIP and profitability, as well as managing the contractual
relationships with contractors, subcontractors and suppliers can be
notoriously complex and troublesome for facilities managers. Built
on a Microsoft Dynamics AX platform, Touchstone CMS remedies this
age-old problem by providing users with a single, easy-to-use
portal from which they can monitor all of their relationships and
ensure tight operational and fiscal management.
The suite of tools embedded in CMS allows
users to tackle the most complex, multi-level contract structures.
For example, the built-in wizards and templates allow users to
generate standardised contracts in a negligible amount of time.
Touchstone CMS incorporates management of
multiple charge line types, including: stage payments; incidental
payments; billing plans; adjustment charges; and charge subtotals.
Multiple cost line types are also accounted for, including tight
management of hourly costs; subcontractor contract cost structures
and summaries.
Billing dilemmas are solved by Touchstone CMS.
The solution facilitates multi-level schedules of rates; uplifts;
billing plans; and intelligent invoicing whether an automatic or
manual consolidation system is being used.
Touchstone CMS can also be linked to specific
payroll systems; and manage approvals, rebates, retentions and
industry certification and compliance rules.
The at-a-glance reporting function of
Touchstone CMS allows users to distil quickly any data necessary –
such as profitability, costs and purchases per job – providing a
clear overview of in-depth contract operations. This is made
possible via dual navigational overview screens and a short-cut
system that moves seamlessly through the contract structure,
irrespective of how many customers and sites are involved.
Chris Town, Divisional Managing Director,
Touchstone Group, comments: “For a long time, lack of visibility
and profitability when managing subcontractors and suppliers have
made the job of facilities management more difficult and
frustrating than it needs to be. Touchstone CMS will resolve this
issue. It equips facilities managers with the tools needed to
manage subcontractors and suppliers efficiently and
cost-effectively, allowing them to concentrate more of their time
on other areas of the business.”