Time Savings and Efficiency Improvements for Portakabin

11 May 2007

Stilo, provider of solutions for Product Lifecycle Management, Document Management, Data Migration and e-Publishing, has provided a solution for speeding up Portakabin's quotation process by integrating disparate systems including SAP and AutoCAD. Portakabin will now be able to process quotation requests in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Portakabin is a member of the Shepherd Group, one of the largest privately owned construction, contracting and engineering groups in the UK. It provides state-of-the-art accommodation solutions and project management services, from planning permission all the way through to building handover, and employs over 1300 people throughout the UK and Europe. The facilities it provides are tailor-made to the specific requirements of the client, whether they are for construction site units, office space, marketing suites or events.

One of Portakabin's barriers to growth had been its inability to reduce the time to get a customer a new quotation. They receive many requests for quotations on a daily basis and each one receives a bespoke response, determined by the particular needs of the customer. In so doing, the request is passed from sales to a design team who produce a drawing of the unit, which is sent back to the sales department where each part number is manually keyed into SAP to identify the cost of each part. This is then processed to create a costing for the final proposal. This procedure typically took 2 weeks and was prone to errors when data was keyed into SAP.

The Stilo solution integrated AutoCAD, where each building component is drawn, saved and used in final unit designs, and the SAP system where the component serial numbers and individual costs are listed. This means that once the drawing is produced as usual, by saving it into SAP the component prices are automatically retrieved and processed into a final unit cost, allowing time to create proposals to be significantly reduced.

Richard Troth, VP,Stilo Engineering Solutions, says, "The Portakabin solution is a good example of using improved data processes to solve real business problems. We are very pleased that we have been able to help Portakabin not only streamline their current service, but also improve their capability to deal with more proposals and thus increase business."

Troth continues "The project was identified when we ran one of our Product Lifecycle Management Workshop with representatives from Sales, Production and IT. The quotation process was a major barrier to growth that was identified with the Sales Director at Portakabin. Over the next few days we developed a prototype to prove the business case. The project itself was carried out in five days and proves that PLM can be broken down into manageable projects that deliver return on investment".

About Stilo International

Stilo (LSE:STL) provides leading solutions for Product Lifecycle Management, Document Management, Data Conversion and e-Publishing to customers in Aerospace & Defence, Manufacturing, IT, Telco, Publishing and Government.

For further information please contact:-

Ismail Evren
Stilo International
Tel. + 44 (0) 1793 441 444
E. ievren@stilo.com
www.stilo.com

Stephen Smith
itpr
Tel. +44 (0)1932 57 88 00
E. stephens@itpr.co.uk
www.itpr.co.uk