COINS is working in partnership with Lovell (a subsidiary of Morgan Sindall plc, operating in affordable housing) to address the common problem in the construction industry of getting proof of delivery from site, back to the office for invoice approval.

Lost or delayed delivery tickets and goods receipt notes result in countless invoice queries, and separate recording of goods receipts in site offices and accounts departments involves unnecessary duplication of effort. The whole process often delays processing of invoices which can be costly to the contractor and does little for supplier relationships.

The PDA solution being developed allows site staff to see expected deliveries and to input goods received information. Lovell’s site staff for example, will now be able to enquire on the status of all open orders for their site, rather than needing to telephone the buyers and suppliers for information. The PDA is on-line to the COINS system, delivering information immediately, via wireless networking or the mobile phone network (depending on the technology available on each site).

“The design of the COINS user interface on the PDA has been specifically tailored for the intended users and recognises their working environment. Working on a building site is very different from working in a clean office and the application has been designed to reflect this. The need to key in text or numbers has been minimised, most input is done through tick-boxes or selection of items from short lists.” explained Jim Etherton, Senior Product Manager, COINS.

Dave Brealey, Financial Controller at Lovell commented, "We are delighted to be working with COINS on this project and are confident that we will see a return on our investment. We look forward to realising the benefits as we roll out PDAs across the business."

This is one of the first of a new breed of COINS applications which takes advantage of the power of COINS Open Architecture to access COINS from devices other than a traditional PC. Other PDA applications will be available in the future, such as Timesheet Entry, Customer Care Snagging, FM job worksheet allocation & job status and Marketing. These applications will be either online to allow live data to be updated or offline, as appropriate.