Basing their ERP implementation on COINS Firstbase gives Barwood Homes a fast track to recognising business benefits

Northampton based house builder Barwood Homes have commenced the implementation of COINS. By using COINS Firstbase as the foundation, they hope to be up and running early in the New Year, approximately one month after starting.

Barwood Homes are a new company, formed in 2010 as a Midlands based homebuilder specialising in well designed, high specification developments. They are driven to create unique homes of superior quality, in desirable locations that sit perfectly within their natural surroundings.

Barwood Homes are part of the Barwood Group, a highly successful group of associated companies generating development and trading profit in the property and land sector. The Group featured in the 2009 Sunday Times Profit Track Top 100 growth companies.

Barwood Group currently use Exchequer for their Finance system across the companies and were initially only looking at Commercial systems for the Barwood Homes business when they first engaged with COINS 3 months ago. However, having reviewed COINS, the Barwood team were convinced that one single integrated system provided a better business solution to their needs in Barwood Homes.

The Barwood Homes business is currently in growth mode and there are plans in place to develop up to 100 homes in the next financial year. The initial order is for a 4 user COINS system covering Land Appraisal, Procurement, Valuations and Financials. The key for Barwood is that COINS solutions are already successfully working for a number of major and regional house builders. They see the implementation being very much driven by COINS, and by using COINS Firstbase as the foundation they hope to be up and running early in the New Year.

Group Finance Director, Joanna Greenslade states: "The concept of COINS Firstbase was perfect for us. The fact we are still small means we don't have the time and resource to dedicate to a lengthy implementation of systems. COINS have a proven track record of implementing solutions within our sector and have developed Firstbase as a consequence of their significant industry expertise. COINS Firstbase, which is an 'out of the box' solution, will enable us to rapidly have the system up and running and start to realise the business benefits a lot earlier. The plan is to go-live in January 2012, one month after we started!"

Barwood Homes have also chosen for COINS to host the system for them. Joanna adds, "Again, this makes sense for us in that we don't have the day to day overhead of managing and maintaining the system and upgrades are applied for us as part of the COINS service."