Auto Time: Exclusive interview, part 2

In part one of our exclusive interview with Auto Time – a leader in providing and developing advanced workforce management solutions to the construction industry – the Company’s Operations Director, Christian Berenger, discussed Vanquish and its impact on the industry. 

The second and final part sees Christian talk at length about the benefits of Vanquish and how it can shape the construction industry in the future.  

Is this the type of thing Vanquish does that other solutions in the marketplace perhaps cannot do?

It is a single solution. There are applications out there that do elements of what Vanquish does but you will probably need three or four different applications to provide the full data analysis that Vanquish provides.

The deployment of one application is very cost effective compared to four, when you take into account licensing and training. It is far more cost effective for any organisation.

Simplicity and transparency are the key things people want and it’s the whole premise of what we try to do. We have made Vanquish user friendly, taking the lead of the major software houses of the world in terms of the aesthetics of our product.

We could create a complex product but that’s not what people want; they want easy icons, app-type functionality in the product. So aesthetically, that’s the way we are developing it. You can very easily get to the data you want with very little training because it’s clear.

Vanquish is intuitive, easy to use and understand. One of the greatest bits of feedback we get is that it’s understandable. It’s easy to present to a client.

How do you see Vanquish shaping the industry further in the future?

It’s a difficult question to answer because of the constantly evolving challenges in business and legislation. Legislative changes do impact us as a business and solution.

Where I do see the major changes is by involving the actual contractors/employees in the process more. So rather than this being driven by the contractor, site managers, health and safety reps etc, we actually push this down to the lower levels so we get a self-service interactive element to the control and running of the software.

We’re finding across all sectors of business all organisations want more interaction with employees and feedback into the system, updating on the task at hand and what’s been completed, getting feedback from people on the shop floor.

That’s where we’re pushing the software in terms of getting the end user to engage with it. This isn’t a control tool just being deployed by the contractor. It’s actually a tool that can be utilised by the individual to provide data back-up in regards to tasks or elements outstanding, or complete. The schedule can be updated.

So that engagement of all people in the system is our next step as a business.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

The biggest feedback we get is that when we engage with an organisation, we want to understand them, and we do an analysis of their business, providing a report based on what our software can do in its standard form and based on what they’ve told us, what it can do with development.

We have an in-house development team and when there’s a bespoke requirement, it is developed in-house and we work collaboratively with the organisation going forward to deliver a solution that ticks their box. We are a true solution provider.

We don’t just sell a product and hope it fits or mould it to fit. If it doesn’t fit, we build it.

The customer gets what they want, not what we want to sell. I think that’s one of the biggest unique selling points of Vanquish – we are a software house as well as a full provider of a solution.

The product itself allows any organisation that centralisation which every organisation wants.

The other point to get across is what we call ‘Vanquish Anywhere’. With construction sites, we don’t always have the luxury of having an IT infrastructure in place so one of the areas we’ve concentrated on is the ability to capture data remotely and get it back to any device via the cloud without the need for a network infrastructure.

On large construction sites, infrastructure in terms of power and networking is generally there, but on smaller sites with a shorter duration or where the contract value isn’t high, all site services might not be in place.

Utilising 3G technology, we can deploy our devices and they collate data and transmit it to the cloud which is presented in our Vanquish Anywhere solution. This is a true hosted solution that allows the application to be accessed from any internet-enabled device so contractors can manage their workforce anytime, anywhere. It doesn’t need to be a PC in an office somewhere.

This means we don’t need an expensive infrastructure in place to deploy the system.

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