Alistar Demonstrates Its Expertise in ERP, BI, and Workflows at Galère

Galère was founded in 1949 and has been an undisputed leader in a wide range of construction and engineering projects for 60 years. The company has revenue of more than 230 million euros and employs nearly 1,000 people. Galère is part of the international BAM Group. The company has more than 100 construction sites active simultaneously, some of which (such as the new NATO headquarters) are on a national or international scale.

Galère also processes more than 250 quotes annually, with calculations that are often highly complex; for this reason, the company’s philosophy has always been to strive for maximum efficiency in all of its operational activities.

Today, there is only one truth left within the company: there is no longer any discrepancy between the reality on the ground and the numbers.

Bernard Breeur, Director of ICT & BPM 

The need for accurate data and real-time access to information

Galère's two divisions—construction and engineering—comprise four categories of operational activities: preparing bids, procurement, construction site management, and financial management.

In the past, each department used its own software. Bernard Breeur, Director of ICT & BPM at Galère: “Despite the ‘gateways’ that were set up between the various applications, people still had to enter certain data multiple times. It became increasingly difficult to guarantee data accuracy—not to mention managing the thousands of purchase invoices, price quotes, and all documents related to construction sites in the execution phase.”

At the time, Galère used the Gebat program to prepare price quotes for buildings. For quotes related to civil engineering projects, Galère used an application that had been custom-developed for the company. As soon as the construction phase of a project began, the items from the quote were exported to Microsoft Excel so that the project manager could keep track of the project’s progress in real time. Finally, during the invoicing phase, the information was forwarded to a financial application running on AS/400, which generated progress reports and invoices.

A project that goes beyond ERP

Bernard Breeur, who has gained a wealth of experience in process analysis and IT audits over the course of his career, worked with Galère’s management to define a strategy for investing in an integrated solution—a project that, however, quickly went beyond the scope of ERP …

It was absolutely essential that the future solution also provide real-time access to management information—in the area of Business Intelligence—to enable better management of the company. The new platform also had to provide the opportunity to optimize collaboration among employees, particularly the validation, approval, and archiving of no fewer than 50,000 purchase invoices per year.

After a careful analysis of several solutions, we chose Microsoft Dynamics NAV (now Dynamics 365 Business Central). Bernard Breeur: “Microsoft Dynamics was an ERP solution that suited the size of our company, but it was GMI Group (now part of Alistar) that really convinced us: after all, their construction solution, Gbuild, featured a module specifically developed for construction companies and fully integrated into Dynamics.”

Microsoft’s strength as a global platform was also a decisive factor. “With Dynamics, the integrated SharePoint portal, and the SQL Server database, Microsoft offered the best solution for realizing our global vision—far beyond ERP,” explains Bernard Breeur.

From Quote to Invoicing

Given the complexity and the number of users involved—150 concurrent users today—Galère and Alistar have opted to implement the solution in several phases. The ‘Quotes’ department, which has 25 employees, was the first to migrate.

Today, every price quote is generated directly in Gbuild, a construction solution based on Microsoft technology. There is no longer any need for duplicate data entry: each quote, which was originally entered into the system, serves as the basis for tracking production on-site, all the way through to invoicing the customer.

With an average of more than 100 construction projects underway—most of which last more than a year—the challenge lies in billing regularly and accurately, based on correct progress reports. After all, that’s what determines our cash flow. 

Since every construction site has an ADSL connection, the on-site team has access to the Dynamics back-end solution to keep the project status up to date. For example, as soon as materials are delivered to the site, the site manager immediately records this in the system. This information is then automatically cross-checked against the supplier’s invoice, enabling the project progress report to be updated.

In addition, staff arrival and departure times at the construction site are entered into the Gbuild solution with just a few mouse clicks, taking into account more than 50 different options: technical layoffs due to bad weather, hazardous work, etc.

Process for validating 50,000 purchase invoices, integrated into a single ERP solution

Every year, more than 50,000 purchase invoices circulate within the company. This is a substantial volume, which poses a real challenge in terms of archiving and validation. Purchase invoices related to general expenses are sent to the managers of the relevant cost centers; every invoice related to a construction project must first be assigned to the project in question before it can be approved by the manager. The paper-based approval cycles did not always provide sufficient control over the approval workflows.

Shortly after the initial implementation phase of Dynamics, Alistar introduced a document flow solution for the approval of digital invoices, which addressed the problem. According to Bernard Breeur, most ‘document and workflow management’ solutions on the market operate independently of ERP: the invoice is scanned, then validated, and finally entered into an ERP solution.

With the help of the GMI Group, Galère was able to implement a different approach to ‘document and workflow management.’.

The invoice is first scanned and immediately recorded in the ERP system. The validation cycle begins only after this phase. The advantage? Any change in the invoice’s approval status is immediately visible to the user in Dynamics.

From ‘cost control’ to an integrated dashboard

Business Intelligence plays a key role in Galère’s operational and financial management. Thanks to two additional tools based on Dynamics—Jet Budgets (now Jet Analytics) for creating cubes and Targit as a reporting solution—every project manager now has access to an essential report: the ‘cost control’ report.

This report provides a comprehensive overview—both a summary and detailed information—of each project: the progress status by item, the products that have been invoiced and those to be invoiced, general expenses, the preliminary results of the project, etc. It is automatically sent in PDF format to each project manager, who adds their comments before it is sent to billing.

Thanks to the introduction of Dynamics, we can invoice our projects regularly and accurately, with a minimum of administrative work. What used to take us 2 to 3 business days now takes just a few hours.

In addition to the ‘cost control’ report, there are several other reports that are necessary for managing the company: tracking accounts receivable, personnel costs, revenue, etc.

Finally, Alistar has also developed a dashboard for Galère that is continuously updated with six key performance indicators (KPIs), such as CO2 consumption, telecommunications costs, accident rates, etc.