TWR - Racing ahead with Synon

From the modest foundation of a small garage racing team in the late 1960s to the high-speed, hi-tech world of motorsport, automotive and industrial engineering in just over two decades. This is the path which has led founder and chairman of TWR Group, Tom Walkinshaw, to a position today of heading an empire of over 30 companies worldwide. Recognizing the importance of a coordinated IT strategy, TWR established a central IT team to manage the group's IT requirements. In addition to the need for sales order processing and manufacturing systems, the complex and dynamic nature of TWR Group called for a flexible and robust financial package. Ross Kirkham, Group IT Manager and Wayne Humphries, Financial Controller, talk about the issues involved.

"When I joined TWR in 1990, it was a green-field opportunity," said Ross Kirkham. "We needed to build a complete set of systems to cope with all aspects of TWR's business, from car and engine manufacturing to group finance and garage dealerships. The only system in place was the dealership package, everything else was up to us to set up."

Kirkham had decided upon the IBM AS/400 as the platform of choice for TWR. With flexibility as a key requirement, Kirkham examined the CASE option: "As the leading application development tool for the AS/400, the Synon CASE environment was an extremely attractive route but we realized that TWR did not have the manpower to build its own systems entirely. "Our financial management requirements were sophisticated. We needed a package that could cope with the multi-company structure of TWR and easily accommodate the numerous changes to this fast-moving business. When Synon told us about Synon/Financials, we readily agreed to take a closer look," said Kirkham.

In fact, TWR became one of the first UK beta sites for Synon/Financials in early 1991. "We were impressed with what we saw. As a Synon-built application, the design of the package was superb and extremely flexible. Moreover, the code was of exceptional quality, requiring little ironing out during our beta test period," said Kirkham.

The principle benefit delivered by Synon/Financials is the ability to consolidate group finances into a corporate overview and present a common chart of accounts. "This ensures that any manager within TWR, with appropriate authority, may access the general ledger at the group level," said Mark Causebrook, IT Support Consultant.

"The ability to have multiple purchase and sales ledgers with Synon/Financials greatly facilitates inter-company accounting. With separate ledgers for internal and external accounts, much time is saved by eliminating the need to amend default settings, such as no VAT on internal accounts," said Wayne Humphries, Financial Controller.

"I would estimate that the productivity of my staff has increased by some 25-30 percent. In addition to the time-saving features already mentioned, the open item feature has been pivotal in drastically reducing the number of errors on the ledgers," said Humphries.

The integrity of Synon/Financials is a key benefit to TWR: "The ledgers balanced from day one and have continued to maintain superb integrity. One of my prime concerns is ensuring that our ledgers are correct and up to date," said Humphries. "We have successfully completed two full audits using Synon/Financials, taking advantage of on-screen searching and access to older entries. The design of the package also allows us to be flexible in how we report our accounts."

"In short, Synon/Financials is an extremely flexible package that has delivered significant business benefits to TWR. It copes with all our diverse needs and will continue to address those requirements in the foreseeable future," said Humphries.

"We took the product at the beta-test stage and have now implemented it across 16 of our UK companies. It is functionally rich, highly flexible and superbly designed and we would not manage without it," said Kirkham.