Consolidated and automated processes across sales, operations, and HR save time and increase efficiency at Naim Holdings Berhad

Located in Kuching, East Malaysia, Naim Holdings Berhad is an investment holding company with two main subsidiaries, Naim Land Sdn. Bhd. (NLSB) and Naim Engineering Sdn. Bhd. (NESB). The group operates as a fully-integrated property and construction enterprise, focusing on:

• integrated property developments combining residential, commercial, and industrial properties with infrastructure and public amenities
• construction, civil engineering, oil, gas, and infrastructure projects
• oil and gas services through investment in Dayang Enterprise Holdings Bhd.

Naim Holding's flagship property developments are Bandar Baru Permyjaya in Miri, Desa Ilmu in Kota Samarahan, and the up-market Riveria satellite township in Kuching southern corridor. These developments are reinforced by a number of smaller residential and commercial developments in Sarawak's major population centers. Together, these developments provide more than 25,000 homes and commercial buildings with a combined population of over 110,000. Including implementation of NLSBs own development projects, it has carried out more than RM5.8 billion worth of construction works and has an order book worth over RM2.8 billion. The company focuses on excellent quality and timely delivery, a philosophy that has earned Naim Holdings a host of industry awards.

The challenge: Spreadsheet-based budgeting and planning is too complex

Naim Holdings has been using spreadsheets to input, store, and consolidate company data. When the company grew, the increasing number of spreadsheets that came with it made comparing figures and producing reports tedious. As such, they started searching for a tool that can effectively provide professional budgeting and planning. The company identified and compared three possible tools from the market: Board, Clarity Systems, and Hyperion. Board stood out as the best choice for several reasons:

• Users from other departments who are not well-versed in IT can easily navigate and work on the system
• Board's flexibility and scope enable customization of profound management reports
• Comparable cost-effectiveness for setting up and maintaining the software
• Board's programming-free toolkit allows for Naim Holdings IT Department to easily perform software development on their end at their own time and pace.
   

The solution: Board provides a user-friendly, standardized approach 

Due to Board's user-friendliness and power-packed training sessions, the IT Team at Naim Holdings successfully implemented the following modules in their Board application:

• Manpower Planning
• Operational Costs
• Profit and COS Recognition for the trading business sector
• Property Sales and Cost Budgeting Reporting
• Cash Flow
• Comprehensive Income
• Revenue & COS
• No. of Units Sold
• Sales Value

For them, Board has become the central budgeting and planning tool providing readily retrievable information and strong daily administrative support. After the initial stage involving the transfer of information and processes from the various departments and subsidiaries to Board application, users promptly filled in whatever missing information was required and the system was promptly kept up-to-date. Depending on the user type, they are empowered to create new projects or statements which are yet to be included in the source system. With this feature, managers can introduce new real-time measures whenever higher management makes changes to existing policies. The versatility of Board enables a string of different reports to be produced with the same type of data. This data, once input into the application, is extremely secure and at no risk of data loss.

The benefit: Significant time savings and real-time data

In a fast expanding property and construction company like Naim Holdings, using the Board application is significantly more efficient and time-saving than Excel spreadsheets. The multi-user interface of Board also allows different users to work and update information at the same time. This results in increased productivity across company employees.

Due to its automation and customization processes, Board has fewer consolidation and calculation processes which are also less complicated. The resulting ease of computation not only minimizes human errors and mistakes arising from linking two or more modules but also enables the speedier regeneration of reports for business plans that have changed.

The IT Team continues to make changes to their Board application in response to future needs and for greater value added to the company. The company is now looking to make a list of developments, including:

• Introduction of Property Investment Business Planning module
• Admin Expenses Budget
• Capital Expenditure
• Introduction of HR module
• Headcount data inputs
• Staff Cost data input.

Based on the comments gathered from users, plans are in place to introduce the above alongside the existing modules.