Five companies, one system of record
Conditioned Environment Mechanical Services (CEMS) is a London based specialist in mechanical building services, covering air conditioning, ventilation, plumbing and heating for design and build projects across the commercial, residential, healthcare, retail and education sectors. When CEMS came to Archdesk, the business was spread over five companies, each with its own tools and accounts. Today all five run on one connected platform, with projects, budgets, forecasts and invoicing managed in the same place.
The problem CEMS brought to us
Growth had turned the group's software into a bottleneck. The old system could not support the way the business was expanding, and working across five companies meant juggling a login and a data set for each one. In practice that looked like:
- Outdated software that could no longer support the company's growth
- A separate tool and account for every company in the group
- Project management and budget control the old system could not do properly
- No access management to control who was admitted to what
- A rigid product, and vendor support to match, holding the company back
What a replacement had to do
- Run every company in the group from one piece of software
- Flex with the business: tailored at the start, adjustable as needs change
- Deliver high quality project management and budget control
- Restrict access by criteria CEMS defines
- Work with the group's accounting software
Building it together
Getting a five-company group onto one system takes a plan, and the plan came out of cooperation. Together with CEMS we walked through the processes every department uses to deliver its projects, requirement by requirement. CEMS put forward an experienced, engaged champion who pressure-tested each proposal against how the business really works, and that involvement shaped the result as much as anything we configured. The build centered on three pieces:
- Five accounts, one per company, intertwined so the whole group is managed from one central system
- A forecasting element connected to project management, generating projections from the documents teams upload
- Invoicing tailored to how CEMS bills, integrated with the group's accounting software
Before go-live, every department in every company was trained on the parts of the system it would own, so the switch happened with each team already fluent in its own workflows.
What CEMS runs on Archdesk today
The whole group in one place
Group administrators work across all five companies from a single screen, while each company keeps its own account and its own teams. Nobody reconciles five sources of truth anymore, because there is only one.
Budgets and forecasts on live data
Budget control sits on top of the project data as it is entered, and the forecasting element turns uploaded documents into projections. Planning, spend and reporting are read straight from dashboards rather than assembled by hand.
Procurement to invoice on one trail
Quotations, procurement, valuations and invoices live on the project record with their documents, and access is granted by responsibility within the company. The trail from first quote to final invoice never leaves the system.
The outcome
- A well structured system that fits the company: tailored, flexible and able to grow with it
- One central place of operations for all five connected companies
Learn more about the company at conditioned-environment.co.uk.
