FINANCE

From rock music
@I_am_wordstruck
Michelle Nicol, Freelance Writer,
Wordstruck Writing and Training
Michelle is a freelance writer, trainer
and tone of voice consultant who
helps businesses tell their story
using words that connect with their
customers. A former BBC journalist,
she also provides business and
creative writing workshops.
be doing because they won’t make
money.”
Working in the cloud
Because David’s consultancy takes
him to customer sites all over the
UK, he understands the flexible
advantage that cloud-based
working offers to businesses,
including his own.
photographer to helping
businesses develop
Life on the road with David Lloyd
Williams of Principality Consulting...
“
Years ago, when I was an
apprentice, I used to take
my camera and take photographs
of the big bands that came to the
North Wales theatres. It was all
in black and white and I used to
develop it myself and send the
bands some pictures. Eventually I
took a photograph of Queen, sent it
to Brian May and he stuck it on his
website. I was pretty pleased with
that.”
These days, David Lloyd Williams
has turned the keen eye that
once photographed travelling
rock guitarists towards helping
businesses run more efficiently. As
Managing Director of Principality
Consulting, he helps companies
find IT solutions that will improve
their businesses.
Finding efficiencies to support
business success
“I enjoy finding a business, applying
some lean principles… improving
the way that business works, and
locking in the improvements we find
with some software which can make
sure that the gains we find can be
sustained throughout the life of the
business,” David explains.
His consultancy services cover
everything from accounting
and financial systems, to fully
integrated ERP systems for larger
companies.
The lean principles that David
talks about apply to a method of
business improvement originally
invented by Toyota in Japan. The
method has spread from the
automotive to the manufacturing
industry and is now used by many
kinds of business to drive efficiency.
company in Holyhead, North Wales.
The company was set up following
redundancies at the aluminium
smelter in the town, where David
himself used to work.
“I went off and started my
own business, and one of my
colleagues, Martin Davies,
started his own business, in metal
fabrication. We came together again
at a meeting, and it seemed I could
help him improve his systems. I
mapped his work process, looked
at what he did, what he needed
and then came up with a number of
recommendations.”
With help from former owners of
Rio Tinto, three former employees
of the smelting plant, including
Martin Davies, set up metal
fabrication company PFS Ltd. They
now work out of the old engineering
workshop that used to serve the
plant and employ 16 people.
Recommended software
After looking at all the different
processes within the business and
assessing its needs,
David recommended that PFS
Ltd use cloud-based project
management software TidyWork.
This solution gives the company
greater visibility of the profitability
of their different projects and
integrates with Xero to provide the
lowdown on their financial figures.
Although still in the early days of
implementation, the software is
already having a positive impact,
as David explains: “They’re already
seeing a number of improvements.
Martin can see now what projects
are making a profit, what projects
are not making a profit. Previously
although he had a gut feel, he
couldn’t put a figure to it.”
“All the time expended on any
project, all the materials being
expended on a project, everything
goes into the project on TidyWork,
so there’s a figure for everything,”
he continues. “He’s now starting to
make business decisions on some
projects, that maybe they shouldn’t
“Cloud has changed everything,”
he says. “Principality don’t have
an office anymore. We just have
cloud-based systems. We share
information using the cloud. It’s
meant that we’ve reduced our fixed
costs because we don’t have offices
and we’re able to get out a lot more
and meet more customers.”
Life on the road
Visiting customer sites and offering
advice and consultancy takes
David from Fort William in Scotland
to South Wales and many places
in between. As well as helping
businesses work more efficiently,
travelling by rail and road does
occasionally allow him to indulge
his love of photography: “As I’m
travelling, I might see a nice picture
and stop to take it. Phones these
days are fantastic. You have your
phone with you wherever you go
and they take fantastic pictures. So,
not so much band photography any
more, but I do still take pictures.”
In his role as a consultant, David
has found lean methodology very
effective: “We tend to find that for
every pound of consultancy that we
give a business, we can save them
£10 a year in efficiency savings.”
Bringing a redundant site back to
life
One of the companies that
David works with is Professional
Fabrication Services (PFS Ltd),
an engineering and fabrication
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