O’Donnell Design

5.2 Third Party Selection

One of the biggest challenges faced by O’Donnell was that of finding the right vendor to implement the solution. “We lost around 6-8 months just trying to find the right supplier”, commented O’Donnell.

Although there were many vendors in the market, many of them hadn’t implemented a system similar to the one O’Donnell was looking for. Although many vendors claimed they had the experience, when it came to the crunch, it became apparent that they didn’t.

Even once O’Donnell thought they had found the right vendor, trying to get time with them was impossible – this delayed the process considerably, turning what was a 12 month project into a 24 month project.

It wasn’t until half way through the project that O’Donnell came across Tobar, a Cork based software design house. It was Tobar that eventually took the bull by the horns and got to work on designing the shop floor control system. Initially, Tobar took the Job Specification Sheet (which by this point was in excel) and transferred it across to Sage. Trakker, Tobar’s shop floor data capture system was then built around that.

O’Donnell was also fortunate to have the advice of an external consultant. Like many SMEs, the advice of the consultant was invaluable in ensuring that O’Donnell got the best system for its investment. The advice received empowered O’Donnell and allowed them to meet with vendors with a greater level of knowledge (rather than arriving at meetings with no idea as to what could and couldn’t be done). “The use of an independent consultant was invaluable and probably saved us a fortune”, said O’Donnell.

5.3 The Project Team

5.3.1 Internal Team

The internal team consisted of a number of staff at O’Donnell Design:

• Aodh O’Donnell, Technical Director – Aodh was the overall project manager and had responsibility for ensuring the project stayed on track.
• Philip O’Sullivan, Production Manager – Philip’s main responsibility was for the shop floor control system on the factory floor.
• Andrew Byrnes, CAD Operator/IT Manager – Andrew was employed as a full time CAD operator and is now also tasked with the ongoing maintenance of the IT infrastructure.
• Jim O’Donnell, MD – Jim oversaw and had full control over the entire project.
• Peggy Collins, Accountant – Peggy had responsibility for identifying how each constituent part of the project affected the accounts side of the business.
• Delwyn Klevenow - Delwyn had responsibility for sales and marketing including relationship management with the web developers.

5.3.2 External Team

• Cormac McCarthy, Tobar Software – Cormac worked very closely with O’Donnell Design to implement Trakker and ensure it integrated with the JSS spreadsheet that was already in place.
• John Murphy, DDSI – John provided ongoing consultancy support and advice on what could and couldn’t be done from a technology perspective.
• CCAD – Used as a vendor for CAD software and also assisted in the installation of some of the network hardware.
• Deirdre Souchere, SDTI – Deirdre designed and built the O’Donnell Design website.

5.4 Setbacks and difficulties

The biggest issue faced by the team, as discussed earlier, was that of trying to find the correct software development partner. Once they found that partner, Tobar Software, much of the project fell into place.

5.5 Budget

O’Donnell heavily overspent on some parts of the project but broke-even or under spent on others. Overall, the project went over budget by around 50% (though more functionality than originally planned was added into the
specification).

One major issue that hadn’t been considered by Aodh O’Donnell was the time-pressure that the project would put him under. All in all, he had to invest around double the time he thought it would take to implement the system.