Ferguson Group (Now OEG)

OEG use C-SAM to manage their container rental business

Background

Ferguson Group, now owned by OEG was established in 1976 to service the accommodation and container needs of the North Sea oil and gas industry. The company operates from purpose-built manufacturing premises in Inverurie, near Aberdeen, where everything from initial design work to producing the finished product is carried out in-house. They supply high quality offshore containers to the oil & gas industry and have more than 8,000 containers available for hire from locations worldwide including Aberdeen, Norway, Denmark, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Malta, Trinidad and U.A.E.

The Challenge

Like similar sized companies, OEG tracked their worldwide assets using a mix of spreadsheets, Word templates and legacy systems, which had evolved as the business expanded. The system was inefficient, time consuming, and data input was often duplicated. Ferguson wanted a fit-for-purpose asset management system which was easy to use and capable of adapting as the company enjoyed further expansion. The initial brief was to provide an asset tracking system for Ferguson’s modular hire business in Inverurie.

C-SAM presented a case to the Ferguson management team that the system should also include the container business Ferguson Seacabs and in addition to asset tracking should incorporate other business management tools. Site visits to two C-SAM clients followed and Ferguson management were able to see first-hand how the system operated. Following competitive tender against four competitors, C-SAM was awarded a contract to devise a system for the company’s container and modular businesses located in Inverurie, Aberdeen and Norway.

The Solution

C-SAM offers niche solutions which work on a standard framework with modules which can then be individually tailored. This hybrid approach provides a compelling competitive advantage, allowing C-SAM to drastically cut the time required to develop a prototype system.

On this occasion, C-SAM were tasked with designing a system which could be used by two different types of business (modular and container) and which could be used by any Ferguson Group employee at any of their international locations. The solution supplied was able to cater for both arms of the business and operated seamlessly between them. The solution provided was composed of modules including:

Asset Management
Rental Operations
Certification Management
Invoicing
Maintenance Management

The system has the capability of integrating with other corporate functions including Personnel Management, Customer Relationship Management and Capacity Planning. Additionally, the system offered multi-lingual support, which greatly assisted integration within the company’s Norwegian division. Nearing the end of the assignment Ferguson Group opened a facility in Perth, Western Australia, and requested the new base was included in the project. The versatility of the system came in to its own and through a mix of online and remote desktop training, the Australian operation was quickly integrated with a minimum of disruption to the completion schedule.

Benefits

The system drastically cuts out duplication and channels information in to one central hub which can be extracted by management at the touch of a button. Operating in real time, instant projections of sales/cash flow/available rental units in stock and other critical data can be produced quickly and efficiently. Consolidating complex reports prior to management meetings is no longer necessary as information is readily available through a management console which can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

In-built automated tasks save time and money and each department benefits from the improved visibility and accuracy of information held in the system. The inclusion of multi-lingual and multi-currency features aids integration in other geographic locations as and when OEG expand.