Yiannis Pericleous — A. J. Pericleous

Role/s in the business

Yiannis is partner, and design manager, for A. J. Pericleous. A. J. Pericleous is a team of 16 — 14 engineers, one BIM technician and one accountant.

Industry-specific business and project management software

“The really great thing about Synergy is that it is developed by engineers and architects for engineers and architects.”

Ready to go

“There was very little I had to set up. Even the design templates were there. Okay, I had to adjust it to become more suitable for Cyprus standards and the design stages we have here, but the basis to work was there. Ready to go.”

Being cost cautious in wake of COVID-19

“Because we had this disruption in the projects that we had in the pipeline, we had to become extremely cost cautious.

“Things that, under normal conditions, may not have been billed to the client — things we wouldn’t usually charge the client for — we now have to account for. We have to charge for everything. Everyone does, at this point.

“And Synergy is something that is helping us with this.”

Accurate reporting to deal with disputes

“Because we have this very accurate record in Synergy, we are able to bill extra work at an hourly rate, so it is much more difficult for the client to dispute the hours that we have recorded in our system — and this happened twice this month!

“Customers asked for an analysis of the hourly rates that we billed — it was easy for me to send it. I just ran a report on that item.”

Why we need Synergy

“Our growth over the last five years since the 2013 financial crisis made it imperative to monitor costs and the profitability of each project.

“We used to use spreadsheets to complete timesheets, but eventually they were useless, except for paying people (checking hours). It was impossible, through spreadsheets, to check the profitability of the project or if there was any extra work that had to be billed.

“So, we started utilizing Synergy, on a test basis, during December 2019. We officially implemented Synergy in our daily operations in January 2020.

“If we were still using spreadsheets we would have lost money.”

Book a free online demo of Synergy

Visit A. J. Pericleous