Fieldside
Fieldside standardized its administrative processes with custom-built internal applications developed by Contribute.
- Company
Fieldside - Challenge
To enhance the efficiency of the Fieldside cluster, there was a need to standardize administrative processes. - Solution
Contribute has developed several custom applications using Oracle APEX, ensuring higher efficiency and security while keeping costs under control.
Contribute streamlines administrative processes with custom-built applications.
Fieldside is an ecosystem of various competence centers, each with its own identity, expertise, and workforce. To support these subsidiaries, Fieldside offers shared services such as administration, sales, HR, and marketing communication, allowing each company to focus more on its core business.
To enhance the overall efficiency of the cluster, all administrative processes were standardized using internal applications. Contribute, a subsidiary within the Fieldside group, deployed its APEX team to develop these custom-built solutions.
Streamlined invoicing
The first step was optimizing the sales and invoicing flow. Financial agreements and orders were previously communicated through various channels – email, verbal communication, printed documents, etc. This created confusion and made it difficult for the administrative team to maintain a clear overview.
To streamline this process, Contribute developed a back-office application. This tool allows account managers to add and, if necessary, adjust sales agreements and contracts. The admin team now has a comprehensive overview, enabling efficient tracking from signed quotes to final invoicing. This improvement has reduced workload, lowered errors, and enhanced communication between sales and admin.
Standardized CVs for consultants
Fieldside’s consultancy services required a more efficient way of managing consultant CVs. “In the past, CVs were stored in Word documents, each with a different format. It was hard to track whether they were up to date,” says Pascal Van Meerbergen, Managing Partner at Fieldside. “That’s why we looked for an application to centralize and standardize this process.”
In the CV tool, consultants can easily add the necessary information, after which the CV is generated in the layout of the appropriate subsidiary. This eliminates manual work and optimizes the quality of CVs, enhancing professionalism toward clients.
Because it is a custom-built application, additional functionalities could easily be added.
“For certain large clients, we need to provide CVs in a fixed format or follow a specific style,” Pascal Van Meerbergen continues. “With the CV tool, we can create custom templates to ensure we always meet the client’s requirements. Additionally, we added advanced search functionalities. For example, if a client requests profiles of consultants with specific skills, we can quickly retrieve all CVs of consultants with more than five years of experience in Oracle SQL. This allows us to efficiently send the right CVs to the client.”
GDPR-compliant with cost management application
Finally, Contribute developed a small tool to support the sales team in presenting consultants and projects. When presenting consultants to a client, they also need to be able to provide the cost price of that employee.
“Since not everyone should have access to these calculations, the cost management application handles this for them,” explains Pascal Van Meerbergen. “This prevents anyone from accidentally gaining unauthorized insight into personal data of other employees and ensures we remain compliant with all privacy regulations.”
The flexibility of custom solutions
“For each of these applications, we first explored whether an existing alternative was available,” explains Pascal Van Meerbergen. “However, our objectives were so specific in some areas that we truly needed custom-built applications.” At the end of the day, we are an IT company, so if we don’t find a ready-made solution, we build it ourselves! For this, we turned to Contribute’s APEX team. Thanks to the low-code framework, we were able to develop applications quickly while ensuring a polished look and feel. Additionally, we decided to centralize everything on the Oracle OCI Cloud. This not only brings practical advantages but also allows us to better address GDPR requirements. We can enforce encryption on all data to ensure secure storage.”
“Thanks to the streamlined processes, we not only relieve the companies within our cluster, but they also support our ISO 9001 certification for quality management and ISO 27001 certification for information security,” concludes Pascal Van Meerbergen. “This demonstrates that we manage our processes with high quality, while also mapping out and digitizing these processes and risks to ensure continuous improvement.”
Contribute not only built the applications but also handles their maintenance. “Each subsidiary has its own specific needs for the tools. These are collected and passed on to our APEX team,” says Filip Huysmans, Managing Partner at Contribute. “We then make the necessary adjustments to ensure the tools continuously align with the evolving needs and requirements of our cluster.”
The flexibility of custom solutions
Because the applications are fully tailored to the Fieldside cluster, they offer the added advantage of being highly flexible, allowing processes across the subsidiaries to be 100% aligned.
“The applications are used by all nine subsidiaries within our cluster,” continues Filip Huysmans. “Thanks to these tools, we ensure greater efficiency through centralized reporting and consolidation. Everyone works in the same way, making it easier to step in when someone is unexpectedly unavailable or to respond quickly when issues or questions arise. Fieldside can now also operate much more cost-effectively. Security and efficiency have improved, while costs have decreased—both in terms of hosting and the work hours required for certain processes.”
Due to the success of the custom applications, a new tool is already in the pipeline. This time, it’s an HR application designed to support the entire HR process, including onboarding, offboarding, evaluations, and training.
Additionally, the APEX team is actively working on a GDPR application that will be used not only internally but also for clients.
With the applications, we can significantly increase the efficiency of our administrative processes. Moreover, thanks to the low-code framework, Contribute can quickly build applications that also have a great look & feel. We already have a few other tools in the pipeline.
Pascal Van Meerbergen, Managing partner at Fieldside
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