Moody International - Evolution

Moody International is a technical services company, formed in 1911, with offices in over 60 countries. The technical services supplied include supplier inspection, expediting and auditing.

In 2005 Moody International identified a requirement for a group wide, end-to-end system to meet their entire business needs. They undertook a study into various off-the-shelf packages and quickly came to the conclusion that as their business is so diverse it would be impossible to get one product that would suit the whole company.

Moody International then decided to split their requirements and look for two systems; one for Management System Certification and one for Technical Inspection Services. For Technical Inspection they looked into off-the-shelf systems and managed to find three that partially met their requirements. After undertaking feasibility studies they again came to a similar conclusion. Due to the diversity of their requirements it was cheaper to start from scratch and build their own system rather than to customise an off-the-shelf package.

Codify created a bespoke solution for Moody International called Evolution which is now used by over 650 people in over 40 countries. Evolution manages all elements of Moody's Technical Inspection and Technical Staffing process including contracts, personnel, purchase orders, invoices, assignments and visits.

Evolution supports Moody International's full operational process from the initial contract through to invoicing. As Evolution is used worldwide as soon as information is added in one country, relevant users in other countries can pick up that information to progress with the work as soon as possible, an advantage over previous systems.

Throughout the project Codify drew on their experience in the energy industry to make suggestions and recommendations for the system. Mark Peacock, Group CIO explains, "In the initial stages of the project we worked closely with Codify to generate a vision and ideas

for Evolution. We would make suggestions and Codify would take them on board whilst also drawing on their past experiences to help us specify exactly what we were looking for. This carried on throughout the development of the software. Codify were very proactive and if they disagreed with the approach to any changes we required they would challenge them, suggest a better solution and justify their reasons, ultimately saving us time and money."

Evolution has brought three key benefits to Moody International as Mark Peacock explains, "The greatest benefit Evolution has brought us is the visibility of our data. Before we only had spreadsheets and paper trails with no real ability to get an overall picture of what was happening. The reports in Evolution allow us to get the information we need when required and gives us the ability to quantify the information in the system.

One central system used throughout all divisions worldwide forced us to take a good look at our processes and to work out exactly what we wanted to do and why. This has allowed us to standardise our processes throughout the organisation and remove existing problems. For example, before Evolution, different countries would use different numbering sequences and so it would be hard to track a project from start to finish as it was passed between offices and departments.

The final benefit is as we own the intellectual property of Evolution we can roll the software out to as many users as we want with no additional licence costs. With over 650 users, this has saved us time and money over any of the potential off-the-shelf systems we reviewed."