MRI Software Qube Project Rescue

The client

The Dulwich Estate owns and manages over 5,000 residential properties, as well as allotments, playing fields and premises for 79 local businesses, spread across 1,500 acres. A registered charity first established in 1619, the Estate uses this income to offer educational opportunities to young people, provide homes for the elderly and look after public spaces for the community in this unique corner of South East London.

The Dulwich Estate had been using MRI Software Qube for the past two decades, though always with significant restrictions. A lack of knowledge and training meant that the organisation was not using the software to its full potential, relying on paper-based workarounds instead.

The challenge

When the decision was made to upgrade their software to the latest version, The Dulwich Estate initially turned to the developer, MRI Software. However, the project was thrown into doubt when MRI confirmed that proceeding with the implementation as The Estate had planned would mean losing all but the current year’s records.

That’s when the Estate turned to TopUp. Our task was to validate all existing data in preparation for the switch, then achieve a smooth transition. Recognising the opportunity to upgrade their own processes at the same time, The Dulwich Estate also asked us to provide training and bespoke procedure manuals that staff could follow. This would allow them to finally start getting the best out of their investment in MRI Qube.

The process

The project began with a full system analysis, reporting back to The Dulwich Estate with the actions required and our recommendations on how to proceed. This revealed major inconsistencies, ranging from data recorded incorrectly to significant errors in the General Ledger. None of this was The Dulwich Estate’s fault, but rather a natural consequence of incomplete system configuration.

TopUp immediately recommended a rethink of the original plan, suggesting instead a two-stage project. First, the current instance of Qube would be upgraded to the latest possible version, allowing us to then tackle the issues discovered during the review and establish new processes and workflows. Only then would we proceed with the full upgrade to the cloud-based SQL system.

Working closely with The Dulwich Estate, we developed a bespoke implementation of Qube v11.5. To speed up progress, we set up a joint project team with the authority to green-light changes rather than having to wait for approval from individual, widely distributed stakeholders. This was crucial to make up for the time already lost.

Another key step was to deliver training as if every user was coming to Qube for the first time. Given the varying levels of knowledge and confidence among staff, this was the best way to ensure effective training and organisation-wide acceptance of the new procedures.

The result

The operational gains reported by The Dulwich Estate since the upgrade are extremely impressive. Workload has been reduced in some areas by as much as 50% and time taken to accomplish routine tasks like logging invoices has been cut by up to 75%.

Maria Psaras, Change Consultant at The Dulwich Estate, commented:

“We had a strategy to streamline our processes and TopUp have been instrumental in delivering the system changes, workflows and training to achieve that transformation. Crucially, they also stepped in to help us find solutions to issues we encountered along the way.”

“We’re extremely happy! This is one of those rare occasions when a consultant fully understands our needs and is able to pre-empt and offer suggestions to future-proof the way we work.”

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