How TimeXtender revolutionised business operations across the Touchstone Group

How Touchstone was able to seamlessly unify data from disparate sources, ensuring a more holistic and cohesive view of business operations.

Incorporated in 1982, Touchstone Group (Touchstone) is one of the UK’s leading IT Services Groups, providing a broad range of business software applications and services for its clients. Group operations are organised into a number of specialist business units that focus on meeting their client’s specific business requirements. With the Group organised into several business units and transaction volumes growing, Touchstone needed a tool that could combine data from numerous finance and other operational systems into a manageable environment from which they could report by individual units as well as the Group as a whole. Recognising its robust capabilities as a data integration tool, Touchstone decided to implement TimeXtender.

 The Challenge

Touchstone operates within a broad ecosystem where data is dispersed across a number of business units and
applications, including Infor SunSystems for finance, Time@Work for project management, Dynamics 365 for
CRM, Freshdesk for support and Flowcentric for order processing.  Managing these disparate data sources, both on-premise and in the cloud, posed significant challenges and made it difficult to gain a comprehensive view of client interactions and overall operations. Additionally, ensuring robust security measures and access control across multiple systems was complex and demanding. The requirement to have access to over a decade’s worth of valuable legacy data for comparative reporting coupled with inefficient reporting processes - involving manual data aggregation and many Excel spreadsheets - consumed valuable time, caused delays, and hampered timely decision-making.

The Solution

Recognising the need for a robust, powerful data management solution to centralise and integrate the
Group’s data effectively, Touchstone implemented TimeXtender. By leveraging the comprehensive capabilities of TimeXtender, Touchstone embarked on a digital transformation journey to streamline data integration processes, automate reporting procedures, and enhance data security measures across the Group. TimeXtender enables Touchstone to seamlessly unify data from various disparate sources, ensuring a more holistic and cohesive view of business operations.
The data integration tool automates reporting processes, saving valuable time and resources whilst providing real-time insights and enabling more informed decision-making. Additionally, TimeXtender’s robust access control safeguards Touchstone’s sensitive information across all systems, fortifying the Group’s data.

The Benefits

TimeXtender has consolidated Touchstone’s data landscape and provided the Group with a comprehensive 360-degree view of its businesses, support services, and clients. Using unique identifiers for each business unit across all systems, Touchstone now has detailed insights into the performance of each business including its client behaviours, preferences, and needs. This enables each business unit to deliver a personalised service to each of its
clients, enhancing client satisfaction. The data integration tool enables each business unit to pivot on any
dimension and create personalised dashboards for management, account managers, and service teams. This enhances reporting capabilities through Power BI and SQL Reporting Services, disseminating insights across the
organisation and empowering stakeholders to make informed, real-time decisions. Furthermore, TimeXtender’s robust security measures ensure data integrity and regulatory compliance, effectively mitigating risks associated with data
breaches and strengthening the Touchstone Groups’ data governance framework. Andes Loukianos, Head of BI,
Touchstone says:

Our mission is to enable our clients to harness the data that they need to make better decisions. We have been able to deliver that to our own business with real measurable results that has meant we can deliver a better service to our clients.”

The implementation of TimeXtender has revolutionised business operations across Touchstone, enhancing their ability to deliver exceptional solutions internally and to clients. With a 40-year legacy of partnering with top software authors to provide best-of-breed business solutions globally, Touchstone is TimeXtender’s leading UK partner, known for its innovation in data management and business intelligence. Their specialist BI team, meticulously assembled over recent years, is renowned for their expertise in Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management. They bring extensive real-world knowledge and have successfully completed numerous BI and EPM projects across diverse industries. This partnership enables Touchstone to consistently deliver transformative outcomes, improving operational efficiency and empowering strategic decision-making for clients.