Dedicated Support for Dennis Eagle

Web Control have been working with Dennis Eagle for over a decade helping support their ERP system (Avante on UniData).

Maciej Jozefiak and Colin Bean from Dennis Eagle along with Tim Kendall from Web Control discussing our support services and how we have assisted in integrating various 3rd party applications.

Dedicated support for Dennis Eagle, On-site and remote for Avante ERP including bespoke development.

Maciej Jozefiak – IT Manager

There was a company called Dennis which produced, fire trucks, refuse trucks and busses. At some point, the company has split, and one side went into the building the fire trucks. Then, Dennis, the part which was making refuse trucks merged with the company called Eagle Engineers, which were making bodies, and we became Dennis Eagle and combines both chassis and the bodies in one.

Because we are so popular, we can call ourselves a British icon. And you can see our trucks on every estate collecting your waste every day, every month, every year.

We are number one in the UK in selling trucks. And the reason for that is we are providing the full product, which is the chassis, body and lifts in one go.

The biggest difference from our competitors is the uniqueness of our cab. It gives us a visibility of 190 degrees and as you can see, is fully glassed. So you can see all round, which is very vital, especially in crowded places like cities.

Colin Bean – Business Systems Analyst

I'm a business systems analyst here at Dennis Eagle. My main role is maintaining, developing and supporting our ERP system, which is called Avante. And for help with support, we use Web Control’s services.

Initially, support was on a call by call basis where where we needed help that grew into helping us develop our applications to suit our business needs. To the point of where we now have two full time support technicians working with us from Web Control, helping us support our ERP and our users.

I am one of two full time support staff. That's five days a week, all day, every day. And we work flexible hours. So that we can work to meet requirements and needs for Dennis Eagle. Sometimes means that we can work weekends, evenings, if necessary.

Due to our special relationship, we have a lot of trust. So we have a direct connection to the Dennis Eagle helpdesk, which allows me to interact directly with users. To be able to speak to them. Almost as an extension to the Dennis Eagle IT team.

Our relationship started over a decade ago. Where we needed support for our ERP application. And over a period of time, that support has grown into developing our ERP to suit business functionality and needs. And we've taken another step forward where we're developing applications that sit outside of our ERP, working with API's. Those applications involve invoice tracking, vehicle tracking, expense managing. And they've helped us create the application interfaces we need.

OneDocs is a is an application that produces pre-printed forms out of our ERP, invoices, purchase orders, purchase schedules, credit notes. That kind of information. And we needed to move away from pre-printed paper. And in order to do that, Web Control again were helpful in helping us develop an application that suited Dennis Eagles needs.

So Dennis Eagle have multiple third-party applications that interact with the Avante system, Avante is kind of like the hub. For the whole business workflow. But with the integrations with those other applications. My team have dedicate some time to learn how to operate those, even if it's on a basic level. Allows us to, offer additional support or extended support. To assist with any problems with those integrations, whether it be on the Avante side or the third-party application.

Working with Web Control allows us to use different people from different fields of expertise, and provide the best support to our users to provide the level of support which we're getting from Web Control. I would need to hire another ten people.

Having Web Control support allows us to concentrate on different parts of the business, and leaving Web Control to concentrate on helping with ERP problems and application problems.

Tim Kendall - Senior Software Engineer / Dennis Eagle Account Manager

Due to the special relationship that we have with Dennis Eagle. There's a lot of trust, given to us, which means that when we receive tickets into the help desk system, sometimes they become sort of change requests. There's some innovative ideas that come through of how we can improve systems for them. So they can turn into little mini projects. In some cases, they might be larger projects, which then I would be invited into, requirements meetings, offer consultation on ways that we can provide solutions.