Atlantic Global PLC

Case Study

• The Challenge

  Plain Healthcare’s Project Management Team are dedicated to providing a first-class service to their clients right from the initial point of contact to the delivery of a live system. The Support Team ensure that help is always available and the Larning & Development Team have established a reputation for first rate and comprehensive training services. Plain Healthcare are also renowned for the attention its Development Team give to helping clients tailor their system to their specific requirements and for their rapid
  reaction to change requests. None of this could be achieved without a significant human resource effort and because of this commitment, it is
  essential that the ongoing investment is managed closely. As an independent software vendor, one of the most important areas to monitor is the research & development effort. In Plain Healthcare’s case this is especially important, as their software is wholly dependent on extensive research with experts in a challenging profession, and constant enhancements to the product to
  keep pace with the demands of the health care sector. Plain Healthcare’s increasing penetration of international markets and the different processes and regulations which need to be taken account of, adds to the research & development challenge even further.
  
  As a part of their ongoing commitment to delivering cost effective solutions to the health care sector Plain Healthcare identified the need for a system to track where effort and expenditure was being incurred, to better define where efficiencies could be achieved and where investments could be made. Specifically, Plain Healthcare needed a system to support the recovery of R&D tax credits which can be claimed from the UK government. R&D tax credit is a
  form of tax relief available from HM Revenue & Customs for UK companies engaged in research and development activities. These tax credits can contribute to a significant reduction in a company’s tax bill or even provide a cash lump sum for some small-to-medium sized companies, who qualify for this form of taxation relief. Similar schemes operate in many other countries, for example the US Research & Experimentation (R&E) Credit Claims, the Canadian Scientific Research & Experimental Development (SR&ED) Tax Incentive Program and the French Crédit Impôt Recherche agreement. In order for Plain Healthcare to secure the benefit of these credits it was important to have a system which could provide a full audit-trail to account for every minute and every penny spent on research & development activities. Plain Healthcare also specified the new system needed to be
  delivered via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model to eliminate the need to provide hardware, approach internal IT for software approval and apply for capex budget up front.

• The Solution

  Plain Healthcare selected Atlantic Global
  OnDemand to capture the time incurred against technical research, customer implementations and development projects as it provided the most flexible, configurable and cost-effective solution and was available as a SaaS offering.
  Atlantic Global have over 15 years of experience in the delivery of timesheet and expense claim management systems and implemented the system with Plain Healthcare within a thirty-day trial period, in which all of the people and project data was loaded, the users were trained and the system was fine-tuned.
  
  The system is now used across the whole operation at Plain Healthcare. Users can easily log all of their time in an intuitive user interface and managers can report on the breakdown of their teams’ effort into pre-defined activities.
  
  Most importantly for Plain Healthcare, the Finance Team can isolate and interrogate the whole company’s effort against all R&D related activities, in order to support their R&D tax credit recovery. In the future, Plain Healthcare plan to use the system for managing staff expense claims and also for accurately recharging effort and expenditure for chargeable projects.

• The Results

  Atlantic Global OnDemand has provided Plain Healthcare with a means to accurately analyse effort and expenditure against typical activities.
  
  This in turn highlights areas where efficiency can be improved, together with the time saved in capturing effort for R&D to accurately reclaim tax credits, Atlantic Global OnDemand enhanced Plain Healthcare’s commitment to cost
  effectiveness and in turn deliver even better value for money for its clients.
  Plain Healthcare were able to achieve a true understanding of the virtual nature of the company, as well as achieving a better overall understanding of everyone’s activities and true Research and Development Costs.
  
  “After successfully implementing the system we were able to capitalise £31,000 of Research and Development expenditure between January and March 2009”, said Tim Morris, Product Development Director at Plain Healthcare.