Construction giant builds on Intentia software

Construction hire company Hewden has signed a €1.9m contract with Intentia for a range of enterprise software, as part of a major overhaul of its IT.

Sweden's Intentia, soon to merge with Lawson, will supply its Product Service Management (PSM) Application Suite. The technology will touch 1,400 users at 360 locations across the UK and affect functions including depot operation, customer service, procurement, financials and sales and marketing.

Hewden said that as part of a "scope decision" it is holding back on rolling out Intentia for HR and payroll.

Colin Hotchkiss, systems and process development manager at Hewden, said: "It's a corny phrase but this is a business project that just happens to be enabled by IT."

The rollout of this enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is part of a much wider, £14m IT overhaul at the company, which is owned by Finning International, based in Canada. Finning signed off the Intentia deal in August and the software should be rolled out in 2007, with "payback by 2008 and 2009", according to Hotchkiss.

For ERP, Hotchkiss said Intentia won from a final shortlist of four companies. Two were specialists in software for the rental equipment sector, while it is thought that the big boys in this space - Oracle and SAP - were also in the running at one stage.

A third-party consultancy will be used as an implementation partner, for change management and technical expertise, but its name has not been disclosed.

The Intentia software replaces customised software which Hotchkiss termed "pretty proprietary".

Intentia executive Andreas Hellstrom called the equipment rental market "a key focus" for the vendor.