From the enquiry to the bench to the van.
Gydon is one system for the whole job. Quote it, take the order, buy the materials, make it, cost it properly, load it and deliver it. No spreadsheet holding the middle together, and no second system for the shop floor.
We will walk you through the parts that matter to your trade, using your own kind of work as the example.
Most systems stop at the order
Plenty of software will take an order and book out stock. Far less of it knows that the order has to be cut, assembled, finished and loaded first, by named people, on machines that are already busy. That gap is usually filled by a whiteboard and somebody's memory.
A job is more than a line on an order
Gydon holds the routing as well as the bill of materials, so a product carries the stages it goes through, how long each takes, and which work centre it needs.
The floor records its own time
A tablet at the bench clocks people on and off a stage. Planned against actual is a fact you collect, not a number somebody types up on Friday afternoon.
The delivery is part of the job
Rounds are planned and optimised in the same place the order was taken, and the driver runs them from a phone that captures proof of delivery.
The bill of materials says what goes in. The routing says how it gets made.
They are two different questions and Gydon keeps them apart. A product's routing is an ordered list of stages, each with a work centre, a standard time per unit, a setup time counted once per job, and a rate. Raise a job and those stages become real steps against the work order, with an estimate, an owner and a clock.
- Setup is excluded from unit cost, so a product does not change value with batch size
- Costing is done in exact decimals, so totals do not drift by a penny
- Stages are laid out backwards from the due date and flagged when they will not fit
- Regeneration updates steps in place, so booked time and ownership survive a change
Routing and bill of materials on one product, kept separate.
Move a stage from Tuesday to Thursday and the week adds up again
Work planning lays the week out as day lanes with the hours planned against the hours available. Drag a stage to a different day. Change who is doing it from the card. The workload view answers the other question: who is committed to what, and by how much.
- Hours planned against capacity, per day, at a glance
- Jobs that have generated steps are counted once, never twice
- Production stages only, so the rest of the business keeps its own task list
Three Android apps that know who is holding them
Each device is authorised once, from the office, with a pairing code, and from then on it holds its own key. The person using it signs on with a four digit PIN or a door card, so every hour, every pick and every delivery is attributed to whoever actually did the work. No shared logins, and nothing for anybody to type on a shop floor.
Shopfloor, on a bench tablet
Warehouse, on a handset
The office half is as complete as the workshop half
Gydon started as a CRM and it shows. Contacts, accounts, leads and a deal pipeline sit alongside quotes, proformas, orders, invoices, credit notes and price lists. Stock, suppliers, purchase orders and goods receipt sit behind them, with material planning working out what has to be bought for the jobs on the board.
Their order arrives as a record, not as an email to key in
Where a supplier, customer or subcontractor runs Gydon as well, link the two. Their order arrives as your order. Your dispatch note arrives as their expected delivery. Their invoice turns up already checked against what came off the lorry, at the price you agreed.
One code sets it up. Neither company can see into the other, and nothing is shared beyond the messages the two of you send each other.
Orders from another company's Gydon, waiting to be accepted.
Turn on what you need. Leave the rest off.
Gydon is licensed by module. A joinery workshop and a builders merchant use very different halves of it, and neither pays for the other's. Menus, screens and permissions all follow the licence, so an unused module is not clutter in the sidebar.
Manufacturing
Production orders that build products from their bill of materials, plus material requirements planning.
Inventory & Purchasing
Materials, suppliers, purchase orders, goods receipt and stock. Not tied to any sales channel.
Logistics & Delivery
Delivery route planning and multi-stop optimisation (LocationIQ), plus vehicles.
Shopfloor App
Android tablet at the bench: scan a job, clock on and off, record what was made, and read the drawings attached to it.
Xero
Accounting sync and Xero connection settings.
Customer portal
Customer-facing portal for quotes, orders, and account self-service.
Marketplaces
Sync products, price, stock and lead times to Amazon, eBay, Mirakl marketplaces (B&Q, The Range and other Mirakl operators) and Etsy, and pull orders back into one place.
Support & ticketing
Helpdesk tickets, knowledge base, SLA, and canned responses.
People & HR
Employee directory, leave, sickness, and HR settings.
Common questions
Is this a CRM or an ERP?
Both halves are in one application. There is a full CRM with contacts, accounts, leads and deals, and there is the operational half with stock, purchasing, production, logistics and costing. You license the parts you use, so you can start on one side and add the other later without moving systems.
Do we have to move our accounts across?
No. Gydon syncs with Xero rather than replacing your accounts package. Invoices, credit notes and payments pass across, and your accountant carries on working the way they already do.
What do the Field Apps need?
An Android tablet or handset and a connection to your Gydon. Each app carries an offline queue, so work recorded while the signal is out is sent when it returns. The apps are installed directly rather than through a public app store, and each is licensed separately so you only pay for the ones you use.
Where does it run?
We host it for you on UK infrastructure, with your own database and your own domain. Talk to us if you need it on your own servers instead.
How long does it take to get going?
It depends entirely on how much of your data has to come across and how many modules you are turning on. We will give you a straight answer once we have seen what you are working with, which is what the demo is for.
See it running against your kind of work
Tell us what you make and how it moves, and we will walk you through the parts of Gydon that apply. No slide deck.