Testimonials

Why work with us and what makes us different... Don’t take our word for it, here is what our clients have said about what they like about working with us:

Working with Elementary was extremely straight forward and their relaxed approach took the stress out of migrating from our old accounting system to Exact.

William Carter ACMA, CGMA

Financial Controller

Phineas Group (UK) Limited

I was impressed with the care and attention Paul took with our businesses requirements to

ensure that we would have the right solution to our business needs from a sales consultancy

perspective.

Richard Milliner

Financial Controller - Ultrasun UK Ltd

Working with Elementary was a pleasant, smooth and swift experience with solid results.

Jasper Hijink

Director - Chess UK

We approached Paul to work with our company as we needed a thorough review and overhaul of our internal systems: we needed to implement new stock and sales order processing software and we needed help in managing and coaching our staff to enable them to take on more responsibilities to relieve the pressure on the Directors.

Paul is very easy to work with. He has always taken the time to listen and understand the company vision, objectives, and culture. He is empathetic whilst not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing but also challenging when necessary. He pays close attention to unconscious signals as well as what is said or discussed. He is discreet and understands when confidentiality is required.

Paul has a curiosity and passion about helping people to solve their problems and

achieve their goals. He has been particularly effective in coaching staff to help them to

understand the company's objectives and culture and help them to grow and take on more responsibilities.

Paul has an organised, structured, and proactive approach that is about outcomes not methods. He. has helped set KPI 's and measures to monitor progress. He is loyal, supportive and has helped reduce the “To Do” list rather than add to it. I would have no hesitation in recommending him.

Alison Mundy

Managing Director - Mundy Veneer Limited

Paul has a curiosity and passion about helping people to solve their problems and achieve their goals. He has been particularly effective in coaching staff to help them to understand the company's objectives and culture and help them to grow and take on more responsibilities.

We have worked together now for almost 16 years, particularly closely since 2017 with your introduction of the Exact business software for my company. Not only was the transfer of data from an antiquated bespoke Unix system to the Exact system seamless, but your detailed explanation and understanding of how you would conduct this very delicate procedure persuaded me to actually make the upgrade, a decision I will never regret.

Paul has helped us develop many of our internal processes, which today allows us to

operate with full knowledge of our management information, streamline our SOP/POP and therefore, increase our sales revenue.

We have all enjoyed working with you and hope to continue to do so over many years

ahead. You are very organised, structured and now simply part of the Biokil Crown team!

Andrew Grisdale

Managing Director - Biokil Crown Ltd

Paul has helped us develop many of our internal processes, which today allows us to operate with full knowledge of our management information, streamline our SOP/POP and therefore, increase our sales revenue.

We have had the pleasure of working with Paul Watson for the last 18 months and his work has been transformational within our business.

Paul engaged with us to review the existing processes and has helped us develop new

powerful processes to support newly leveraged business systems. Paul worked as part of our dedicated team to train and implement these new systems to ensure they are truly effective for our specific business needs.

Paul has a wide range of skills that are firmly based in his own personal experience of

business. He looks at every opportunity from a business perspective. His approach ensures

the investment in processes, systems and training are truly aligned with the core business objectives and are targeted to give the outcomes required.

Paul’s skills span a wide variety of areas, which allows him to start by identifying the core strategic aims of any question. This then leads to incisive analytical review, from which

spring new technical business strategies. He has the expertise to work directly with proven business software providers and tailor these specifically for the businesses he works with. More importantly still he then out rolls a program of training for those who directly use the software to ensure that the necessary skills are embedded. When support is required, he is

always at hand and when software needs further tailoring, he can achieve this too. This

ensures that the strategic plan is delivered.

Paul has become a much loved member of our team. Employing him for a second year was a decision we could make with full assurance of the return that he brings. We cannot recommend his services highly enough to anyone who wishes to develop their business in terms of system, processes, and team.

Alex Coppock

Director – Communion Architects

Paul has a wide range of skills that are firmly based in his own personal experience of business. He looks at every opportunity from a business perspective. His approach ensures

the investment in processes, systems and training are truly aligned with the core business objectives and are targeted to give the outcomes required.

Excellent project management techniques meant we kept on track and engaged with

each Consultative approach which meant the businesses operations and needs were well understood.

Versatile thinking when faced with unexpected issues to provide effective solutions that importantly worked for the business.

Clear and concise system training sessions that delivered value.

Expert knowledge of the exact online system, we never felt there was a question

that went unanswered then and there. Very professional.

Max Wilson

Director - Indoor Sports Services Ltd

I started my first business as a sole trader in 1993. That grew successfully and developed and changed to become a limited company about 10 years later. I left that company early in 2016 and now continue occasional work, once again as a sole trader.

In my search for someone to provide us with IT support I first met Paul Watson in 1995. He is specific and built our first systems. He has continued to support us over the years, and he continues to do so with his business, Elementary Solutions. Paul has been an excellent resource for us in all the different guises in which we have worked over the years. He initially built systems for us. As the industry changed, he provided us with a critical procurement service that included specifying the systems, setup and configuration. This included operating with our teams internationally. And, providing an on-call service so that expensive down time was reduced to the absolute minimum. As he moved into larger businesses, we benefitted from the growing team around him.

We have never been a large business ourselves, operating with a maximum of a dozen machines at any time. Paul has been for us, the ideal solution, though I know that he has been equally highly regarded in much larger operations. His ability to address a problem, identify its characteristics, seek out options for resolution and press them home to

conclusion have made him a highly valued resource here. I do not think there will be many out there who can match Paul for the commitment, hard work and responsiveness that

have made him for us, very good value.

M H Rowlatt

Principal - Tellus Associates

We have never been a large business ourselves, operating with a maximum of a dozen machines at any time. Paul has been for us, the ideal solution, though I know that he has

been equally highly regarded in much larger operations. His ability to address a problem,

identify its characteristics, seek out options for resolution and press them home to conclusion have made him a highly valued resource here. I do not think there will be many

out there who can match Paul for the commitment, hard work and responsiveness that

have made him for us, very good value.

As IRM had 18 months of Financial transactions to get onto Exact in a limited time scale, Paul guided us through all processes and the working aspects of the system from

purchase/Sales Ledger, bank, General Ledger, VAT etc. Finally producing our 1st years set of Management accounts.

Paul was very precise and accurate in his instructions and extremely patient. He is easy to listen to and taking each step at a time not to rush and to ensure I had the understanding of one part before moving on certainly gave me the opportunity to get to grips with the

system clearly and made the journey very smooth sailing.

Lorraine Wilson

Finance Controller - IRM Systems

I would thoroughly recommend Paul Watson and Elementary Business Solutions. I was impressed with the care and attention Paul took with our businesses requirements to ensure that we would have the right solution to our business needs from a sales consultancy perspective. Following the decision to purchase the EXACT system I was delighted that Paul would also act as our implementation consultant. His ability to challenge our processes and to explain the mechanics of the system enabled us to achieve a successful launch and build deep understanding within the team here.

Post implementation, he has continued to provide excellent support and advice and I look forward to working with him on our future EXACT enhancement projects.

I was impressed with the care and attention Paul took with our businesses requirements to ensure that we would have the right solution to our business needs from a sales consultancy

perspective.

Richard Milliner

Financial Controller - Ultrasun UK Ltd

I have worked with Paul in his previous role since 2011 and then with him further after he

began running Elementary Solutions in January 2016. Paul has managed software support and delivered bespoke development projects for our business during this time. The high-quality work which Paul has provided has greatly contributed to the success and growth of our business.

As well as receiving requests to assist with and lead projects, Paul has pro-actively offered suggestions to improve our CRM system. This has helped us to simplify processes in order to

save a huge amount of time whilst managing customer enquiries and converting orders. Paul's work has made our business stronger and more efficient.

Paul uses a common sense approach and a positive attitude to keep projects moving and to resolve problems. I have found that this helps others to understand and appreciate complex issues without stress in areas outside about helping people to solve their problems and achieve their goals. He has been particularly effective in coaching staff to help them to understand the company's objectives and culture and help them to grow and take on more responsibilities.

Paul has always been focused, professional and has behaved with integrity whilst working with PAR. I have found Paul to be trustworthy and have had no concerns when allowing him access to confidential or business critical information and access to work with copies of data as required.

I would not hesitate to contact Paul to request his services for IT based business development or ongoing systems improvement projects.

Paul has always been focused, professional and has behaved with integrity whilst working

with PAR. I have found Paul to be trustworthy and have had no concerns when allowing him

access to confidential or business critical information and access to work with copies of data

as required.

Keith Chambers

Managing Director - PAR Group Ltd

Paul is fantastic at listening and understanding both you and your business. He adapted very

well to a bunch of women giving ideas from a varied amount of angles and positions. He

pays a great deal of attention to your needs and objectives, successfully finds the right way forward and delivers a service to implement it.

We were very lost with our back office and management of the workflow, struggling to keep up and Paul helped us implement a system that suited us so well. Not only did he help us but he did a lot of the work himself for us, such dedication and support is rarely seen in business these days.

Following successful installation Paul continues to provide help and support! With any queries we know we can go to him and he will ensure the issue or query is resolved quickly and efficiently. I would not hesitate to recommend Paul. Not only is he great in business but he is such a kind and friendly man to go with it.

Paul is fantastic at listening and understanding both you and your business. He adapted very

well to a bunch of women giving ideas from a varied amount of angles and positions. He

pays a great deal of attention to your needs and objectives, successfully finds the right way

forward and delivers a service to implement it.

Michelle Wilson

Managing Director – E-Paraplan

Working with Elementary was extremely straight forward and their relaxed approach took the stress out of migrating from our old accounting system to Exact. Elementary gave us confidence in that any unexpected issue that arose could be solved in an efficient and correct manner. We believe we’ve really extracted the most from Exact and tailored it to our company works, this is largely due to the knowledge Elementary has provided us.

William Carter ACMA, CGMA

Financial Controller

Phineas Group (UK) Limited

Together we managed to move from Sage to Exact whilst maintaining clear accounting records, this helped us greatly in our year-end audit (especially since we migrated to Exact in the middle of our financial year). We had a clear audit trail along with correct Financial Statements with no errors or downtime.

Another one of the projects we worked on together involved linking a 3rd party software to the Exact accounting software. This was a complex project that required lots of problem solving and thinking outside the box to make the systems work together, we managed to achieve this whilst maintaining simple and effective ways of working.

Elementary gave us peace of mind in the correct set-up of our financial software. Their knowledge of both the software and key financial structures that are needed has resulted in us having an easy to use - true and fair accounting system - whilst giving us the detail we need to make important strategic decisions quickly.

The sessions were also fun. By the end of each session we felt a lot more confident in using the system and had confidence to explore further. If we had any follow up questions or problems, Paul would always get back to our emails promptly with a concise solution.

Initially the training sessions were designed to give some basic training on the system to new starters (including myself). After several of these sessions it was identified that some of the longer serving staff did not get the best out of the system due to insufficient training and access. The training was extended to these employees and Paul inspired everyone in the organisation to look at what could be achieved. This has had a significant benefit to the organisation and everyone working within it. Once Paul understood how our business worked he was able to identify ways to amend the set-up of the system to ensure the business ran more efficiently. All employees started to get more out of the system and more importantly started to contribute more and get more enjoyment out of their roles. Once they understood the flow of work they appreciated the information that was required by other members of the team and contributed in positive way to improve the entire workflow. A lot of the old data issues have been cleaned up so the information coming out of the system is more reliable. The system is now a very useful tool the business and working for is in a much better way. So much so we have now decided to link the system to our website to enable us to take orders on-line. We would not have been able to achieve this without Paul’s input and expertise.

Paul has created a more positive attitude with in the business as to what can be achieved. He has identified a lot of issues in way system was set up, some of which we didn’t even realise were a problem. With his help these have been improved. Paul has suggested a lot of changes to the system to improve workflow. This has had a major impact on the staffs job satisfaction and they are working as a much closer team. We look forward to working with you further once the web site link has been completed. Thanks Paul.

Paul clearly has a very broad knowledge of our Exact ERP system and a wide business expertise. Having listened to the many issues we had, Paul came up with a plan of how we could prioritise these issues and developed a series of training sessions to assist us. The training sessions, all of which were done remotely, were always very well structured, clear and professionally delivered.

Gary Thomas

Finance Director - William Marston Ltd

Paul took the time to understand our business and how it worked and the challenges we faced, making suggestions on how our processes could be easily streamlined to fit with the new system. He kept the project on track whilst recognising the need to keep the business running during the implementation and assisted with implementation workloads where possible when we could not achieve our deadlines. Paul always answered questions promptly and provided constant support even while not on site. He easily became part of our team.

Paul took the time to understand our business and how it worked and the challenges we faced, making suggestions on how our processes could be easily streamlined to fit with the

new system.

Amanda Summerfield

Finance Manager - Diamond Dispersions Ltd

Chess UK started small with an entry level, basic accounting system. Great for a small business. However, rapid growth meant our operations and processes quickly outgrew the system. After a market survey and the assistance of Elementary a choice was made for Exact Online. Elementary helped us use and optimise the processes and implement them in the system. Within 2 months the system and our organisation were ready for the launch. Elementary supported us throughout the first months and delivered a successful go live. Any questions and issues were resolved swiftly.

A full transfer of our accounting and logistics process from Xero to Exact Online. This gives us full control of everything that is going on in the business so that we can deliver solid results. This includes the standard process of quotations-order-delivery-invoice, but also specific requirements around subscription management and batch management.

"Working with Elementary was a pleasant, smooth and swift experience with solid results."

Elementary helped us use and optimise the processes and implement them in the system. Within 2 months the system and our organisation were ready for the launch. Elementary supported us throughout the first months and delivered a successful go live.

Jasper Hijink

Director - Chess UK

Elementary were able to carry out the training at our pace with no pressure to rush it through, Paul’s knowledge was excellent in every aspect of Exact and he was able to answer any and every query we had on the use and set up of the system.

Wayne Ottley

Director - Universal Safety Systems Limited

We managed to download the older company system we were partly using and upload to the new company with verry little difficulty, we set up a fully working CRM database with access to quotation and customer price lists and a fully functioning multiple warehouse location stock control system alongside Purchase orders, order acknowledgements, picking lists and delivery notes whilst accessing full reporting information on each customer and suppliers alike. We found Elementary to be verry knowledgeable in all aspect of the Exact Online System and we know have a fully working stock control and order processing and CRM systems with for all our customers which has helped our company to operate more efficiently in every sector of the business.

We would thoroughly recommend Elementary to anyone looking to improve their overall business processes.