Managing Change Within Your Business
Interviewee: Jim Caldwell, Chief Executive Officer, Atlas Professionals
Interviewer: Stacey Magee, Service Delivery Coordinator, OPMS
Our relationship with Atlas has now reached eight years in duration, in this time, we at OPMS have seen many a change, mostly in ownership for Atlas. During this time, two things have remained as stalwarts, OPMS as the operating system, and, our interviewee, Jim Caldwell.
Previously known as Offshore Marine Services, Skilled Offshore, and Programmed, these acquisitions have come with their challenges for all concerned. With challenge, however, comes excitement as it also presents unique opportunities, opportunities to test how robust our system is and find any pressure points that may come with change.
It is wonderful to sit down with Jim for this interview as we started out our Perth work lives together many (many) moons ago……
Q. Firstly, would you please describe what OPMS is used for at Atlas Professionals?
A. Everything, I’m quoted (quite famously) on the OPMS website as saying “OPMS lets me sleep at night” and that is why we use it. It is a robust, dynamic and progressive system that we as a company use for almost every function within our business units, and to be fair, we probably still only use around 40% of its capabilities. Atlas currently utilise rostering, travel and logistics, training and compliance, recruitment, offshore operations – accommodation and timekeeping, along with payroll data and cost control.
Q. To survive as many transitions with a company as a supplier in any industry is a rare thing, what do you believe our main strength/key to our success in the multiple takeovers and maintaining our relationship with key stakeholders?
A. Quality of the staff at OPMS and the close relationship that we have with them. The constant throughout this entire time is our compliance, this is helped largely by what the software can do to assist us in this area.
Q. How has having OPMS as an operating system helped you and your staff during these transitions in terms of continuity/integrity of data, training of new staff, reporting for the new management etc?
A. We have had specific Project teams assigned to combining/integrating information from previous databases seamlessly during these transition periods to ensure smooth sailing, integrity, and continuity of our data. Our work with OPMS through each acquisition has been second to none and a big part of our success in continuing day to day operations with new staff within our company. OPMS offer training of all new staff and always support them through this phase, we can contact them easily by phone or email at any time, including after-hours/weekends, therefore, know our queries will always be dealt with promptly.
Q. OPMS and Atlas have grown together over the time we have been aligned in your various incarnations, as a Chief Executive Officer, what do you think has been the biggest hurdle we have had to overcome together?
A. I can’t think of any time we have had a hurdle that has been that bad, everything is worked through thoroughly, we have our nominated Super Users at our end that keep the line of communication open between OPMS and us. Any, and all changes/improvements are always carefully considered and well-communicated prior to them being implemented. We have such a great relationship with OPMS as a company, it makes this part of our jobs very simple.
Q. What do you think OPMS’ competitive advantage is?
A. It’s a very intuitive software with so many features, as a system, it is very user-friendly. Obviously, as mentioned numerous times in this interview, the support from the whole team at OPMS is a huge advantage to us and something we value very highly.
Thanks very much for your time Jim, it was lovely to finally catch up for that coffee!
Jim Caldwell and Stacey Magee (after many coffees, hence the crazy eyes/smiles)