The Situation
As a full-service landscaping company, offering everything from design and construction to maintenance, and employing more than 80 staff to carry out these services, Tim Davies Landscaping (TDL) needed better tools to survey their financial landscape.
Having reached the end of the road with an overburdened MYOB system, TDL had identified Microsoft Dynamics NAV as the right tool for the job at hand, but an initial project kick-off ran aground, leaving TDL once bitten, twice shy.
TDL needed a partner it could trust to revive the project and bring its new financial system to life. At this point Intergen was a relative newcomer to the Western Australian IT scene, and entered the picture proposing its Rapid Results for NAV solution; a time-bound, fixed-price offering that would bring about tangible results quickly, with the greatest possible certainty and the minimal amount of fuss.
The Pain
TDL’s financial systems had become “nightmarish”, TDL’s Chief Financial Officer, Rebecca Pearce explains. “We just didn’t have the functionality that we needed for the size of our business. With MYOB we had no visibility into costing information and didn’t have any certainty that the that the information that we could see was correct.
“We had separate general ledger accounts for every department, not to mention lots of Excel spreadsheets, which meant there were lots of errors. And the data file was so big it took half an hour just to run profit and loss reports.”
TDL’s ICT Manager, Graham Kimber, adds: “MYOB was proving to be a big bottleneck for the business. It was difficult to make use of the information that did exist, we couldn’t integrate it with anything, and only the accounts department could access the information – and even then we had too many users for the system, which was all extremely limiting.”
The Vision
With the investment in the technology platform already made, TDL wanted to “get it in and get it working,” Graham says.
The key to success would be a swift implementation, replacing like for like in terms of functionality so that benefit could be realised straight away, with enhancements to be added incrementally once NAV had been bedded in once and for all.
TDL needed low risk, cost certainty, quick wins and immediate evidence of return on investment. Rapid Results delivered on all fronts.
The Process
Intergen’s account manager Nik Johnson says, “Rapid Results gave TDL certainty around outcomes and clearly defined scope and timeframes, which was exactly what they needed. And while the key focus was on getting NAV up and running, with additional functionality to be added in future phases, we still managed to achieve integration with SharePoint and CRM within the scope of the Rapid Results project, which was an added bonus.”
Graham Kimber attributes a large part of the project’s success to the Rapid Results methodology and the process followed. “The approach was very disciplined and methodical and the documentation was meticulous. Our project lead, Craig Keenan, had great communication skills, kept everyone on the same page and managed our expectations,” he says.
The Gain
Less guesswork, greater visibility, unprecedented insight.
The project was delivered on time and on budget, all within a 17-week timeframe. TDL now has access to financial information that is reliable, complete and correct. Information is collected from right across the business more directly and a true financial picture can be viewed, drilled into, filtered and reported on.
Processes have been greatly streamlined and integrated with other systems across the business, such as CRM and SharePoint. This has resulted in greater business efficiencies and time saving; for example, payment runs and reporting take significantly less time now, and time spent on the invoice maintenance process has been cut in half, with direct integration into CRM.
“We’re recording more, and we’re doing it better,” Graham says. “We have information now that we’ve never had before, and because of this we’re making fewer assumptions. And while we take more time to capture this information at the outset, we’re saving a lot of time in the long run, and getting invaluable business insights along the way.”