> Davis
Davis's Connected Success Story
"Up-to-date project costs, reduced duplication of
data entry, and improved reporting ability have greatly
increased our understanding of our business, and the large
amount of customization we were able to complete helped
to create a truly enterprise-wide job costing solution"
Warren Clayton, VP Finance.
Davis, a branding and graphic design studio established
in 1971, provides clients with a full range of services
including: new brand development, existing brand development,
brand revitalization and extension, corporate branding
and communication programs.
We use Macintosh computers exclusively, and with 80+ employees
we were certainly challenged when we started to look for
a program that would meet our needs since all of the more
popular job-costing programs were PC-based.
We were seeking to replace a 20 year-old custom-designed
job-costing system that ran on an old Windows 95 PC and
could only be accessed by Accounting staff. Since we were
running a stand-alone program, all job costing data had
to be entered manually into the software. This translated
into a large amount of costly duplicate data entry, and
a time delay in job costing reporting.
Our requirements for a new system were:
1. Project costs up to date daily and available to account
service staff at their desks.
2. Reduction of duplicate data entry
I.e. Time entered once and by actual employee (we were
currently inputting the same timesheet information 4 times
under the old system).
3. Improved reporting ability regarding job status, WIP,
and better financial reporting accuracy and timing.
4. Macintosh-based program
After great deliberation and a close examination of many
different programs, we chose Connected because it was
the best fit for our Mac-based accounting/job costing
software needs.
What really made Connected work for us was the amount
of customizations we were able to complete. It was a very
powerful tool in gaining company-wide acceptance of our
new system. Users were asked what options/ideas they liked,
and with Accountek's outstanding problem solving and creative
thinking skills, we were able to add many features that
made our users very happy.
Another side bonus was that Connected is multi-platform,
so we were able to utilize the security of a PC server
to host our data file.
After 1 year of using Connected ……..
Our costs are updated each day from various external sources
including Filemaker databases. All account staff can access
current project information detail. All employees enter
their timesheets daily into Connected. We have reduced
our duplicate data entry almost to zero. The reports that
we have designed and customized are fantastic and help
to keep us on top of our business. We are able to host
our Connected date file on a Windows 2003 server without
issue.
WIP has been purged and the status of stale projects is
updated/resolved at least monthly. Invoicing has been
made easier and has increased from a quarterly process
to at least a monthly occurrence. In part because our
billing is more current, our days outstanding has been
reduced by 15 days to an average turnaround of 31 days.
Moreover, the financial literacy and working knowledge
of our entire account services staff is greatly enhanced
- better informed workers give clients, even better service.
Mission complete. Thank you Connected."
SPECIAL NOTE: Accountek Solutions Inc and Bottom
Line Software Inc would like to extend our warmest thanks
to Davis and their staff. It has been and continues to
be a pleasure working with such a well managed professional
organization. We wish Davis the best for their future
successes although our wishes are not necessary. Once
again, thank-you Davis.
> To learn more about Davis Design. please visit their
web site at www.davisdesign.ca.
