Johannesburg, 30 Aug 2005
"To say that I was frustrated with the inability to produce my WIP reports from SYSPRO in the format that I wanted them, would be the understatement of the year!" says Ettiene Steyn, Financial Director of MC Design and Contracting Services in Port Elizabeth.
For years Steyn has battled to get a solution to his unique needs. He had seriously investigated and considered other packages outside of SYSPRO to try and find a solution to meet the reporting requirements he needed to make effective business decisions. None seemed to fit the bill, so he continued his frustrated path, battling to deliver key business information out of SYSPRO.
"When Alchemex said they could meet my needs, I was very enthusiastic, but also sceptical," says Steyn. "Previously I had been offered solutions, but no one was able to deliver what I wanted."
MC Design is a vibrant medium-size company that designs and manufactures production lines. It is able to provide a start to finish solution for clients, including mechanical and electrical design, as well as offering specialist sheet metal and medium to heavy fabrication workshops to manufacture the designs. MC Design provides services to companies around the Republic, including General Motors and Volkswagen. Some projects have even found themselves reported in Martin Cremer`s Engineering News.
As most of the company`s projects are large and span a lengthy period, Steyn needed to have a summarised WIP report per job on one page. He wanted the ability to select a job, show all the relevant details of the project as well as a summary of the value invoiced, the total purchase orders outstanding and the materials and labour billed to date. In addition, he wanted to be able to drill down to the details of each total.
Steyn was overjoyed when Alchemex Reporting Solutions was able to produce a report in Excel in the exact format that he had dreamed of for years. Using the unique ability of Alchemex to draw information from different data sources into different worksheets in Excel, the Alchemex team in Port Elizabeth was able to extract the information from each of the areas Steyn required directly from the SYSPRO tables. With all the information sitting in one Excel workbook and with the ability of Alchemex to automatically update the information each time the report was run, Steyn is now able to access everything he needs from one page in Excel.
In order for each manager to have access to the same WIP details, MC Design added four Alchemex viewer licences. Now each manager can produce a report based on the actual current figures in SYSPRO at the click of a button. They no longer have to wait for someone to print a report or wait for the monthly reports (which did not have all the information they required).
Alchemex on SYSPRO has been able to deliver what no other accounting package or reporting solution has been able to offer previously. "I am now able to keep track of all projects and immediately do troubleshooting as all the details I require are directly accessible without having to go to other sources to find the information. It has revolutionised the reconciling of projects and has allowed my managers access to information that helps them to manage their jobs," says an ecstatic Steyn.
In addition, Steyn uses the Alchemex Management Pack Drill Down for producing his financials ("I cannot believe how much time it has saved me"). He also uses Alchemex to extract his Pastel Payroll information into Excel in order to produce his labour content per project. He uses an exported Excel report to import the information directly into SYSPRO, which in turn is extracted in the WIP report above.
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