Alliance Emergency Vehicles (AEV), the largest manufacturer and refurbisher of fire-fighting vehicles in sub-Saharan Africa, has renewed its Accknowledge accounting software contract with Web Accounting Solutions, an InterSystems partner. InterSystems is a technology innovation leader in database and integration software.
AEV supplies 70% of the market requirements for locally manufactured fire-fighting, rescue and hazardous materials (HazMat) vehicles. MD Hans Muller says that as a manufacturing concern, AEV had experienced major challenges with stock control and job costing for more than a decade.
"Accknowledge was introduced into the company just over a year ago when we decided to replace our existing system as it kept falling over, and was not capable of giving us the information we needed. With the new application, we have gained full control of stock and job costing. We now also have stock control over items generally regarded as consumables, which results in more accurate costing of each job. In our game, job costing ranges from small costs to the total cost of the manufacture of an entire fire engine."
Muller says for the first time in the history of the company, stock can now be efficiently tracked from receipt into the master warehouse, through WIP (work in progress), up to completion and final invoicing of the job, be it at AEV`s Boksburg-based head office or at either of its two mechanical workshops in Johannesburg and Pretoria.
Accknowledge enables better control of the buying of material and parts and has reduced stock losses and material wastage in the process. The Accknowledge solution comprises a general ledger, debtors, creditors, inventory and multi-warehousing; special features include the support of unlimited transactions, unlimited financial years, job costing, multi-currency and a multi-lingual feature. A first for browser-accessible accounting, the Web-based package was developed entirely in South Africa, and is specifically geared for the needs of the local market.
Web Accounting Solutions chose two partners to create Accknowledge: Cape-based software development company Intrepid Solutions, and InterSystems. "We conducted extensive research into the capabilities of various databases and InterSystems` CACH'E post-relational database came out tops in terms of speed, reliability and data storage capabilities," says Malcolm Granville, MD of Web Accounting Solutions.
CACH'E is a multidimensional database enabling rapid Web application development, speed, scalability and real-time queries against transactional data, all with minimal maintenance requirements. "We found that our developers could innovate with CACH'E when creating Accknowledge at no risk, because it is backed by 24x7 support," Granville says.
AEV`s Accknowledge users have found the solution easy to use when it comes to both bookkeeping and general business management. Users no longer have to wait for others to exit a specific module before they are able to use it, and multiple users can now work in one module simultaneously without a decline in the operational speed of the system, greatly increasing employee productivity.
"We have also been able to set up each workstation with dual screens to further increase productivity by saving time wasted in switching between modules on a single screen," adds Muller. "We can have a full set of management reports at the push of a button. If any problems were to occur, help from Web Accounting Solutions is a phone call away. That`s one of the greatest advantages of using locally developed software. More serious issues resulting from errors such as incorrect data input can be addressed via the Internet, eliminating the need for a technician to visit the company and cutting back on downtime and general irritation."
Because Accknowledge is Internet-based, AEV management can monitor the business and work from home, or anywhere in the world. The system can be accessed directly by dialling into the office server via the use of an ADSL line. Muller says he can also monitor the day-to-day activities of AEV`s Cape Town-based associated company and make adjustments as and when needed. "From AEV`s point of view, it is as if Accknowledge was custom designed and developed for our business."
An unlimited number of financial years can be retained in Accknowledge, thus making long-term business history available for improved business management.
Accknowledge can scale from one user to hundreds. Small businesses can begin with a single licence and grow to an unlimited number of users as and when they choose to, saving companies time and money as they do not need to buy new software, or learn new applications. Combinations of projects can be created where a project is sharing 50% of the costs. Accknowledge also allows a business to track all documentation associated with a project, as well as view the profit and loss per project. Most systems can only allocate all costs to one project.
"CACH'E enables the rapid creation and fast integration of high-performance applications as a result of its modular and flexible development environment and rich functionality," says Henry Adams, country manager for InterSystems South Africa. "And because it provides rapid transaction processing, and integrated data access options, it is ideal for the development of a Web-enabled accounting solution like Accknowledge."
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