Softline Pastel recently announced the successful conclusion of a software upgrade at East Coast Radio, which sees the radio station moving to Pastel Accounting version 9 and continuing its nine-year loyalty to the Pastel brand.
Vinay Narsi, financial director of East Coast Radio, says the upgrade was undertaken so that the company could gain access to the new business intelligence and drill-down features present in the product.
"Over the past nine years, we have found Pastel's solutions to be perfect for our size of organisation, offering the right level of functionality and an easy to use interface," Narsi says. "So when our finance team requested business intelligence (BI) functionality, it made sense to stay with the same platform and upgrade to a newer version of the software that delivered this functionality."
The company has also seen immense value from the new drill-down feature, which Narsi says has saved his department time when viewing the general ledger and debtors accounts; and made the process of issuing copies of previous invoices to customers a less tedious process.
The implementation partner engaged by East Coast Radio for the work conducted to date is SanTech Solutions, who has over 10 years' experience with Pastel's solutions and is fully qualified to install and support the Pastel portfolio.
Senior Consultant at SanTech, Yesh Maharaj says due to its North Coast locale his company is able to deliver unsurpassed service to the radio station.
Maharaj says it's not uncommon for his company to deliver a turnaround time on a call-out that's as low as two hours.
"Not that it's often required," Maharaj adds, however, "since the Pastel Accounting platform is extremely stable and doesn't often require technical attention.
"What's more," he says, "the entire upgrade was completed within a few hours. This was extremely important to East Coast Radio, since it meant minimal downtime."
Further assisting with the upgrade process, East Coast Radio's Narsi says no training was required, since his team was already familiar with the user interface.
Softline Pastel national sales director, Bridget du Toit, says East Coast Radio's positive experience with the new product is not isolated and the company has received similar feedback from all customers who have upgraded thus far.
"For example, many of our customers agree that the product's drill-down feature, which can be invoked from any report anywhere in the program, saves them significant time and has made a major impact on their working lives. When combined with BI functionality, they are also able to highlight exceptions and extract useful patterns in data, helping them make more informed and proactive decisions.
"The constant feedback we receive also allows us to keep a close eye on features our customers, such as East Coast Radio, may require, and thereby allow us to continue enhancing our software to meet our customers' growing needs."
East Coast Radio's upgrade is not completely over, however. Narsi says the company plans to roll-out additional Pastel products before the end of the year, thereby unseating a number of Pastel's competing solutions.
"We have our eyes fixed on moving to Pastel's fixed asset management module," Narsi says. "We believe by moving to a single platform, we can leverage a common data store, experience with a common platform and expose additional value to the organisation through the built-in BI module.
"We plan to undertake this upgrade before the end of the year," he concludes.
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