Case Study: Adlib grows into a £11million turnover company with Access finance software

The challenge facing Adlib

One of the biggest reasons that Adlib started to look for a new finance software provider was that they knew that as their business grew, the number of transactions would increase so they needed to invest in their finance system and also their finance department.

They were using bespoke systems, like Microsoft Office Accounting, that was integrated with Sage Line 50 which was not as flexible as they would have liked and needed something to help them move up to the next step - an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

Their auditor recommended Adlib to investigate the solution offered by The Access Group as an option to rival Sage Line 200 as the latter could potentially give a workable solution, but to achieve this would need many third-party ‘add-ons’ which didn’t integrate with one another. This also required a Sage partner to help ensure that all the plug-ins worked properly, which ‘seemed to involve too many software companies and we could only half do all the jobs that we want to do’.

‘When we looked at the Access offering, we saw Access Dimensions being the core finance product and Access Expenses, especially FocalPoint, would help us with the timesheets, expenses and absence reporting all in one place as well as being able to integrate with our bespoke internal systems.’

Powerful financial reporting and full visibility

As part of the implementation, Adlib commissioned Access to build a fully customised quoting system using Access Workflow Forms. This was primarily for the sales and installation team to use and was integrated with the purchasing and stock management system that sat within Access Dimensions.

Within Access Dimensions, Adlib also found using the TaskCentre module allowed them to automate their reporting and push information out to managers via email as needed, either automated at a pre-determined schedule, when a specific event happens, or when a certain criteria was met.

Another bonus was the document management system module (ADM) which integrated straight into Access Dimensions and FocalPoint, allowing the office to go paper-free and enabling all departments to have quick access to records which would have previously been kept in the archive storage. ‘This makes a huge difference to our finance team, says David. ‘We can now leave our auditors with one computer and they can easily find all of the documentation they need from within Access Dimensions without us having to trawl through cabinets of paper’.

Using the Access Office Integration (AOI) module allowed them to easily input and extract information from their databases, plus set up journal templates through Excel with ease. ‘We have never seen anything like AOI before, the facility to write back into the database via Excel makes updating stock pricing so quick – no one has anything like this!’

The Transaction Broker module allowed Adlib to aggregate and integrate into other databases quickly, David commented, ‘Focalpoint enabled us to integrate the sales and installation functions into the main database so we took the company from having three different databases with three software providers to just two. And then Transaction broker enabled us to bring all of the transactions from our rental-specific application into the core Access database. Previously the 3 databases didn’t really ‘talk’ to one another, so having the level of automation that Transaction broker provides has reduced the time taken to move transactions from one database to another.’

It was a big change for us, it allowed us to work smarter and to grow from a £3 million to an £11 million turnover business, with the same amount of people within our finance team.

Freedom to work more efficiently

‘Access has given us the freedom to bring our information together, like the non-financial aspects of project accounting. As we were trained on how to use the product suite we weren’t constrained to requiring an Access consultant to customise the system. We quickly started creating our own custom workflows that allowed us to record non-financial information such as training records and non-conformance reporting systems for our ISO accreditation. So now when we report on the finances of the project we can also see what issues we had along the way. For example, if a supplier didn’t deliver on a project, I can see this when I print out the project profitability report’, observed David.

Easy to use – by all departments, not just Finance

Another plus for Adlib was they did not need to spend a huge amount of time retraining their staff. ‘We have the support from Access if we need it, we are not restricted to continuously seek help from Access. We can grant access of financial information to other departments with added functionality of them being able to drill into information that’s pertinent to them from status of a particular customer, to contact details of suppliers and even details at a nominal level if their permissions allow.’

‘Because Focalpoint is based around approvals, our workflow forms are also based around approvals, so for example, when we quote for a job and it doesn’t meet a certain margin, it will go to  manager for sign off. Or when we buy something and it’s over a certain amount, it will go for approval, allowing us to ensure that we always have a checking process – with multiple stages that are customisable for different  departments within the company.’

Working with Access was seamless and straightforward

‘From the on-boarding to consultancy to front-line support – either by phone or via the website, Access have been outstanding. We had a really good consultant who understood our business needs and demonstrated clearly what the software was capable of, meaning that our requirements evolved from our initial scope to the end result, helping us achieve more than what we were hoping for. Without the help of our consultant and the Access team, we wouldn’t be at this stage now.