R & L Builders & Sons Inc., a 20-employee commercial construction company based
in Battleboro, NC, came to Microsoft Small Business Specialist Jason Harrison for
help with its accounting and business management solutions, having been referred
to him by another business partner. Its existing accounting solution had allowed
the company to keep up with AR, write checks, and track bank accounts, but the business
had outgrown its accounting solution. The owners didn’t know what they wanted or
needed.
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Harrison’s firm, Harrison Technology Consulting, of Nashville, NC, stepped in and
evaluated the situation. Decades of experience in technology consulting and training,
supporting all manner of solutions, had prepared them to select the best tools for
the job.
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Client Benefits
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Partner Benefits
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Improved customer response times and close ratio
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Added a new managed services client
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Better tracking of sales opportunities and projects
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Additional touch point beyond the server
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Better job costing and profitability analysis
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More strategic relationship and perceived value
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They selected Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2007 and Outlook 2007 with
Business Contact Manager. R & L’s business partners and clients were pushing them
to be able to respond faster and have more reliable business class e-mail, so a
new Dell server running Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 R2 was added as well.
R & L has been able to respond to customer inquiries much faster, as well as document
and track bidding opportunities, thanks to Outlook with Business Contact Manager
and its deep integration with Office Accounting. When a bid is awarded, they can
then turn the opportunity into an official estimate and proceed to progress invoice
as the work takes place.
As a QuickBooks customer, I was not satisfied with the level of customer service
I received. I decided to test the Microsoft Office Accounting package with ADP Payroll
as a replacement. Based on my initial usage, ADP Payroll offers superior payroll
processing over QuickBooks, including the ability to process special requests quickly
and accurately.
Using the job costing features in Office Accounting, R & L now has a much better
handle on its profitability for each job. The cash flow tools in Office Accounting
help them better manage their cash flow to optimize how their available funds are
utilized. And they have a real business class network that is super reliable, secure,
and is ready to perform when they need it.
Because of the increased reliability and efficiencies, they have been able to do
a lot more with less effort. That in turn has allowed them to more aggressively
pursue opportunities that they would not have had the capabilities to handle before.
It’s also allowed them to focus more on life and less on business, a benefit that
you can’t put a price tag on.
Harrison credits Office Accounting with some of his success as a Microsoft Small
Business Specialist. “Offering an accounting piece has always put us on a different
level,” he says. “When you are able to improve the business processes that operate
on top of the infrastructure that directly save a client hours a week or thousands
of dollars a month, you are really having an impact. You are affecting the client’s
business in a much more visible and tangible way in their eyes.”