ACCPAC Advantage brings Future Cellular into the future

Communications company, Future Cellular, has decided to abandon its existing point-of-sale (POS) and accounting systems in order to fully automate inventory management, financial reporting and customer service and it is using ACCPAC Advantage Series Enterprise Edition to do it.

"Future Cellular offers a large selection of cellular phones, accessories, prepaid items and nationwide cellular service," says Jeremy Waterman, managing director of ACCPAC Africa. "Customers can order cellphones, matching plans and accessories for their phones at kiosks that are strategically located in major chain stores."

The company had become frustrated with inadequate POS and accounting systems that were causing widespread inefficiencies and needed to find a fully integrated solution that could handle the rapidly increasing volume of transactions. "Inventory management, financial reporting and customer service were key considerations in finding the right solution," says Waterman.

With the assistance of ACCPAC Business Partner Acclink, Future Cellular implemented a comprehensive business solution - ACCPAC Advantage Series.

"This system's ability to run on Red Hat Linux with the IBM DB2 database and integrate with the ePOS point-of-sale system led to a dramatic boost to Future Cellular's bottom line as inventory management, financial reporting and customer service have improved significantly with ACCPAC Advantage Series at the core," says Jim Kirwan, chief operating officer at Future Cellular.

The new accounting system manages inventory, creates professional-looking financial statements and helps facilitate the best possible customer service. "With entry-level sales personnel manning the kiosks, the POS system had to be simple to learn and use in order to keep ordering mistakes at a minimum," says Kirwan.

"Plus, it had to possess the flexibility to handle consignment phone transactions, organise the sale (for example, matching customers with the right cellphone plans and phones) and return the data to the accounting system at the main warehouse."

Jackie Taylor, Acclink's general partner and sales and marketing director, feels confident that the solution to fulfil the company's long-term needs is ACCPAC Advantage Series. "With the volume of transactions rising quickly, Future Cellular also needed an operating system and database stable enough to grow with them long-term and eliminate the expense of another upgrade down the road," she says.

"All the accounting processes in ACCPAC Advantage work flawlessly," says Kirwan. "This has resulted in a dramatic improvement in our financial reporting and customer service, which is critical. Since we can generate the monthly management reports we need, we have a much better handle on where we are financially at any given time."