Nothing is Impossible with Pick!

Philtron, a Pretoria-based distributor of electronics products, has converted its legacy database to a Pick Systems D3 database system in just 24 person hours. With the D3 system installed Philtron is able to run its custom-developed advanced management information tool and speed up information processing, analysis and make more informed business decisions.

Running a 31-user network on a SCO UNIX server, Philtron uses the debtors, creditors, general ledger, payroll, inventory control, distribution and clock card systems modules supplied by Pick VAR Sognio Consulting to manage its operational requirements more efficiently than ever before.

According to Sarel Lacante, accountant at Philtron, the benefits have been felt mainly in the areas of financial management. "We can now apply sophisticated financial planning using the Balance Scorecard methodology to track and measure company performance."

Says Lacante: "We have found out that nothing is impossible with Pick. We didn`t experience any delays during the conversion. When employees left on Friday we were running the old system and when they reported to work on Monday morning the new system was up and running.

"The rapid conversion helped us to save us a great deal of time and money, apart from enabling us to reap the benefits of the new system much sooner."

"Initially we thought the conversion would take months. In the end it took just 2 days. A number of people in the industry recommended buying software from the United States to facilitate the conversion. Eventually we decided that if it was going to take so much time with the software we might as well complete the work ourselves," says Henny Moolman, CEO of Sognio Consulting.

"We chose Pick D3 for its ODBC capabilities, its open systems architecture and because the source code of our legacy system was essentially written in Pick. Moreover the system had to interact seamlessly with our Windows-based business intelligence tool," continues Lacante.

For its management information system Philtron uses Effectus Balanced Scorecard from Sognio Consulting, a high-level Windows-based business intelligence tool that calculates and displays data from multiple databases. Effectus automates the balanced scorecard methodology giving executives the ability to translate strategy into action. Its features include the ability to track corporate performance against strategic and operational indicators, measuring critical success factors and tracking key milestones relative to strategic initiatives.

By integrating all corporate data sources to one point for analysis, Effectus not only reduces the number of reports required it gives Philtron a comprehensive overview of business performance at every level of the organisation.