ASYST International SA, the sole southern African distributor for Access Accounts, today announced that VWV Productions (Pty) Limited, widely recognised as SA`s most innovative experiential communications company, had moved its accounting systems to Access Accounts.
VWV grew out of a PR consultancy in 1982, and today its expertise extends into the fields of corporate audio-visual production, event staging, video production, corporate communications, brand management, strategy development (business-to-business/consumer relationships) and digital technology for companies such as BMW, SAB Miller and ABI.
In this highly competitive marketplace, VWV seeks to give its clients a competitive-edge "through the uniquely creative application of technology and talent".
This strategy has been extremely successful for VWV with the last 12 months seeing a substantial increase in turnover on the back of strong growth in international contracts as well as recognition within the industry at the Loerie Awards. VWV was in the spotlight, winning two Grand Prix - one for Corporate Film and the other for Corporate Events: Theatre Large Events.
"Our previous back-office accounting system was extremely limiting," commented Eleanor Leong, Financial Director of VWV. "The B-Trieve database was too small for us and suffered from frequent corruption, while a lack of modular integration resulted in excessive data re-keying. Additionally, project costing was very badly affected as every single item needed to be recaptured into the core ledgers and there was only limited support from the dealer we were using and nothing in the way of regular software updates, leaving our team to fend for itself.
"We were impressed with ASYST International SA from day one and the confidence they showed in Access Accounts," continued Leong. "Our impressions were well founded in practice. The transition from Great Plains to Access Accounts was carefully planned and efficiently executed. It took less than two months from the moment the project began, and physical system implementation was completed in just five days, with downtime limited to a single day. Training on Access Accounts and Crystal Reports was also provided by ASYST International SA at its own training facility.
"The software was easy to master and in the very first month, we were able to complete a full month`s transactions in just two weeks, thus meeting our month-end deadline.
"All of VWV`s goals have been met by Access Accounts," added Leong. "Data capacity and stability is no longer a problem, as Dimensions runs off the Microsoft SQL 2000 database. Furthermore, the fully integrated job costing is all we hoped it would be, with actual and committed costs now updated correctly to the relevant jobs, cost centres and nominal accounts and with no re-keying. We have a need to capture information in considerable detail, as we have a complex costing structure for each of our jobs. Access Accounts Dimensions is ideal for this task. With the use of direct timesheet capturing, the tracking of progress and profitability is easier than ever before.
"Access Accounts is a pleasure to work with," concluded Leong. "We can now trust our data as there is proper integration between all our business modules. It is also important to us that additional help is always on hand should it be needed; ASYST International SA offers and has demonstrated a high level of professionalism."
Prior to the use of Access Accounts Dimensions, updating budgets was also a major challenge for the VWV team. Microsoft Excel was used to prepare production budgets, but this information needed to be re-keyed into the accounts.
Today, the situation is very different, as the powerful integration between Excel and the ledgers and job-costing module has helped to free up around three hours per day. The costing team used to spend much of its time recapturing data from Excel and reconcile job costs with the corresponding ledger balances. Now VWV can focus on monitoring spending patterns and preventing budget overruns and resulting in a far more profitable use of its resources."
Additionally, production budgeting has been further strengthened using a companion application, written by ASYST International SA. This provides a range of additional functionality, including different security levels for approval of Excel budget templates, auto posting of approved budgets to the relevant Access Accounts cost centres and auto generation of client sign-off documentation.
Finally, VWV is in the process of fine-tuning the group`s management reports, following training on Crystal Reports. It is quickly working through the full suite of reports, customising each one to meet VWV`s unique requirements.
"We are always proud to receive a reference such as the one detailed above," added Paul Marketos, Managing Director of ASYST International SA. "We strive to differentiate ourselves through our products, expertise and services; thus success such as that at VWV confirms to us that we are getting things right."
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ASYST International SA is a South African company providing experienced consultancy and specialising in the provision and improvement of business information systems.
ASYST International is an established expert in financial, business intelligence customised software systems, providing solutions to improve business efficiency, reduce operating costs and increase profits. Asyst believes in a hands-on approach, from a tailored proposal, through to the best software design and systems configuration, to providing ongoing training and support. It is also the sole distributor of Access Accounts in southern Africa.
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