Enhanced Productivity with AI Assistance
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Childress Engineering Services (CES) is an engineering and consulting firm headquartered in Dallas, TX. CES has existed for more than 25 years and is known throughout the construction industry as experts in residential and commercial designs, building consultancy and architectural/structural engineering. With more than 120 employees in four locations, CES is a technical leader in the industry. For the project-based business, their ERP solution is key to their success — as is having a partner who can not only do implementations but also support their ongoing needs.
Challenge: Finding the right ERP partner
CES has been through four different ERP solutions and almost as many partners in the last decade. Their most recent system, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 (AX), couldn’t produce the project-based automation and reporting they needed. The team’s productivity and effectiveness suffered – They couldn’t rely on the data to help make informed business decisions because they didn’t trust the accuracy of the reports. They described them as “useless.” The issues with reporting along with other inefficiencies caused them to spend days each month on redundant manual tasks, wasting employee time and costing the business money.
Reaching out to their ERP partner at that time didn’t help either. This partner, like many consulting firms, felt no urgency to requests made after the initial implementation finished.
Solution: Boyer & Associates
After implementing AX, CES was disappointed in their current system’s value and the service they received from their partner, so they went looking for a new partner. They asked their network and got a referral to Catherine (Cathy) Dean at Boyer & Associates. It was a great fit. Dean and her team were very knowledgeable about CES’s industry, AX’s features and functionality. Better yet, they took the time to listen and understand the business further. After the initial meeting, CES knew they had found their new partner.
Dean and team helped CES decide on a solution that would be best for their growing business. They settled on an upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Project Operations. They developed a phased implementation plan to ensure user adoption, onboard additional companies, and reduce challenges with learning the new solution.
CES is thrilled with the benefits of this new system, according to Chris Wohletz, the company’s CTO. “With the help of Cathy and her team, we implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Project Operations. Not only have there been zero complaints; we are very happy with what the software can do when operated by a partner that understands them both,” he said.
Benefits: How did CES transition from “useless” to “no complaints”?
CES attributes their ERP project success to these five factors:
- “The Right ERP Partner is the most crucial piece. It’s like choosing a business partner, someone who will be with you through it all,” said Wohletz. “Not only did we want an experienced partner with strong technical expertise and a solid track record, but a partner who stuck with us after the implementation, through training, and with the ability to find solutions to problems we encountered along the way. … You also want a partner who will hold you accountable for your part of the project. An ERP implementation isn’t something you can be removed from. Executive buy-in and project champions really helped ensure the success of the new ERP solution.”
- Leveraging the Cloud – “There are many benefits of moving to the cloud, and all of them helped CES to finally have the system they needed. Having true remote access to all the data is powerful,” said Wohletz. “With consultants traveling and living in different states, it is a powerful means of communication. Additionally, during COVID our employees easily transitioned from working in the office to working at home full-time. This allowed us to experience virtually zero downtime during the lockdowns. There are many other time and cost saving benefits including submitting expenses on a mobile device, with no VPN needed, no hardware needed, and backups that go straight to the cloud.”
- Reports, Reports, Reports – Having up-to-date and accurate information in all the reports presented in a matter that facilitates timely business decisions is key for any business. Drill-down capabilities and live links to relevant data make it easier and faster to get the details needed. CES also uses PowerBI to get more out-of-the-box functionality and add calculations, including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). For example, they now have a true Project Management Summary report where project managers can see all their projects and metrics, such as time spent, value spent, time invoiced, contract amount, and more.
- Integrations with other Apps – The ability to easily add on other apps that are already integrated has been a huge cost savings. For example, CES is paying about one-tenth of what they used to for credit card processing fees by using eBizCharge. There are many more ISV options out there now, and having a partner who pays attention to what’s available and which ones they recommend saves time and money.. Additionally, CES has a myriad of other customized, home-grown software solutions and uses many third-party party applications. Wohletz stated, “Integrating many of those systems and applications with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Project Operations significantly reduced our costs and duplication of effort, helped ensure data integrity, and allowed us to gain efficiencies we were unable to obtain with prior ERP systems or prior ERP partners.”
- Automation Tools – Workflow and automation tools are worth the new system alone. By implementing them CES saved time, allowing resources to do other things for the business. CES estimates their AR team saves 4 full days every month — or 48 days (about 1 and a half months) a year — by emailing out customer invoices and then generating and sending out past due notices every 2 weeks through Power Automate. Clients not only are paying their bills timelier, but there are also fewer inquiry phone calls, and the AR team can focus on other collection tasks.
Overall, CES contributes their successful ERP implementation to having the right partner, Boyer. With their new system, CES is more efficient and is getting valuable information for running their business.
