The Client

A fleet vehicle service and repair company headquartered in Western Michigan. The organization has been serving commercial customers throughout Southwestern Michigan for more almost three decades and now maintains six separate business divisions. It offers both onsite and mobile fleet repair options.

The Challenge

The client contacted The TM Group with the intention of swapping its existing Quickbooks installation for an alternative accounting solution. The company was encountering significant scalability issues that were dragging on multiple backend business functions, most notably, payroll. Personnel working in the department were unable to store more than one year’s worth of employee information on the platform, necessitating annual purges that inhibited the collection and analysis of historical payroll data. This database capacity problem also forced the stakeholders managing this function to maintain two separate payrolls, causing additional dysfunction. Quickbooks was also creating issues for the accounting staff overseeing the general ledger. With virtually no access to automated reporting tools of any kind, these individuals had to cobble together monthly, quarterly and annual financial statements by exporting raw accounting data from Quickbooks and organizing it into an easy-to-read format via Excel. This created great inefficiency and increased the risk of accounting errors. Together, these issues hamstrung both the accounting department and the organization as a whole, preventing decision-makers from scaling up essential backend operations in preparation for growth.

While the client was unhappy with the Quickbooks installation, it remained committed to virtually all of its active line-of-business applications. This meant that any new solution would need to seamlessly integrate with these assets, a fairly significant technical challenge our developers and implementation experts would need to address during development and deployment.

The Solution

With these pain points front and center, The TM Group team put together a proposal centered on the Microsoft Dynamics GP platform and several of its core components, including the accounts receivable, accounts payable, bank reconciliation, payroll and direct deposit modules. The proposed solution package also featured the eOne Smart Connect integration tool, which The TM Group intended to use as a bridge between the business’ various line of business (LOB) applications and Microsoft Dynamics GP. Greenshades Software, a payroll tax filing and employee portal solution, rounded out the solution. The client reviewed the proposal and approved the implementation, at which point The TM Group staff went to work.

The LOB application integration was perhaps the most significant implementation hurdle our team faced, as each solution featured technical eccentricities. These tools included:

• IFS Fleet and Asset Management: The client used this solution to manage its fleet of mobile repair vehicles, leveraging its maintenance program tracking, scheduling and forecasting components to ensure field work was executed as planned.
• YES Management System: Personnel overseeing onsite repair operations took advantage of this software when building estimates, processing and assigning work orders, issuing invoices and managing replacement part inventories.
• Time Guardian Pro: This system sat at the center of the company’s employee attendance management workflow, giving payroll stakeholders the power to facilitate time-keeping activities and gain an exhaustive, top-down view of scheduling patterns.

In all, these disparate products were of critical importance to the client, which meant that The TM Group team had to handle them with care during implementation and ensure they functioned flawlessly prior to go-live. To follow through on this requirement, our developers began using the eOne Smart Connect integration module to craft workable links between these applications and Microsoft Dynamics GP. However, complications arose in the form of a database switch: The client wanted to migrate the information associated with the YES Management System to a newly coded Mongo open-source database, a development that put a pause on virtually all integration activities. Even so, The TM Group team moved forward with and completed the base-level implementation of Microsoft Dynamics GP, with the intention of finishing up the remaining work during forthcoming project stages.

The Outcome

Today, The TM Group continues to collaborate with the client and are nearing the conclusion of the YES Management System integration. The Greenshades installation and IFS Fleet and Asset Management hook-up are the next items on the project agenda, along with the full integration of Time Guard Pro. Once active, this backend suite will give the organization the power to transform its accounting operations and lay the groundwork for significant growth. With Quickbooks out of the way and Microsoft Dynamics GP ready for use, internal accounts will be able to cultivate and store accurate historical transactions, while gaining access to the real-time tools they need to keep decision-makers in the loop regarding financial matters, big and small. Also, the seamless connections between the central accounting platform and the orbiting LOB applications will ensure that the business continues to achieve operational excellence.

This ongoing Microsoft Dynamics GP implementation offers potential adopters insight into just how powerful this accounting tool can be when installed properly and in accordance with foundational revenue-driving functionalities. It also demonstrates The TM Group’s commitment to client happiness. Instead of insisting on pushing forward in light of the new database requirements, a decision that would have caused significant technical issues down the road long after our engagement was over, The TM Group’s implementation and development leaders slowed down the project, committed to executing the right way.

Is your organization interested in achieving accounting software adoption success and working with a reliable, seasoned implementation partner? Connect with The TM Group. The TM Group has been executing successful Microsoft Dynamics GP implementations for decades, providing small to medium sized organizations, in numerous industries, tailored services designed to help them find financial success today and in the future. Contact The TM Group today to learn more.