For over 25 years, Kenneth Ayres Australia has been a specialist and leader in the sale of retail presentation packaging and display supplies, focussing primarily on the jewellery industry. Originally a manufacturer, Ayres has now diversified its business offering to encompass a number of PVC and paper packaging and storage products, through the introduction of imported lines to complement those manufactured by the company. Ayres is locally owned, with offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane and has a turnover approaching $10 million.

After deciding its DOS-based financial package required upgrading, Ayres took the opportunity to stand back and consider the options besides the Windows version of the incumbent system.

According to Ayres’ accountant, Ross Gulliver, the impetus to evaluate a range of other solutions was that to upgrade to the existing supplier’s Windows product was "basically a case of starting from scratch financially. Therefore, we were free to buy the best value for money solution available."

The company was able to prune the contenders to a shortlist of three, using the products’ functionality, flexibility and value for money as the key evaluation criteria. The short listed solutions were evaluated rigorously for four months. Gulliver says the users at Ayres were unanimous in their selection of Greentree because of its "contemporary design, proven CBA heritage, flexibility, required investment level and very competent and professional support from the Greentree Business Partner."

Gulliver and Ayres’ key management worked closely with the Greentree Business Partner to develop the implementation plan, and together they decided upon a phased implementation with Payables, Purchasing and GL in phase 1 and Receivables, Sales Orders and Inventory in phase 2.

The necessary hardware and network upgrades were also treated as separate phases to be bedded-down before moving to software. Gulliver also made a conscious effort to involve users in the selection and implementation process, as he believed that it would "give them ownership and confidence" and help to mitigate the risk of adverse reactions to the new system at the operational level.

The implementation proved to be a resounding success, with the phased approach a critical factor in the roll out progressing smoothly.

Twelve months on, Gulliver says he is confident that Greentree was the ideal solution for Ayres, citing a number of factors that have benefited the organisation’s process efficiency and allowed it to take its customer service to the next level.

Of most benefit to the company in Gulliver’s opinion is Greentree’s native integration to Microsoft Excel.

"The ability to slice, dice and dissect the data using the Excel tools is exceptional," he says. "With our previous system, I spent the majority of my day generating static reports. Greentree’s integration to Excel has made a dramatic impact on the amount of time we spend analysing data and resolving issues."

Externally, Greentree has helped Ayres overcome a number of issues in dealing with its suppliers and customers. Gulliver says Greentree has significantly enhanced the company’s ability to add value to its customer relationships.

"We generally have long-term, repeat business customers. With Greentree we can present our customers with an order history for any period and in any format required, generally within half an hour. Using our previous system, these summaries took closer to a day to complete."

Gulliver says the stability of the system is critical as the organisation does not have a dedicated IT specialist in house.

"When IT things go ‘pear shaped’ it is a big deal. Greentree just sits in the corner and does its job without my help."

Ayres’ choice of Greentree is also being vindicated as it begins the process of bringing the entire IT function into one package. Greentree’s CRM and Sales & Marketing modules have been implemented along with the WebStore for Internet sales, which went live in December 2003. In the following year, Ayres began the implementation project for Payroll and evaluated Fixed Assets as a further addition to the system.