When David Goodwin took over his new role as group financial controller at The PA People he was pleasantly surprised to find that Greentree, the business management software he inherited, wasn’t actually broken so he had no reason to ditch it.

As far as Goodwin could see, Greentree was doing everything the business needed it to do, integration with other business modules was “fantastic” and he was very happy with it as a whole.

The business situation
The purpose of The PA People business is to make sure that audiences can see and hear exactly what’s going on at public and private events. The business originally focused on providing sales, hire and installation services to churches and schools. It has since extended into contracting, maintenance and testing services, and manufacturing.

A key driver in the original decision to install Greentree was the need for a more comprehensive and fully integrated system incorporating CRM, functionality not available in the previous system. When the business refurbished its showroom, which sells over 3,000 items from 40 manufacturers, and also began a contracted maintenance service division, it had no way to comprehensively manage inventory or its contractual arrangements with customers.

The showroom now utilises Greentree’s inventory module while CRM is used to manage contractual relationships which have become core business activities. These needed to integrate with other key business functions and activities.

“It really is the integration between all the financial modules, as well as the CRM interface, that makes [Greentree] stand apart,” says Goodwin.

Ebb and workflows
The PA People's use of Greentree's modules typically begins with a customer enquiry being categorised as either a hire or sales lead and, if it involves a new customer, a new record being created using the CRM module.

For a straightforward sales enquiry the quotation or invoicing functions are used but if it is a larger project type job, for example the 2004 Athens Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies, it is allocated to a Project Manager for job costing before a quote is prepared. When the Athens opportunity came up, Greentree was well up to the task of providing the functional capability required to cost such a large scale multi-faceted project.

Greentree’s workflow module is used to track and trace the progress of each customer transaction through the system. A colour-coded alert system lets users know exactly what the current status of a job is at any given point in real-time.

“Users have found Greentree to be very intuitive and they appreciate its power once they manage to get their heads around everything it does,” Goodwin says.

Drill-down through a single-source of relational information
Greentree’s modular integration enables users to drill-down through various levels of detailed information and see everything related to a customer including, but not limited to, communications, invoicing, and sales history - all from within a single-source so there is no duplication of data in multiple places. As far as Goodwin is concerned this is invaluable and serves to empower the business process and its decision making.

Commitment to the future
The PA People business is currently looking at the Greentree approvals & alerts and manufacturing modules, and is also looking at how the hire part of its operation can be integrated into Greentree.

Goodwin says the support The PA People have had from the local Greentree implementation partner has been “fabulous” and this coupled with “continual upgrades and enhancements show [Greentree’s] commitment to making it better all the time.” These complementary factors make Goodwin confident that committing to a future with Greentree is a sound business decision that will stand the test of time, and personnel changes, for a good few years to come.

For more information

www.greentree.com/customers/profiles/pa_people.cfm

Graham Hill
Greentree
Ph: 0800 313 313
Fax: 09 366 3889
Email: graham.hill@greentree.com
www.greentree.com

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