Lexicon is an international branding consultancy specialising in those overnight corporate makeovers which often follow a merger or a company name change.

"If you were a bank and you needed to change your corporate livery at a couple of hundred branches across the country - and you needed this to happen over a single weekend - we are the people to talk to," explains IT consultant Ross Vincent.

No two projects are ever the same, but they are almost always completed under a great deal of pressure, not least because a single project can be worth millions of dollars. Whilst the company subcontracts much of the installation work out to its network of installers and specialist manufacturers, but it also manufactures some of the signage itself.

Prior to Y2K, when Lexicon went shopping for a financial system, the IT team at the time had some difficulty finding a package that would fit the needs of both sides of the business. The company eventually chose an accounts package aimed at manufacturers.

When Vincent joined the company later, the manufacturing system he had 'inherited' was already beginning to reveal some troublesome limitations. "One of the biggest drawbacks of the old system was that it was too rigid. For example we couldn't raise an invoice until a job was finished, but many of the jobs we do involve progress payments while the project was still underway."

The manufacturing system was also incapable of producing invoices in the format required by Lexicon's customers. "Some clients want individual branches to pay their own share and in some cases head office will pick up the bill, or it can be a mixture of both. The sort of work we do is incredibly varied and the old system just didn't have the flexibility to cope with it."

Most worryingly, the manufacturing system was not allowing Lexicon to track its costs on a project by project basis.

"We became more and more aware of our inability to know our true financial position at any one day," says Vincent.

Last year Lexicon decided it needed a system that would integrate project management and accounting functions. After a lengthy selection process, the company chose Microsoft Solomon, supplied by Auckland-based Complete Solutions. Lexicon finally received board approval to purchase Solomon at the end of January, leaving Vincent just eight weeks to get the package up and running in time for the new financial year beginning in April.
 
"Complete Solutions were very helpful. They told us what we had to achieve each week, and they set milestones as to which modules had to be configured in what order." Vincent says there was nothing difficult about the configuration process, but Lexicon took the opportunity to re-examine its business. "We looked at what structure would be the best practice from the business and accounting point of view, and we not only looked at where the business was today but where we wanted it to be in two years time."

Vincent says Solomon was ready "bang on time" and now after four months of operation it is more than proving its worth.

"It's simple and straightforward, and the customers get their invoice in the way they want to be invoiced. Solomon can cope with a lot of variation within a job, and you know exactly where the costs lie."

Vincent says Solomon is now also providing Lexicon with real time views of critical financial and non-financial indicators. The next step is to implement Microsoft's Business Portal, which will integrate seamlessly with Solomon to deliver information applications to managers and employees via the company intranet.
 
"We now have much more business intelligence than we've ever had before, and at the end of the day, good decision making depends on having good information."

For more information
www.lexicon.co.nz

Anne Frith
09 362 5865
askdynnz@microsoft.com
Microsoft New Zealand
P O Box 8070, Symonds Street, Auckland

January 2005

Lexicon staff