Quikserv Corp

Drives Through to Greater Success With Sage 300 ERP Flexibility

Since 1986, Quikserv Corp, based in Houston, Texas, has specialized in stainless steel and aluminum fabrication for drive-thru windows, transaction drawers, air curtains, deal trays/ shelves, and bullet-resistant products. During the 1990s, rapid sales growth, increasing customer call volume, and a massive customer database combined to overwhelm its existing spreadsheet-based system. Local computer consulting firm Advanced Applications resolved these issues by performing numerous enhancements to the company’s highly flexible Sage 300 ERP* system. Now Quikserv has instant access to the latest sales, shipping, and customer data, leading to dramatically improved sales/product tracking, reporting, customer service performance, and increased profitability.

Rapid Growth Forces Quikserv to Reevaluate Outdated Business Systems
When Quikserv was a small start-up company, it relied heavily upon a manual spreadsheet system to process orders and customer service requests. By the early 1990s, the company took on large corporate accounts, causing its database of contractors/middlemen (who install the products) to swell into the thousands. The spreadsheet system proved incapable of managing all of the data, creating a strain on customer service reps. Reordering a product was very time-consuming since the process necessitated going back through old spreadsheets to find specific data. With business growing so quickly, it was clear that a more automated and customized system was needed to keep pace.

Sage 300 ERP Technology Boosts Quikserv’s Productivity
Quikserv’s controller, Jason Epps, called Scott McMillian, founder and president of Advanced Applications, Inc., to implement a fully automated and customized business solution. Advanced Applications first upgraded Quikserv’s Sage 300 ERP accounting software and performed numerous customizations, starting with enhancements to the software’s lookup function. “After Advanced Applications created a special lookup function, Rapid Retrieve, what used to take ten minutes now takes only seconds,” Epps claims.

Quikserv sells products through contractors to the end user, who ultimately pays for them. The optional fields enabled the system to be customized so that sales could be tracked from the middleman (contractor) all the way through to the end user.

Challenge
Increasing customer call volume and a huge customer database overwhelmed Quikserv’s manual system, making it difficult to track sales, generate reports, and provide quality customer service.

Solution
Sage partner Advanced Applications, Inc. upgraded Quikserv’s Sage 300 ERP accounting system, and installed optional fields and the MISys manufacturing system.

Results
Sage 300 ERP enables Quikserv to perform complete sales tracking and analysis and provides a more efficient shipping system.

With the Sage 300 ERP add-on product for comprehensive, multidimensional analysis and reporting, management can now look directly into the Sage 300 ERP database and gather all the information needed to perform comprehensive sales analysis.

An outdated, inefficient shipping process also needed revamping. Advanced Applications set up a configuration so that Quikserv could capture key shipping information. “We wrote a series of reports with this information to automate the company’s shipping process and to create a generic bill of lading, thereby eliminating dual entry between the sales order and shipping systems,” said McMillian. “Required information is pulled right from the Sage 300 ERP system to generate all the applicable shipping documents.”

“We wanted to improve on our public image, and Sage 300 ERP gave us the tools to do so,” said Epps. “Sage 300 ERP is like a giant toolbox. Every time we need to change something, the software has the right tool for the job. We have just expanded the system with MISys manufacturing software, and we intend to add the Sage CRM application down the road.”