Landells Signs: 'It's all about reports' - iStart leading the way to smarter technology investment.

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Published on the 13/05/2010 | Written by MYOB

AT A GLANCE

Landells Signs

INDUSTRY

Sign Installation and Maintenance

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

Flexibility to be able to create customised reports
Fluidity in the creation and handling of jobs

SOLUTION

MYOB Exo – Exoserv

THE BENEFITS

MYOB Exo now acts as a communication channel between departments, easing the flow of information around the company
Quicker to resolve problems or hold ups
Cut business administration workload by about 50 per cent

FOR MORE INFORMATION

MYOB//
E: biggerbusiness@myob.com
NZ: 0800 696 239
AU: 1300 555 110
https://www.myob.com/

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Its history may stretch back to Victorian times, but Victoria’s Landells Signs needed to make sure its accounting system met its 21st century needs. It signed off on MYOB’s Exo…

Walk down Bourke Street in Melbourne and it’s hard not to bump into something that’s come out of the Landells Signs factory and warehouse in Sunshine. The company’s work is literally everywhere…

Coles, Priceline, KFC, Tradelink – household brands all of them. The signs: all Landells.

It’s not just about signs – or Melbourne, of course.

The company, which first started life over 100 years ago in 1903, offers a complete service, which includes installation and maintenance, throughout Australia.

For the best part of 10 years, Landells had been using Line 100, the accounts and trading package from Sage. A reliable system, with a strong brand behind it, it suited the size and structure of the company well. The only problem, according to Landells’ finance manager Shamila Jayasuriya Shamil, was that it was really only suitable for somebody with a head for numbers.

“Coming from an accounting background, I didn’t have a problem using Sage,” says Jayasuriya.

“But because others in the company, less used to dealing with financials, struggled to get to grips with it, the responsibility for getting data in and out of the system fell on my team’s shoulders.”

Landells was also looking for additional functionality from the package – and a way of making information more easily accessible to non-accountant managers.

“We really wanted the flexibility to be able to create customised reports, as well as a little more fluidity in the creation and handling of jobs,” says Jayasuriya.

“With Sage there’s a lot of manual effort required to find all the details relevant to a single job. We wanted to be able to store that sort of information in one place.”

Keeping it simple
Jayasuriya first came across MYOB’s Exo Business suite online.

After comparing it with a handful of other products, she contacted MYOB, who put her in touch with Exo specialist Exoserv.

“What struck us immediately about Exo, coming from Sage rather than an MYOB product like Premier, was the simplicity of the navigation. It looked as if it easy enough to use from Day One.”

Jayasuriya says she was also impressed by the apparent ease with which reports could be created from just about anywhere in the program.

However, these were just first impressions. What Jayasuriya and the rest of the Landells management really wanted to see was how MYOB Exo processed a job from start to finish using real data. That’s where Exoserv stepped in.

Penny drops
Exoserv’s first step was to walk Landells through a number of different presentations – standard presentations on the whole – showcasing MYOB Exo’s general ability. With the theory covered off, the Exo team, headed by Andy Ford, then set up a trial using real Landells data.

According to Jayasuriya, that was when the penny dropped.

“The trial was really the first time people in the business other than me got to see the product in action. Perhaps more importantly, it was the first time people realised it wasn’t a tool exclusively for the accountant.”

For Shane Woodman, Landells’ CEO, this was something of a revelation. It meant he could gather genuine intelligence on the business himself, whenever he wanted or needed it.

In all, it took Exoserv no more than a couple of days to complete the basic installation of the system and import Landells data across from Sage.

“For anybody coming from Sage, I’d recommend working with Exoserv,” says Jayasuriya. “They really were exceedingly helpful.”

“Andy and his team’s in-depth knowledge of both Sage and MYOB Exo meant Exoserv not only knew where we were coming from – from a cultural point of view, as well as technically – but what we were trying to achieve. As migrations go, it was pretty slick.”

“Exonet has freed up our time dramatically,” she adds.

“Because we’ve been able combine job costing and accounting in the one package, we’ve cut our business administration workload by about 50 percent. That means we’ve got more time to focus on doing what we do best – offering customers a great service.”

At a practical level, MYOB Exo has given Landells the one thing it wanted – the ability to store all information relating to a particular job in a single place. And as a central reference point, accessible by everybody, MYOB Exo now acts as a communication channel between departments, easing the flow of information around the company.

“We’ve got a much better idea of who’s responsible and accountable now, which means we can be quicker to resolve problems or hold ups if they occur,” says Jayasuriya.

It’s all about reports
In terms of overall managerial visibility it’s the ability to generate such a wide range of reports that’s impressed Woodman and Jayasuriya most, largely because this has allowed the management team to focus on areas for growth.

The suite’s ‘Clarity’ report designer allows users to create new reports based pretty much on the outcome of your choice. And, because reports can be printed from anywhere in the system, there’s the ability to take a snapshot of business performance at almost any point.

That said, there’s really only a handful of reports that Landells relies on regularly, and these are the type of reports that help drive the daily activities of the business – graphic dashboards, trend diagrams, comparison tables and so forth.

“Our main report is a sales analysis tool, because we like to see, side by side, how sales are for each of our customers,” says Jayasuriya. “We’re also pretty dependent on a variance report, which lets us compare actual costs with budgeted costs. But, as much as anything, it’s the flexibility we like.

“Even if we’re not using half our reports, the knowledge that we can dip in and get a view of a particular aspect of the business is hugely reassuring.”

“And really, that’s Exo’s biggest appeal.”