Datasharp is a telecommunications and document solutions company with over 30 years' experience delivering bespoke solutions to 1000s of businesses globally. With a host of value-added services including consultancy and project management, their portfolio of industry leading products and award-winning customer service supports their customers to ensure their business remains at the cutting edge of technology.

The challenge

Industry	Telecommunications
Geographic	Truro (HQ), offices across England, Scotland and Wales
Employees	62
Turnover	£11m
Solution	Access Dimensions, Service Manager, SelectPay, GoldMine Premium Edition
Modules	Credit Control, Asset Manager, Costing/Project Management, Dashboard, Sales & Purchase Order Processing, Invoicing, Price Matrix, Meter Billing, Call Centre, Serial Number Tracking, Sub-analysis, Sale & Purchase Contra, Cash Book, Core Ledgers, SDK, Transaction Broker, Access Office Integration

"Datasharp's original system was only ever intended to handle operations at head office," says Paul Hayes, Datasharp's Finance Manager. "But the business grew much faster than anticipated - and our IT system struggled to cope with the needs of what became a much broader, bigger business." It also became clear that remote access - particularly for the sales teams - was the way to grow the business again in the future. To put it simply, they didn't have the functionality required.

As Paul explains, there were a couple of very specific problems. "Unfortunately it was possible to duplicate customer details and there was no way to record key information needed to run targeted marketing campaigns."

In effect Datasharp were making the best of a basic contact management database as opposed to a more sophisticated system that could help move the company forward. After a period of time struggling with the limitations of what they had, they decided it was time for a change.

The search

Datasharp started the search for a new system in early 2010. They knew they needed a fully integrated system from back-end financials through to service and CRM - because up to that point they'd been using Sage and found it had limited integration. It was time to move on, and they were looking for a system that could give them a fully comprehensive, live picture of their business.

We were so impressed with what Access had to offer that once the system was in - we kept adding more to it!Paul Hayes
Finance Manager

The decision-making team - the IT team and the FD - worked together to research the best solution.

"Although there was a specific budget in mind, we were well aware that there were huge unknowns, and it would be short-sighted to start such a large project with a restrictive approach to cost. Also, when we did our research, we found that a similar package to that offered by Access from another company would start at around £250k just for integrating the previous package with the new system." To their surprise, this already prohibitive cost did not include any add-ons, consultancy or bespoke project work.

The solution

From what they knew of Access already, Datasharp were very interested in Dimensions, GoldMine and Service Manager. They specifically chose GoldMine because it offered the best functionality for what they were looking for - and saw that it could read from Service Manager, instantly giving the business more control of sales teams, tasks and targets. "We were also impressed that the Access software was able to link in seamlessly with systems in place that we wanted to keep - they could even write new software that reads from third party," says Paul.

Paul and the team were so delighted with what Access offered that since buying Dimensions, then adding GoldMine and Service Manager - they also chose to take our payroll solution SelectPay as well.

Implementation

"We found the sales team and processes of Access to be absolutely great," says Paul. "There were a few modifications needed, but that's because Access understand that every company works differently. In fact we work more differently than most!"

A further piece of the puzzle was that each office location within the Datasharp group works differently, in a system where national offices work more like a franchise model. Therefore all information read by the system centrally had to be identifiable by a special prefix. Access wrote this into Dimensions specifically for Datasharp.

"The Access project manager stayed the whole time. In fact everyone that was involved worked really hard and often worked until gone midnight in order for Datasharp's new system to stay on track."

The results?

"Access' finance software provided an excellent level of control, exceptional data retrieval, and is the most user-friendly package we've ever used."

Remote access, local success

Of course the change was huge, but as Paul says, "we knew what to expect - and that change can take time - but now everyone in the department can see the benefit of using the new system. One of the greatest benefits is that it offers our salespeople the opportunity to use the system remotely, which they've never had before."

Visibility & control

Another way in which Access has transformed the business is visibility - not just of sales teams, reports and costs - but also of the customer.

"GoldMine, Dimensions and Service Manager are all about giving as much visibility of the customer as possible so that our sales people have a clear overall picture of the customer - which is especially valuable when speaking to them. Plus, Dashboard is a fantastic management tool."

Post-implementation

"The Support team have been very good and all support calls are dealt with in a timely manner. We still have good access to our Dimensions consultant which we value highly: we often hear that once the install has taken place, companies don't hear from the consultant again.

Moving forward we are looking at ways to integrate Dimensions with our Network Services division's billing platform. This will allow us to cut out the manual intervention which we have to do every month to import call data and invoice information."

Summary

"We were impressed that the Access software was able to link in seamlessly with systems in place that we wanted to keep - they could even write new software that reads from third party... we found the sales team and processes of Access to be absolutely great."

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