Weary of the waste, inefficiency, and lost value that resulted from relying on a patchwork of disparate software — including Excel, Sage50, BillQuick, Tableau, and Salesforce — M S Benbow & Associates (MSB) decided they needed an integrated, project-based ERP solution to become more data-intelligent, resource-efficient, innovative and competitive.
Establishment of a stand-alone project management department within MSB in 2017 exposed some of the firm’s biggest ERP challenges:
- A reliance on multiple disparate systems required time consuming, often redundant data entry and transfer.
- Data bottlenecks were preventing the free and timely flow of actionable data to inform project-specific and firm-wide strategic, forward-looking decision-making, while also limiting cross-departmental collaboration.
- The lack of a single, simple environment in which to view and analyze project data in real-time also hampered decision-making.
- Inefficiencies surrounding critical processes such as opportunity tracking, project startup, client invoicing and expense reporting
MSB is using the Unanet A/E, powered by Clearview, cloud-based ERP software platform, purpose-built for architecture and engineering firms. The firm is utilizing most of the modules available with Unanet A/E, including accounting modules (A/R, A/P, and General Accounting), the Marketing module, the Project Management module, Advanced Analytic Dashboards, the Analytic Dashboard Designer and Flows & Actions.