AC&R Specialists: Refining a strong company and enabling consistent growth
"When it comes to support, WennSoft is head and shoulders above its competitors, and I’ve dealt with many software companies over the years."
Ron Bond
President, AC&R Specialists
AC&R Specialists is a mechanical contractor based in Sioux City, Iowa, that serves the national commercial and industrial markets. Their primary emphasis is to provide refrigeration construction services including full engineering and design capabilities. Quality and customer satisfaction are the company’s watchwords. They are proud of the reputation they’ve earned as a solid, “fast track” contractor. Their approach to projects allows delivery that consistently meets or exceeds customer expectations in situations with critically short timeframes. Their company philosophy is to provide quality at the proper price. The success of their business is based on repeat customers.
Out with the Old
Soon after joining AC&R in 1995, the company’s president, Ron Bond, began looking for ways to achieve growth. One of his strategies was to replace the company’s outdated Microsoft DOS-based Open Systems.
“At the time, our solution did not have a complete suite of products to work in a Microsoft Office environment,” Bond said. “Some custom coding had been done, but there was no path to update the solution.”
Their old solution didn’t interface between the general ledger, purchasing or other essential areas in the organization, which caused unnecessary work because information had to be entered in two or three different places. The lack of integration also prevented them from running ‘percent of completion’ reports on jobs more than once each quarter.
“We never knew where a project stood, unless every purchase order was added separately,” Bond said.
Bond made the decision to move AC&R to WennSoft Job Cost and Service Management Series, along with Microsoft Dynamics GP.
The results were dramatic. AC&R became more efficient because WennSoft was tied into the general ledger. This meant they only had to enter information into the system once. It also helped AC&R improve the time it took to get job cost numbers – they could get accurate figures five-to-seven days after a project was completed rather than waiting until the end of the month.
“WennSoft opened our eyes because we could see all the committed costs on a project,” said Bond.
WennSoft also helped AC&R transition from paper to electronic information. With their old system they needed multiple copies of every document in case one got lost. Now, their operations are primarily electronic, which reduces the number of stored documents.
“The only person who has lost money since AC&R switched to WennSoft is the guy who used to shred our paper,” said Bond.
The transition to WennSoft paid off. WennSoft enabled them to achieve accelerated growth without a significant increase in staffing. Between 1995 and 2005, their sales grew tenfold and their service division expanded five times over. During the same 10-year period, AC&R only hired two additional backroom staff members.
Taking on More Responsibility
Now that they have created more effective operations, AC&R is focused on refining the WennSoft solution so it is consistently rolled out across the company’s different divisions. This has helped AC&R’s managers take on more responsibility. The management team can use WennSoft to understand status, determine next steps and identify any issues that might arise.
“The availability of information that WennSoft provides has allowed my people to be more productive and more efficient,” said Bond.
Twelve years ago, Bond’s managers had so much legwork, they could only handle one or two projects. There was no single source point of entry to get the information, so a manager had to go to multiple sources to obtain information, or they needed an accountant to produce a summary report. Bond said the tools WennSoft provides have alleviated much of the excess work.
“Our companies run extremely lean,” said Bond. “The workload my people are now able to carry is much greater than when I first came into the business.”
Providing Construction Management with Effective Tools
WennSoft has been particularly beneficial for AC&R’s general construction division. Since this division isn’t as mature as AC&R’s other divisions, the manager of the construction division had to overcome a pretty steep learning curve. WennSoft helped by providing project-management tools that enabled the construction division manager to track the division’s profitability.
“Because of WennSoft, I didn’t miss a beat with this new company,” said Bond. “I didn’t lose any opportunities, and made better money.”
Ability to Anticipate Trends
WennSoft provided AC&R with data that enabled them to recognize the nation’s economic downturn well before economists were predicting a recession. This gave them a jump on the competition by reassessing important elements of their business such as profit margins.
“WennSoft helped me maintain profitability in these tough economic times,” said Bond. “WennSoft allows me to be smarter about how I run my business because I have the history and tools to monitor in real time the impact of trends on my base assumptions, such as my billing rate.”
AC&R Praise for WennSoft Implementation and Support
“When it comes to support, WennSoft is head and shoulders above its competitors, and I’ve dealt with many software companies over the years,” said Bond.
Bond said he likes the fact that WennSoft continually solicits feedback from customers. They take this input and match it up to their short-term and long-term plans, and make changes accordingly.
“WennSoft recognizes the importance of listening to customers and making changes to suit their organizational needs,” said Bond. “They foster a confidence and rapport with their customers so they are able to get honest feedback, which helps them continually develop a superior product.”