The complete integration of the “front office” tasks of quotation, sales and purchase order processing and inventory management with the “back office” processes of administrative accounting has been possible for some years. For nearly a decade, affordable products such as Pegasus Opera have reliably provided this type of functionality to firms that mainly buy, sell and assemble. The real problems begin when the “front office” processes are less conventional. ATW, a long established IT firm based in Chichester, West Sussex, specialises in developing software to meet unusual demands and then integrating this with standard accounting software. Here are just a few of our most recent computer and network outsourcing projects.

For A UK National Charity ATW has developed complete administrative systems for a division of one of the largest national charities in the UK. These systems control, monitor, record and fully document an assessment process. It is then seamlessly integrated with Pegasus Opera to provide comprehensive administrative, financial and

For A Specialist UK National Chartered Surveyor The development of comprehensive professional and agency management systems for one of the UK’s oldest specialist national Chartered Surveyors. These area network using Microsoft Windows Terminal Server and a generic RAID Level 5 File Server. The output of this system is then tightly integrated with Pegasus Opera for the purposes of financial and management accounting.

UK National Environment Charity A comprehensive and integrated system to control the processes of the management of conferences and seminars together with the sales of publications, manuals and yearbooks for one of the UK’s oldest national environmental charities. This is in the process of being seamlessly integrated with Pegasus Opera.

Southeast England Central Heating Services Firm A complete Service Management system for a substantial central heating engineering company. The system logs calls and facilitates the allocation of work to technicians on the basis of availability, skill level and time availability filtered by postal code. On line password protected access to information is provided for some of the company’s most important local authority and housing association clients. The system includes invoicing for both labour and parts and is seamlessly integrated with administrative, financial and management accounting using Pegasus Opera. Few would question the benefits of such systems. The cost savings are of course important but neither the charities nor commercial firms mentioned above have made staff redundant. Rather they have redeployed staff in more interesting, income generating employment.

For the two commercial firms and two charities described, the greatest problems were:

(i) finding a single competent supplier of software development and computer network and installation services that would accept total responsibility for the entire system;

(ii) upfront cost - most medium sized firms have found that it is simply not economic to have this type of resource in house. Firstly it is unusual to find a single person with both the networking and programming skills.

Secondly even a person who happens to have these skills at a moment in time (a) quickly becomes out of date and (b) does not acquire the necessary experience to bring sufficient innovation and experience to the solution of problems. In addition, as desirable and cost effective as a given solution may be, upfront costs can sometimes be prohibitive. ATW brings an innovative solution to both of these problems. First, we are a “turnkey” provider of total solutions. In house, we have both the network, hardware and software competence to develop, install and support a comprehensive and integrated solution. More important, our long term relationships with suppliers of IT finance means that we can wrap up software development and the network platform into a single supply contract. One recent transaction even included a sale and lease back of an existing network. Computer Outsourcing.