Coldwell Banker
Coldwell Banker Reduces Month-End Workload with Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision
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Company Overview
Colbert Coldwell and Benjamin Banker founded their real estate firm amid the ruins of the great earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco. Since then, Coldwell Banker has grown into one of the most prominent and financially successful real estate companies in North America, with 120,000 sales representatives in over 3,600 offices worldwide.
Business Challenge
Coldwell Banker entered the Canadian market in 1989. Four years later, having established itself as one of the country’s premier real estate franchise systems, Coldwell Banker and Canada Trust Realty came together to create Coldwell Banker Affiliates of Canada. Today, Coldwell Banker Canada is 100 per cent Canadian owned, is a leading force in Canadian real estate, and has one of the country’s largest franchise networks.
Coldwell Banker Canada’s national network represents nearly 4,000 sales representatives who sell real estate out of over 200 independently owned and operated franchise offices located across the country, except in Nunavut. In Quebec, it has established a referral relationship with La Capitale, one of the province’s leading real estate companies.
The company had outgrown its Microsoft Access-based Integrated Office Accounting (IOA) accounting application, and needed to deploy a more powerful, stable and flexible solution to meet its general ledger and accounts payable needs.
“The IOA software we were using had served us well in the beginning, but five or six years later it was too limiting and was unable to handle our growing business,” says Corina Thomas, controller, Coldwell Banker Canada. “Plus, organizational changes within Integrated Office Accounting meant we were no longer getting the service we expected for the software.”
The accounting team at Coldwell Banker Canada’s head office provides support for three separate divisions within Coldwell Banker Canada. The IOA application could not handle the workflow between divisions, resulting in time-consuming manual processes to share data across the accounting system.
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Solution
Coldwell Banker Canada reviewed a number of different accounting systems on its own, and also enlisted the help of Microsoft Certified Gold Partner CSB Systems, A Bell Canada Company. CSB Systems recommended upgrading to Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision® because it offers the flexibility, stability and functionality the company was looking for.
“Coldwell Banker wanted an accounting solution that would allow them to run their business without system-related headaches, which is why I suggested Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The IOA product they were running was a low-end application that could not scale and adapt to meet their needs – they were obviously reluctant to continue pumping time and money into supporting it,” says Chris Reichenbacher, business development representative, CSB Systems. “Microsoft Navision would cost them more up front, however when they factored in the cost of managing bad information, down-time due to poor stability, plus the overhead caused by manual data entry and transfer, they came to realize that the hidden costs associated with maintaining IOA made it a costlier proposition in the long run.”
Microsoft Navision is a fully integrated business software package designed for medium-sized organizations like Coldwell Banker. As an established business management solution, Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision delivers integrated functionality to support solutions for financial management, supply chain management, and customer relationship management.
The solution allows Coldwell Banker users to drill down through layers of data across the entire system. Users are able to navigate seamlessly from financial statements down to original source documents, and from source documents up to the resulting financial statements. As well, the product is flexible enough to adapt to the company’s specific real estate business requirements.
“We liked the fact that Microsoft Navision allows us to pick and choose what we require for our business – we didn’t have to buy into the entire package, only the specific functionality we needed,” says Thomas. “We have a custom accounts receivable system that eventually we would like to integrate, which would have been almost impossible to do with IOA. However, Microsoft Navision will enable us to connect the two and transfer general ledger data.”
CSB Systems, A Bell Canada Company, helped Coldwell Banker Canada deploy the Microsoft Navision general ledger and accounts payable modules at head office, designing a blueprint for the rollout process that outlined how the company would use the system and what business processes it would have to adapt to accommodate the switch. The actual deployment took less than two months, and came in under budget.
Business Benefits
Upgrading its accounting system to Microsoft Navision has given Coldwell Banker Canada the flexible, stable solution it needs to support its growing business.
Improved Efficiency
Microsoft Navision is helping Coldwell Banker Canada streamline its accounting processes, enabling head-office staff to be more productive.
“Microsoft Navision is simple to use and has really helped us improve staff efficiency because it virtually eliminates manual effort in terms of accessing data,” says Thomas. “We have our month-end process down to one day with Microsoft Business Solutions, where previously it took us three to five days. This is saving a lot of time and effort, and enabling us to focus on other important business issues.”
Flexible Reporting
Coldwell Banker Canada now has more flexibility in creating reports with Microsoft Navision. The solution enables the company to report and analyze based on an unlimited number of criteria – for example sales by region, by department or by date – which is helping head office manage the workflow between various divisions more easily.
“We really like the reporting within Microsoft Navision – it’s much easier to make changes if you need to,” says Thomas. “It also provides more information than IOA did. For example, in processing an invoice into accounts payable, you can actually look to find out how it’s broken down to the general ledger, whereas IOA didn’t allow that. It’s also much easier to copy and paste into Excel.”
Microsoft Business Solutions
Microsoft Business Solutions offers integrated business applications and services that allow small and mid-sized organizations and divisions of large enterprises to connect employees, customers, and suppliers for improved efficiency. The financial management, customer relationship management, supply chain management, and analytics applications work with Microsoft products such as Microsoft Office and Windows to streamline processes across an entire organization, giving businesses insight to respond rapidly, plan strategically, and execute quickly. Microsoft Business Solutions are delivered through a worldwide network of channel partners that provide specialized services and local support tailored to a company’s needs.
For more information about Microsoft Business Solutions, go to:www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions/
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about CSB Systems, A Bell Canada Company, call (905) 814-7568 or visit the Web site at: www.csbsystems.com
For more information about Coldwell Banker Affiliates of Canada, call (800) 268-9599 or visit the Web site at: www.coldwellbanker.ca
