APS, Microsoft and Menzies Chartered Accountants – a winning combination

in a first for a practice management software provider, Microsoft has profiled APS in a globally published case study. The study focuses on how the two companies’ products have come together seamlessly for the professional services market place – and in particular sheds light on their combined efforts in the systems upgrade of Menzies Chartered Accountants.

Menzies was reliant on its old UNIX based system to produce reports essential to its work. The system was difficult to use and this was hampering Menzies’ ability to use management information effectively. This slowed down the billing process and meant the firm could not identify new opportunities very easily. So Menzies worked with Microsoft partner APS to implement the APS Advance® practice management solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The new system, which deals with Client Relationship Management, time and billing, workflow, and management reporting, has increased efficiency and reduced the reporting process from days to virtually real time and operates over a Wide Area Network (WAN) for 250 people.

Brian Coventry, Managing Director of APS UK, says: "We have a very good relationship with Microsoft through our development centre, so we keep up to speed with things as they change—and they change quite rapidly—so we can incorporate them into our solutions and ensure that our clients benefit from leading edge use of technology. So when it comes to working jointly on a project in the way we did for Menzies, there was no learning curve. We were able to get straight onto the job at hand, not get to know each-others products first."

Salvador Amico, IT Partner at Menzies, says: "Advance is very user friendly. Users can pull off reports and present them on any desktop in almost real-time. We weren’t in control of the reporting process before, whereas now we are. Advance is so much better than anything out there. The other system we looked at was far too complicated."

The Menzies case study is available at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies/CaseStudy.asp?CaseStudyID=14549

For more information about APS’s products and services, visit the Web site at:
http://www.aps-advance.com or call 01344 393 050.

For more information about Microsoft products or services, call the Microsoft UK Contact Centre on 08706 010100. To access information via the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/uk

For more information about Menzies’ products and services, visit the Web site at:
http://www.menzies.co.uk

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