Background

ACT Reprographics is one of the UK’s leading large format display specialists. The Cardiff-based firm provides display solutions in formats including banner stands, banners, building wraps, fabric graphics, vehicle deliveries, signs, backlit media, exhibition graphics, billboards and more. Point of sale displays, pop-ups and modular exhibition kits are particularly popular.

Started in the 1990s, the firm now employs 18 people and has recently increased its production area by over 50%.
Business Need
Like many print and repro houses, ACT runs all its systems on a Mac platform. The company needed a financial package that would run on Mac, offered good job costing functionality and would be able to support future growth.
Solution
ACT began using HansaWorld FirstOffice, at that time the only Mac-based financial system suitable for small businesses, in 2001. The firm has since upgraded to HansaWorld Express and now HansaWorld Enterprise, with nine users of functionality including accounts, logistics and stock management, purchase orders and quotations.

More recently, the firm has also adopted Hansaworld’s Voice over IP (VoIP) technology. “By using HansaWorld alongside a VoIP ISP, we will be able to make calls from our computers simply by clicking on buttons within HansaWorld, while at the same time automatically storing details of the conversation in a CRM record,” says ACT’s Lee Saltmarsh. “We are also getting clients for Nokia mobile phones, so our sales reps can stay in contact with their data, not just their emails, at all times.”
Results
“We haven’t seen another package that comes close to HansaWorld in terms of its comprehensive features,” says ACT’s Lee Saltmarsh. “Where else can you get email and calendars, document management, VoIP interaction and mobile phone clients in the same package as standard accounts, order processing and stock?”

ACT also praises HansaWorld’s reliability and ease of use: “We’ve not had a server crash in all the time we’ve been running it and for a system of HansaWorld’s power and flexibility the software is surprisingly easy to use. We particularly like the ability to run our favourite functions directly from the desktop, without having to navigate through menus.”

Saltmarsh says ACT has spent “around one-third of one person’s salary” on the software, “and this is dramatically less than the cost savings that it has delivered.”