Sage BusinessWorks Is Rock-Solid Solution for Mario and Son
Mario Marcella is a man who loves fine stonework. He dealt with plenty of surfaces during his early years as a tile setter. Then 12 years ago he started a granite business in his garage with a mere 40 square feet of space, creating kitchen counters, vanity tops, fireplace surrounds, and other products for residential and commercial use.
Today, Mario and Son is the largest fabricator of granite, marble, glass, and engineered quartz products in the Inland Northwest. Home Depot recently selected Mario and Son as its installation vendor for the region, in part because of their fast turnaround, state-of-the-art manufacturing technology, and "old world" craftsmanship. The company has won awards at numerous home shows, including First Place for Outstanding Exhibit at the Home & Yard Show in Spokane, Washington.
Porous Infrastructure
Mario and Son had just one computer shared between three staff members when Gale Snyder came aboard as office administrator. Accustomed to sophisticated networks from former jobs, she lobbied her new employer to expand its information system-and was successful in getting desktop PCs for each office worker. Then came the task of deciding which accounting package would serve the company best-the demo version of Sage BusinessWorks 50 Accounting they'd been using, or a competitor."I looked at everything, and kept coming back to Sage BusinessWorks," Snyder says. "I wanted something that would give us good balance sheets and income statements, as well as reliable data for tax purposes. Also, I wanted everything to be integrated-a far cry from the stand-alone packages we'd been using for Accounts Payable, Account Receivable and quotes. Both our external accountant and bookkeeper were familiar with Sage BusinessWorks and recommended it highly. We’ve been pleased with our decision to use it ever since."
"Sage BusinessWorks is both saving us money and making us money-and has easily paid for itself just in the first year."
Rock Solid Solution
From the time a customer brings an initial layout to Mario and Son, to sending a final invoice in the mail, Sage BusinessWorks automates the flow of information into one seamless whole. After preliminary drawings are scaled out and prices are applied to square footage, figures are entered into the system as a quote. If accepted, the quote is automatically converted into a sales order. Then the order goes to the shop floor for fabrication. The correct stone is selected, edges are confirmed, and a pick ticket is created off the sales order. The pick ticket tells craftsmen in fabrication exactly what to make. Once the job is done, the pick ticket goes back to Snyder, who uses it to create an invoice-all in Sage BusinessWorks.
"Sage BusinessWorks is awesome," says Snyder. "It has allowed many people to access the system at once, tripling the amount of work we can do. I can do accounts payable while somebody else does sales orders. Before, I'd waste half the day waiting to use the computer for quotes. So Sage BusinessWorks is both saving us money and making us money-and has easily paid for itself just in the first year."
Snyder especially appreciates the fact that data only has to be entered once. "We've avoided all the duplicated efforts we did previously,” she says, "which means that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time."
She found it was surprisingly easy to get up to speed on Sage BusinessWorks, both for herself and her coworkers, because of its intuitive graphical user interface and familiar Windows-based architecture. "We depend on Sage BusinessWorks all day long,” says Snyder. "It’s an all-encompassing program that makes virtually everything in our company more efficient. Even with our enviable growth rate of 10 percent a year, I’m confident that Sage BusinessWorks will continue to meet the needs of Mario and Son for years to come."
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