Country Club Enterprises
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Country Club Enterprises is one
of the largest Club Car
distributors in the U.S. serving
Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode
Island and eastern
Massachusetts. The firm sells,
leases and services thousands of
golf cars to golf clubs each
year. These clubs buy or lease
the golf cars in fleets ranging
from less than 20 to those with
fleets of 150+. CCE also
provides maintenance and repair
services for the cars it sells
or leases.
Two problems arose from the old
system. One, the inability to
accurately track inventory in
real-time caused confusion about
the true physical location of
some cars. Two, there was often
a time lag between delivery and
invoicing because the sales side
had to do their work by hand.
Country Club Enterprises chose
PRONTO Software's enterprise
management solution to help them
manage the administrative tasks
involved in the sale, leasing,
customization, distribution,
maintenance and repair of golf
carts. PRONTO Software provides
a fully integrated management
system that links all aspects of
the business from accounting to
delivery.
"PRONTO software has tied all
our processes together from
sales through production to
accounting for the first time
since we acquired CCE two years
ago," explains Russ Spencer,
CFO. It also meant that in the
first half of this year, CCE had
significantly accelerated its
billings compared to the same
period in 2001.
This is a very seasonal business
with their busiest time being
between January and April, as
the clubs get ready for the golf
season along the upper East
Coast.
"We now have linked all the
steps from inventory control to
sales and invoicing," Spencer
continues. "These are the two
most important benefits to us."
The capabilities of PRONTO
allowed the firm to eliminate
the redundancies that occurred
under the old system, which also
helped to eliminate errors or
conflicting data.
When CCE was purchased two years
ago, the new management team
inherited a legacy DOS-based
system that left much of the
paper trail to be literally
hand-done or was captured in
other software such as Excel.
For example, inventory was
tracked in Excel that wasn't
linked to the DOS system. The
Excel inventory had to be
reconciled with accounting's
figures because there was no way
to create a clean cut-off for
cars in transit from one
location to another.
"To be
able to track serialized
inventories, we have created
a purchase order for the
trade-in cars coming back to
us, so our books in essence
show that we are buying the
cars and we credit that sale
back to customer when we
invoice them for the new
fleet being shipped in
exchange," he says.
Today, they not only know
what they have, but where it
is located at any given
point in time.
"Our
most significant inventory
issue now is reconciling the
inventory that was being
tracked in Excel when we
converted to the new system.
Eventually, we'll get it all
captured in the new system,"
Spencer adds.
"Using our old system, which
involved a lot of paperwork,
meant there could be a lag from
the time of the sale until we
actually mailed the invoice,"
says Spencer. "Now we invoice on
delivery. It also means that
CCE's aging reports are the
useful management tool they are
meant to be.
"We are probably doing some
things with the software that we
will do differently in the
future," Spencer explains,
"because we didn't fully
understand the software
capabilities before making some
implementation decisions.
"If we had to do it again, we
would have extended the
implementation to allow time for
more thorough training and to
make better decisions," Spencer
advises. "It was our decision to
push an aggressive installation,
as we wanted to go-live by Jan.
1. We did the pre-install work
in October, then began system
set-up in November and December.
That was a very short period of
time to make such as dramatic
change in how we need to do
business.
"That resulted in making some adjustments along the way. Our
PRONTO consultant was excellent
at working through changes and
solutions with us. As with any
new software, we ran into a few
'bugs,' which we chose to call
'unanticipated software
enhancements.' He was terrific
in finding and resolving those
issues. There were no deal
stoppers. The beauty is that
nothing is set in stone, so we
can modify our system
configuration in the future. The
software is incredibly flexible.
"We need fast, accurate
information in every aspect of
our business, particularly in
our service department since
golf carts are a significant
revenue source for our
customers," he concludes. "When
they need service, we need to be
there."
Country Club Enterprises grew
dramatically in 2001 and has a
staff of 30 between in three
states. Spencer says they were
able to handle the growth
without adding administrative
staff, in part, because of the
efficiencies brought about by
PRONTO software.
"We are positioned now for
continued growth," Spencer says,
"PRONTO gives us the scalability
we need to reach that goal."
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