Velociti, a global provider of enterprise technology solutions for nearly three decades, helps meet complex business needs by optimizing technology investments, lowering costs, and improving employee and customer acceptance through innovative design, rapid installation and deployment, and proactive support services for a broad range of transportation and networking technologies.
Velociti had been using a legacy financials system, and due to the constraints of the old system, the company’s accounting department found themselves performing a lot of functions manually. The team was printing and sending out invoices by mail, and processing and costing work orders by hand. As the volume of transactions increased, Velociti was having a hard time keeping up with demand and completing month-end close as quickly as they would have liked.
Conversely, Velociti was performing other operational tasks in Salesforce, such as the initiation of work orders. The Velociti team enjoys the flexibility of the Salesforce platform, and they knew that flexibility would be at the forefront of their search criteria as they looked for a new system.
Velociti knew they had outgrown their old financials system. The challenge? Finding a new one that could automate accounting processes, deliver better visibility into costing and revenue, and provide flexibility to fit the team’s needs.
Throughout their search, Velociti looked into various ERPs, including Epicor and Oracle NetSuite. While these products had some of the functionality Velociti needed out of the box, none of them could deliver the level of flexibility the company was looking for. They wanted something customizable.
“We had been spoiled by the customization capabilities within Salesforce and wanted a solution that would provide similar capabilities,” Cheryl Saxton, VP of Technology & Innovation at Velociti, said.
Enter Nextworld.
With the Nextworld Enterprise Applications Platform (EAP), Velociti could continue to innovate using the No-Code Studio, which would allow them to easily build and extend applications to meet their exact needs.
“What sold me on Nextworld was the ability to customize the platform without relying on outside programmers,” Tim Kats, VP & General Manager at Velociti, said. “All of the other vendors we talked to made it seem like it wouldn’t be easy to customize their systems.”
Another reason Velociti chose Nextworld? Their culture.
Rather than treating Velociti like they were cookie cutter, Nextworld took the time to understand their business and pain points, which was reflected in the statement of work that was presented.
“I could write a book on the difference between what other vendors presented and what [Nextworld’s] team presented,” Saxton said. “The level of detail they provided gave us so much confidence that they knew what they were doing and we were going to come in at or under budget.”
The biggest factor in Velociti’s decision was flexibility. Throughout the sales process and conversations with Nextworld customers, Velociti saw how flexible the Nextworld EAP was and how it could help them as they continue to grow their business.
Velociti was able to complete their Nextworld implementation in six months—making it an on-time, on-budget project.
“How quickly [the Nextworld] team was able to migrate the data from our legacy system onto the Nextworld EAP really speaks to the flexibility of the platform,” Saxton said.
Along with the Nextworld EAP, Velociti also purchased the No-Code Studio, as well as the Financials, Procurement, Manufacturing, and Projects business suites.
Velociti’s team used the No-Code Studio to build an integration between Nextworld and Salesforce. Now, when Velociti team members enter work orders into Salesforce, they automatically become projects in Nextworld, giving managers and the accounting team an easy and powerful way of collecting and managing supply, manufacturing, and costs associated with customer orders.
With Nextworld Project Costing, Velociti team members get earlier visibility into the ongoing costs and profitability, which supports ongoing improvements to pricing models.
Velociti is planning to use the Procurement suite to create purchase orders for contractors and subcontractors. Historically, team members have had a difficult time keeping track of the details surrounding their contractor purchase orders. With Nextworld, they will be able to manage all purchase order details from a single location.
Nextworld has given Velociti the flexibility needed to upgrade and modernize their accounting processes.
Since the integration with Salesforce, Velociti has used Nextworld to automate many invoicing processes. For the data-entry components that still need to be done manually, Nextworld built templates for Velociti.
By streamlining processes and automating manual tasks, Velociti was able to avoid hiring two additional employees for their accounting department and achieve immense time savings.
“I used to spend three to four days on month-end close,” Kats said. “Now, it only takes me one day.”
Velociti has also used Nextworld to provide more granular and readily available data surrounding their revenue and profitability. Since work order details in Salesforce are directly updated in Nextworld, Velociti can see exact details about individual project costs and profits in real time.
One of the ongoing benefits Velociti has found with Nextworld has been reduced development hours and professional service dollars. The team can do so much themselves in terms of customization because Nextworld makes it easy with the No-Code Studio.
Rob Brown, a Business Systems Analyst at Velociti, creates a great deal of customizations within Nextworld. One of his biggest projects involved consolidating financial data from multiple tables into a live, interactive report for the accounting department.
Most enterprise systems require users to rebuild or rework customizations after a new release, which can be a costly and time-consuming process. Because of this, many organizations choose not to upgrade their systems, forcing them to incur technical debt and locking them into soon-to-be antiquated technologies.
Nextworld customizations, however, automatically merge into each new release, meaning they will always be current and compatible with every upgrade.“It’s impressive how you can customize without impacting your upgrade path,” Saxton said.
With Nextworld, Velociti achieved the flexibility they set out to find. The team has used the time savings to do more analysis and become nimbler, and they have plans to create even more automations through system integrations. The opportunities are truly endless.
“Everybody says they’re flexible, but with Nextworld, there was some trust in that flexibility, and it has come to fruition,” Saxton said.
